10:05am
5/1/20
#3

Somebody that I knew from high school overdosed two days ago. My other friend from high school called me crying saying that he had died.
I thought back on all the time I spent with him. I went to my phone and looked through old pictures.

In February I had another friend text the group chat saying that one of our friends committed suicide. That hit hard. Really fucking hard. Of course we all felt responsible. Why didn’t we reach out to her? It’s so fucking obvious when something doesn’t sit right with someone.

When I was in the lowest moment of my life, when the only thing I wanted in the whole world was just to stop hurting, if anybody reached out to me, my mind would’ve been in a whole different place. So when people’s friends die and they think to comfort themselves, “There’s nothing I could’ve done. They were in a bad place.” Shut the fuck up. People commit suicide and there is something you can do about it. People pushed them into that dark place and people can bring them out.

Here’s a poem by Louise Erdrich

Grief

Sometimes you have to take your own hand
as though you were a lost child
and bring yourself stumbling
home over twisted ice.

Whiteness drifts over your house.
A page of warm light
falls steady from the open door.

Here is your bed, folded open.
Lie down, lie down, let the blue snow cover you.

So be nice to people. Ask how they’re doing. We’re all hurting.