Letters from the Other Side

Karen

R.I.P Karen

Friday I heard my best friend, from school, had commited suicide by gassing herself. I felt floods of guilt. Could I have stopped her?

We had grown apart the last several years. Our lives had taken different trajectories. She got married and had two children while I felt stuck and failing at life. My life goals didn't pan out the way I wanted. I never found the right guy and though I wanted it with every fibre of my being I never got married or had kids.

My career also didn't pan out. I didn't become a working creative, instead I ended up a spinster, living with my mother.

Karen looked like she had it all, but secretly she was suffering from depression and anxiety. She was fighting a fight I knew all too well.

As we all deal with trauma differently, I raged against the pain, going to every counsellor, shrink and pastor who would put up with my messy me. Karen coped in her own way. We took different turns, I chose to be a truth teller and whistle blower and the world called me a trouble maker. But I had Jesus.

Only now do I realise how much I relied on Jesus. Family got tired and gave up on me. One by one friends disappeared. But I clung to Jesus. I survived. Karen did not.

I look at the pressure on women in society today. To be the perfect woman. Perfect Christian. Perfect Wife. Perfect Mother. Perfect daughter. Some of us scream into the void and give it the finger. But we pay a price for not conforming. We become the pariah. The proverbial Woman at the Well. Not everyone is strong enough to live under constant scowls and cold shoulders. Jesus became my all.

Karen didn't have all the Bible College and Christian counselling I had. She didn't have the tools to fight the good fight.

I miss her. I remember when I was 12 years old and had just moved from a very traumatic situation to a new city. She became my best friend. Through thick and thin. Until 15 when another tragedy occurred and God Himself stepped in and removed me from the situation.

We kept contact when I had to change schools again at 16. Then we lost touch for a while. Yet we always seemed to get back together after years had passed and catch up as if nothing had changed.

I was there in her late 20s when she met her husband. I was a bridesmaid at her wedding. I was there when she had her first baby.

After that my problems became a bit of an annoyance and her duties became such that we didn't have much common ground anymore. Slowly we drifted apart.

The last message I sent her was a happy birthday message a year or two ago. She never responded. I got the strange sensation she was angry with me.

Now that she's gone what can I say? I'm numb. I want to cry but I feel too guilty. What must she have felt in those last desperate moments? Could I have changed her mind if I had been there?

I'm not going to preach about how you should appreciate the people in your life while they are alive. I hate guilt tripping with a passion.

The truth is, sometimes we can't save the people we love. Sometimes love is not enough. Sometimes Mental Health sicknesses are too powerful; the person is in too much agony and they can't listen to reason. Sometimes it's no one's fault. Sometimes even Jesus won't change things or grant miracles.

She was in too much pain and needed to end her suffering. She couldn't save herself. Her poor husband suspected something, rushed back but was too late. He couldn't save her either.

I'm not going to give a trite conclusion about how mental health diseases are just as deadly as physical ailments to make everyone feel as crap as I do.

It's life. It's hard. It sucks. Recently a deluge of divorces have occured among my Bible College and School friends that left me quite astounded but grateful I had never caved.

But I never expected the first death to occur in our mid-forties.

I always thought I understood the cliche that life was going to be hard. Turns out, I didn't have a clue.

Things almost never go your way. Relationships you thought were stronger than granite crumbles and dreams fade like vapour.

As for me, Jesus has been the only truth that never gave way under the granite weight of life.

Thank you Jesus. Karen is safe and pain free with You in Heaven tonight.