Next week is the fifth anniversary of a friend taking her own life. We all know the cliche of time being a great healer but it isn't. The emotions today are as raw as they were back then.
I can remember in vivid detail what happened the moment I found out. The text message came in and it was so blunt and to the point. The final sentence was 'She's gone' and it will stay with me forever. I didn't believe it at first and called the sender, my best friend, to ask what she was talking about. It was late at night, around 11pm, and I was living on my own in London. Our conversation was brief as we were both in shock and five minutes after I hung up I was crying like I'd never cried before. I phoned someone who didn't know my friend and sobbed down the phone at them saying that I couldn't believe what had happened.
The next morning is a total blur. I woke up, showered, got dressed, caught the train and went to work. I sat at my desk but instead of starting work I logged into Facebook. I began looking at photos of her and getting more and more worked up to the point of hysteria. A colleague walked by and said good morning. Thankfully it was a colleague I was friendly with because within seconds of her words coming out I broke down and all the emotion came out. I can't remember her taking me out of the building but I found myself sat on a wall outside the office on an incredibly busy street in the middle of the city with a cigarette in my hand which was so weird because I made sure never to smoke at work. I'd stopped screaming by that point and was calm but the tears were still coming so I sat there silently crying. I didn't care that people were looking at me as though I was some kind of lunatic, my friend was dead and at that moment it was the only important thing in the world. I don't recall the conversation I had with my colleague but whatever she said must have helped because she snapped my brain back to reality. What the hell was I doing still in London and why the hell was I at work. I went to the head of the department and said I had to take some time off at short notice and then I left. Within an hour I'd gotten back to my flat, packed a bag and got in my car to head to my home town.
I went straight to the place where my group of friends were congregating. I remember people coming and going, I remember people crying and I remember the big joke about one of our group taking longer to get there from the other side of town than it had taken me to get there all the way from London. I was there for a few days but I can hardly recall a single solid thing, it's like those days are gone from my memory. I know we talked about her and shared stories but that's it. I think we were all just so stunned. I'd been talking to her only a couple of days before hand about arranging a stripper for our youngest friend as he was about to turn 18. She had plans, things to look forward to.
When I got back to London I sat on my bed and ate an entire tub of Ben & Jerry's Baked Alaska. I cried the whole time. And then the world started turning once more. Normal life resumed except it could never be normal again. My beautiful friend is dead.
Every year since then I've followed the same ritual. Every day in the week leading up to the anniversary I look at photos of her, I watch her YouTube videos and I listen to the song she was playing when she died. I feel so sad for her that it becomes a physical pain. Sometimes I get angry, sometimes I smile and sometimes I cry but whatever the reaction, it hurts so very much. I miss her.
I've purposely not revealed her name or how she died - her story is not mine to tell. What I will say though is that her death is down to depression. She was such a beautiful person inside and out. I know that is what everyone says but in this case it's the truth. She had a figure that people pay a lot of money to replicate and she loved kids, animals and her friends. She was always up for a good time and always had a smile on her lovely face. But the thing with depression is you can't see it and underneath it all she was hurting.
Her pain is now ours to carry. We have lost somebody special and we also have to live with the fact that we couldn't help her. Deep down we know its not our fault but it still doesn't make it any easier.
The impact of suicide was not new to me. My maternal grandmother took her own life many years before I was born. Again, depression was to blame. The ripples and aftershock of suicide travel through the years and can never be forgotten. They find ways of encroaching into happy times and tainting things. When something good happens and then you remember you can't share it with that person. The memories you have of that person become bittersweet. The death of my friend and the circumstances around it are just so tragic and it scares me to know that other people may be feeling what she did.
So much has happened in the last five years from world wide events to small personal victories. But every February I'm back in my tiny flat in London reading a text message with the worst possible news. It will be the same in another five years time. These emotions are never going to go and in a twisted kind of way, I like it. It means I'll never forget her.
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