To Marguerite: Continued
BY MATTHEW ARNOLD
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
A high school friend took his own life by drinking a pesticide towards the end of January. He left a suicide note in the form of a video, and it appears the reason for why he had to die was because of a failed relationship. It is always a very sad day for me when someone commits suicide. It indicates that he felt his problems were too big to be solved, that no-one could help him, and that because of that problem, it was better not to breathe anymore, never wake up to see another day. That’s just downright sad.
Regarding
this friend in question, what was particularly sad was that he was a pastor and
musician with many people rallying around him, close to a thousand Facebook
friends, yet he still felt alone in a dark bottomless pit. The world is so fickle. Many of the relationships
we have are actually quite useless when push comes to shove. There are really
no life guards looking out for you waiting to save you. Everyone is absorbed
with their own problems and not many people care enough to really follow
through even when they can see that something is amiss. You just have to save
your own life. When you feel yourself going off the rails, talk to someone. It’s
time we started having some faith in counselling, and removing stigma from
mental illnesses and acquiring as much information as possible on them. Recently
in Swaziland, a man tried to hang himself but was fortunately discovered on
time. The first thing the Good Samaritans did after saving him was give him a
good hiding. I found that really appalling. How does beating up an unstable
person help?
Following
his death, quite a few people came forward to state that it did not come as a
shock that he took his own life because there was always “something about him”.
Yet no-one, especially his loved ones, tried to get him help. . This guy had
attempted suicide a few times before and I wonder if he received any
counselling. What happened to being your brother’s keeper? Society needs to be
educated on how to handle situations where someone is a danger to himself and
others. Sometimes we might even propel someone off the rails because we don’t know
what exactly to do and end up saying the wrong things. Some years back on his
Facebook page, someone was asking him why he wasn’t married yet, and he responded
to the effect that a previous relationship had nearly cost him his life
(through suicide!)Why do people ask personal questions like that on a public
forum and cause unnecessary embarrassment, make someone feel inadequate because
they haven’t done this, that or the other?
Another
thing that was particularly distressing was that this departed friend, in his
suicide note, blamed the woman in his life for taking his life. That was quite
unfair, in my opinion. But bearing in mind that suicide is precipitated by an
unstable mind; I can’t say I blame him. He was definitely not himself. I don’t really
have the 411 on what really transpired, but nothing is worth taking your life
for. Relationships collapse all the time, people get disappointed, and people
move on and find happiness all the time. Your life can’t depend on one person.
You can’t force people to want to be with you. How is that woman going to sleep
at night after such utterances were made regarding her role in the death? She’s
likely to always going to have a dark cloud hanging over her.
We
need to be very careful what kind of people we bring into our lives. Sometimes your
life will be heading in a glorious direction – until you get involved with
someone who will just derail it for you and take out all meaning out of it.
Sometimes things happen in your life, and if you are superstitious, they can
make you think you are jinxed, when in actual fact you just have a toxic person
in your life who continues to sap your energy, and before you know it, you have
also developed mental health problems caused by the negative energy engulfing
you. People should get their issues sorted out, because if they don’t, they become
a dark cloud in other people’s lives.
May
my late friend’s soul rest in peace💙
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