Off balance

It's been somewhat difficult finding a topic to focus and write about these past few weeks. Something truly saddening and incomprehensible happened at the beginning of last month that has left me somewhat off balance. Not that I wasn't off to begin with but this has been hard to sort out in my head. Part of me feels wrong just as I begin to type this, as if I were betraying some terrible secret. Another part of me feels that I might be disrespecting the person I'm writing about. I don't know what the right thing to do is but I need to get some of the thoughts down and out of my head. Writing therapy.

A co-worker and friend took her own life last month. I say co-worker first as mainly we were friends through work. We met there, bonded there, and talked there - about our lives, the deeply personal and the mundane, but we never really interacted outside the workplace. Were we friends? Yes, we were but only in a microcosm. Everyday we spend hours and hours with people we don't really know the whole of and they are our friends, but we all only really get a glimpse of the lives lived away from the workplace. We knew pieces of each other, small private pieces, large surface pieces, disjointed by the barriers we kept in place and sharing only those parts we felt most comfortable exposing. Did I know she was struggling with demons only she could truly understand? Yes, I did. We had discussed how she struggled with her thoughts every day just weeks prior, but only to the degree with which she was comfortable. Do I wish that I had known more and offered more of myself, broken through the barriers I knew she erected and convinced myself I was respecting her privacy, her personal space and boundaries? Yes, Yes I do. Do I regret that I was so wrapped up in the everyday frustrations that I didn't see, didn't know what edge she was on? Absolutely, but regrets don't change anything now do they? One day there she was, a smart beautiful woman who loved her husband and her dog. She loved Yoga, alternative music and Ganesh and was really good at her work. And then one day she was gone, having lost, or forfeited, the battle against forces she had fought long and hard against. Clearly there were demons she couldn't fight anymore. I truly wish she had been able to do so but maybe it's so much harder to live in constant battle with yourself than anyone who does not experience such thoughts can truly comprehend.

I can't begin to say I understand because I don't know that I ever will. My head reels when I think about it and try to find some level ground to gingerly pick my way through. I have no judgements of what steps she took but heavy sorrow that such a beautiful woman, inside and out, felt there was no other option for her.

Days after this happened, after the funeral and after the worst of the shock had settled, I went on vacation with my family and it was wonderful to be with them and certainly more poignant considering. It's the reality, the weirdness and the odd comfort that life moves on, in spite of major life altering events. I've seen enough of that to reconcile myself that it happens. And maybe that's a good part of the human condition.