Celebrating Suicide Awareness Month 2025

You see the world in a different way when you lose a friend to suicide…

The green of the trees is different. Not duller, just…different. They have a different energy. Maybe not as healing as before…and you are more in tune with others’ facades.

STORYTIME:

I used to think I was invincible. I thought that I could save people. I would have this…gift, let’s call it. When I felt a tug at my heart, I would call them. Not text. Call, so I could actually be able to hear their voices. There is so much to be misconstrued in a text. And so many times when I called, they would pick up and softly say, “I was just thinking about unaliving myself…”

And we would talk. And they would get better.

But the last time I had the nudge, I didn’t answer. I was busy. I’m human (or so I’m lead to think).

Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow.

Next week. I promise, I’ll do it next week.

And for weeks this kept happening. Until one day I saw the post for his wake…

My world was turned upside down.

Impossible. He wasn’t gone. He was supposed to get married that year.

I found things out. Things that, to this day, still don’t make sense. But who am I supposed to ask? His grieving mother? His ex-fiancée? His corpse? No. I had to move on.

People ask me how I get over it. How do I cope?

Sometimes I tell them time. That’s a lie…

In reality, I never got over it. Sure, he wasn’t a brother or cousin. We weren’t as close as many other people were, but we still had memories. We were in the theatre together. He taught me and one of my friends how to correctly use a drill during my undergrad while we were all work-study kids. He was one of my first dance partners. He and I would help the other students out with their choreography assignments. He was my first stage kiss. And he threw banger theatre parties in his basement (he was a DJ). He was the rock that held many of us together just as friends. And when he left us, we shattered to pieces.

Everyday I am reminded of him and his legacy.

May his memory live on forever. I call him The Wanderer.