I had moved this blog over from my Facebook for safe keeping. I didn't intend to post it (as you might have noticed it has just surfaced now, at the end of February, but is dated quite earlier). I hung out with a couple of friends of mine last night and found out that one of my friend's former students had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought that I had heard about the person from someone else, but it turns out that two teenagers had jumped last year. So I decided to post this again, for all to read.
We all have lost. Losing someone so young is not comprehensible. It should never be something that you can understand. Losing someone to suicide is something that should leave you feeling helpless, and a little empty, always. It is a mark on your life that should never fade. Not because there is anything you could have done. That I have come to accept, there was little any of us could have done, but because experiencing someone losing all faith and hope in life should forever shift your foundation and alter your reality.
So I post this to say you are not alone. We're all in it together. And together, with lessons learned, perhaps we can recognize the signs and help those contemplating their end to realize that the faith and hope they are looking for is in themselves and in those that love them. And together we can also support those who will, inevitably, suffer this great tragedy.
After over ten years I will be visiting Karen's final resting place. I am hoping to find some peace in my heart there, for myself, as well as for her. Wishing you all peace.
May 23, 2007
The day is almost done and it feels like such a blur. Ten years have past but if I close my eyes the moment sneaks back in as though it were yesterday. Thinking back on my past ten years of life I cannot imagine how it could possibly have stayed so vivid.
I remember hearing the words from Jasmine down in her yard. She said them so matter-of-factly before taking a drag off of her cigarette. I smiled. I have always felt guilty about that smile. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t feeling an ounce of joy. It didn’t occur to me until a few years had past that I was in shock. Ten years later and I don’t think I would react any differently. At twenty four I am still as ill prepared as I was at fourteen for such devastating news.
I remember who I was with. I remember going downstairs to find my friends’ parents in the living room with my mom trying to figure out how to tell us. I do not remember anything from my life in those few months that did not have a direct connection to Karen. There was no room in my consciousness for anything else. It was not just coping with the loss of a friend, grieving is not something that you have to learn how to do, that part came naturally. It was coming to terms with never knowing why. Suicide comes with about a million different versions of the question why. To this day I have not a single answer.
We have all heard it in a time of loss, “Time will ease your pain/Time heals all/Just give it some time/It will be easier with time.”. Each year I wake up on May 23rd hoping that this is true, giving myself a moment to see how it will feel this year. I never have really felt much in that moment. At least not the stabbing pain that there should be. An ache in my stomach and a feeling of dread is as close as I ever get to the agony that is warranted. It is entirely possible that the loss was such a shock to my system that, to this day, I remain numb.
This year was different. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all. For the first time in a couple years I cried for her. This year the day hit me like an eighteen wheeler. I woke up and was grateful for the dark. I wasn’t ready for the sun yet.
Thinking back on many of the different moments of hope, fear, sadness and excitement I have felt over the past ten years I became completely overwhelmed with the fact that she will never have those moments. She will never have a sense of independence with her first job and her first apartment. She will never have that warm ball of pride in her stomach with her first purchase using her first paycheck that is no ones but her own. She will never be able to appreciate the pure joy of grocery shopping on payday after over a week of nothing but pasta. She will never have a great love, a real relationship. She will never have that amazing feeling when the hopelessness of a devastating heartbreak is lifted with the potential of a new love.
After ten years something else has happened. The little bits of memories that fade with each passing day have now turned into a significant block, and I feel as though I‘m losing her. I remember more details about the days following her death than I do about the days we spent together while she was alive. I have forgotten her voice. How awful. The first picture of her face that I see in my head is one of a girl in a baby blue box with silver angels on the corners. I desperately wish it was one of her smile wearing her blue lipstick.
I never mourned her the way she deserved to be because I had no idea what she had really given up, neither did she. This year was different. This year I cried for her and all she will never see and do, for all that we will never see and do together and for all of my lost memories.
We miss you dear friend.
Karen Striplin
February 23, 1983-May 23 1997
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