Monday, February 9, 2009

Do you know someone who committed suicide?

I didn't want to write about this subject this semester, seeing as how I subjected you all to it twice last semester. But Emily's prompt to respond to this prompt got me thinking about it again.

Evan is not the first person I've known to commit suicide. The summer after 8th grade, my classmate Kevin killed himself. He was thirteen. I don't know if we were really "friends," but we'd had several classes together for two years. He was funny, kind of a goof off. I never, ever would have guessed that he was suffering. I found out that he shot himself in the mouth in the orchard behind his house, and his older sister was the first to find him. She sang at his funeral, barely making it through the song. It was so awful, the whole situation.

It was during that summer that I found out Evan was depressed. That's when the worry began, though I tried to ignore it most of the time. But he always needed some worrying over. Like the time he told me and some of our friends that his father hit him, once with a sprinkler head. We were appalled, though none of us would say the word "abuse." He told us not to tell anyone, but one of the other girls, Jessica, did. She probably told her mom, who made her tell our teacher or the principal. I remember Evan being called into the principal's office and Jessica revealing what she had done. Evan wouldn't talk to any of us for the rest of the day. Maybe that's when the worry began.

It still seems very surreal that Evan is gone. I forget, most of the time. I didn't think about him much in the last few years when he was alive, so it isn't weird that I don't think about him now. I still haven't deleted his phone number from my cell phone, though. At first I couldn't do it because it was too fresh, it hurt too much. Now I can't because...I can't. It seems wrong to just delete him from my life. The phone number wasn't even current. It's from at least two years ago, if not more. But I always kept it, in case I needed to get a hold of him. It was the only link I had.

6 comments:

  1. I deleted my brother's email address from my address book two weeks ago. I couldn't do it until now. It was a school account that I'm sure was canceled three years ago. And I don't remember us ever emailing but the way you put it is good, "I always kept in, in case I needed to get a hold of him."

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  2. Kate this can definitely be added to the piece you were working on last semester. It adds a different voice and allows the reader to see that you tried (and still are trying) to hold on to Evan, even though you seemed to doubt your loyalty to him in the essay.

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  3. kate- i love your ending with the cell phone. Isn't it weird how today, our cell phones are what make us feel connected, or facebook or IM? If Evan had died before all of these inventions, what would you not have been able to delete? I think that "link" is important. I still have my girlfriend's who died phone number in my cell too. I cannot bring myself to delete it either. I wanted to call her right after she died, but I was too afraid to hear her voice on the message machine...

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  4. Yes, I agree that this should be added to the piece you were working on last semester. It's not so much the idea of abuse, because it is too easy to write a difficult piece about suicide and try to "justify" it by listing off all the reasons that may have led up to it.

    What I think is really interesting about this bit is the pact of silence that was broken and how, in a way, you're breaking it again by choosing to write about it. The comparison of you and Jessica could be an interesting angle to explore the emotions of the essay.

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  5. days after reading this i was left with this concept: you kept his number "in case (you) needed to get a hold of him"

    intriguing.

    since i just finished a piece where i had to use my honest imagination to complete it, i found myself wondering: what would a dialog / a conversation with Evan be like if you *could* get a hold of him today?

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  6. I don't know the piece from last semester, but there's lots I'd love to see you develop and linger on with this one. Maybe a longer piece that reflects on the ways a suicide affects the ones left behind, and it might be especially interesting to hear reflections about this from someone who was not a family member or close friend.

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