i HOPE this isn't too depressing

Suicide has been on my mind a lot lately - but not in the way you would think. A friend of mine called me this week to tell me that her brother has attempted suicide twice in the past month. His wife told him that she has been cheating on him for two years, was leaving him, and wanted nothing to do with their two small children. That is quite a blow.

I've written in some earlier posts about how I experience really high highs and really low lows. If something like this happened to me I'm sure I would have some extreme thoughts running through my head. My friend talked about the pain it was putting the family through and the pessimistic outlook for her brother's future. No one in the family believes he'll ever be the same. They even wonder if he'll make it through this at all. My friend spoke of the complete lack of emotion or remorse in her brother and how scary it is to see someone like that. I know this all to well.

When I was 19 years old one of my best friends slit his wrists and swallowed a container of pills while washing it down with a fifth of vodka. I found him on his couch, blue in the face and waiting patiently for death. When he showed me what he had done I completely freaked out. I punched a hole in a nearby wall and screamed at him - I asked him how he could do this when so many people loved him? If I'm honest about it, I was also a little pissed off that he beat me to it. I wasn't in a good place at that time either and had contemplated it on occasion. I never went so far as to directly make an attempt on my life but I certainly tried to circumnavigate it through self-destructive behavior. In some way I hoped that would make it easier on my family.

It seems to me that most people I know characterize themselves as either having depression, having gone through depression, or suffering from sporadic bouts of depression. I'm not a doctor but I tend to think that people today are just less prepared to deal with the downs. Don't get me wrong, I believe in depression, I'm just not sure we diagnose it correctly. Kind of like how small boys are diagnosed with ADD so quickly. Whatever happened to the thought that little boys are just made to be rambunctious? When did it become a problem? We live in a world of convenience.

Back to the point of the post - I feel such deep sorrow for individuals who get to a point in life where suicide seems the best option. It's never a quick and easy decision - these people are typically going through a period of extreme anguish. It's a loss of hope...which is the worst thing I can think of. Hope pats us on the back and tells us it's all going to be okay. It whispers words of encouragement and asks us to be patient. It reminds us that we can't predict the future and any attempt to do so is a a sad form of arrogance.

I know I'll continue to go through very low periods in my life. I know I'll feel pain that makes me want to break in two. I know my hope will diminish to a speck. I just pray that I never lose hope completely as I once did. I pray no one in the world ever loses hope. Hope to me is a sunrise...a reset button. It's a bottomless barrel of second chances. You don't have to believe things will get better but we should recognize it's possible.

I have one last story to share. This blog has been very kind to me, extremely therapeutic. I've received comments from people in different places of the earth and used it as a vehicle to stay in touch with a certain two or three close friends. One day about three months ago I received a comment from a girl calling herself "lachrimae." She said, "everything you write seems like it could have come from me"...or something like that. I visited her blog and saw someone who I could relate to. She was dark and sad. She was artistic and conflicted. I enjoyed reading her poems and viewing her photography. I felt like we were similar in some ways although I wondered if she didn't have a deeper pit of despair inside her. Lachrimae sent me an e-mail message one day and we began to strike up a friendship. I referred to her as my first "bloggy friend." We began to learn more about each other although we were both a bit guarded - I can only speak from my point of view but I wasn't sure how to react to an e-relationship (and this isn't in the romantic sense). After trading e-mails for a few months I realized that lachrimae and I may have been even more alike than I could have imagined. Although it isn't a surprising concept, I was amazed that emotions, thoughts and disposition weren't hindered by borders or long stretched of wild blue ocean - Lachrimae is from Portugal. The last e-mail I received from lachrimae was about how she had a tough task of restoring a relationship and how she was battling to find a comfortable place in the world. I congratulated her on buying a home and doing well at work. We exchanged "real" names - we began to open up a bit more.

A couple months ago I went to her blog and saw this:

http://huntingdreams.blogspot.com/2007/08/thats-all-folks.html#links

It has been her last post for quite some time. The title of the post sent shivers down my spine. I HOPE I'm wrong but my instincts tell me otherwise. I've e-mailed lachrimae several time pleading for her to tell me that she was alive. I offered words of encouragement and prayed she'd find strength. I've never heard back from her. I worry she is no longer with us. I feel she isn't.

Lachrimae means "tears" which is exactly what has seeped from my soul since I lost contact with her. The world can not possibly be a better place without her. Even though we've never met face to face I feel like our e-relationship was more powerful in a way. I'm not sure either of us would have opened up as much as we did had it been face to face. We weren't made like that. Lachrimae, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't blog more often in the hope that you'd remember you weren't alone in your feelings. I'm sorry I wasn't quicker to ask all the questions I really wanted to know from you - being that it was exclusively online I was worried you would think it was creepy. I'm just not used to it. I'm sorry I didn't send you a phone number so you could have called if you needed to talk - I knew you had many struggles. I'm sorry I didn't come through for you. I felt a kinship with you and I feel like a piece of me has left with you.

Hope. I have no concrete evidence so I hope she is alive and well and working on her problems. I hope she hasn't lost hope. I hope that if, in the unfortunate event that my instincts are correct, god understands. I've always felt that the god that has pity for the poor, the ignorant, the sick, and the weak, would most certainly have pity for the soulfully inflicted.

In closing - I've characterized "hope" in a lot of ways thus far. I'll add one more - hope to me is not only a belief that the unknown future might be brighter than the past, but it is also materialized through sunrises, reflections in a pool of water, a shadow under a tree on a sweltering day, a mountaintop view, a child's laughter, a friend's warm embrace, a good book, hot chocolate, and the smell of coffee on a brisk morning. It's everything beautiful in the world, everything we need to continue to remember. There is no single event (or many for that matter) that can possibly cancel out all the beauty that life holds. We may lose something but we never know what we may gain.