Hello gentle Sane forum folk,
Let me tell you a story. All of it is true. It takes place a decade ago in a large country town where I used to live. I had just been struck down with my first ever bout of psychosis and was convalescing following a very suicide attempt which saw me hospitalised for quite a length of time.
As part of my social and vocational 'rehabilitation', my case manager introduced me to the local Clubhouse. Here I made a few friends, but not the kind I would normally hang out with at home. That was until there was talk of J. Everyone spoke fondly of her and said she was talented and smart, a brilliant poet and artist. I was taken by everyone's testimonies of her, yet after a while, I soon forgot about her. That is, until the day she walked into the Clubhouse. I was awestruck, she was vivacious, unconventional and intensely funny. I felt drawn to her, not in a sexual way or anything... I just was like a moth to a flame.
After a few casual meetings, I decided to invite J to a get-together at my place. Of course she came and from then on, we became firm friends. We enjoyed shopping trips, lunches, laughs and more than a few deep and meaningful conversations. She soon became my best friend. However much we came from different worlds, we formed a united front... J and I against the world!
She taught me how to use the internet properly and introduced me to worlds I never knew existed. Before I was caught up in the world of pop music and the closest to 'alternative' I ever got was a brief soujorn into the grunge lifestyle of the 1990s. Now I was not only into alternative music, I was listening to all genres and my eyes were well and truly opened. She had internet affairs both same sex and heterosexual and together we rode the highs and lows of online relationships. She even received a marriage proposal, but the relationship ended abruptly when following her rejection of the proposal, the lad in question committed suicide violently.
This knowledge was too much for J. She spiralled out of control, taking ilicit drugs and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. She asked desperately for intervention from friends, doctors and mental health professionals, but everyone ignored her but me. Everyone said she was just acting out 'borderline personality disorder behaviours' (such was her diagnosis). Her depression deepened as did mine to see my friend suffering so. We decided neither of us had anything to live for and on December 31 that year, we would end suffering together if nothing had changed by then.
We were desperate to get help. Psychiatrists were at a loss with me and labelled me 'alcoholic' as well as schizoaffective. J was just labelled BPD and although she begged for a hospital admission, the powers that be deemed her too fragile for hospital and denied her a bed. As 31 December loomed, I decided to take a last trip to Melbourne to visit a dear friend who was like a mother to me (my own mother dying in 1990 when I was an adolescent). During this trip I tried several times to contact J to no avail. I did not think anything of it, as she was often hard to get in touch with.
Upon my return to the country town, I asked at the clubhouse after J and were met with ashen faces. Called into the director's office, I was told of J's suicide. I was devastated. I had lost my best friend and confidant. Against my wishes, I was immediately hospital and sat in the psych ward, wondering why they couldn't have done the same for J?! I was angry at the world from then on.
Fast forward a few years and I met up with the mutual friend who found J on that sad day. He mentioned she left a note and in it J had written that I 'had too much potential' to waste on suicide. I wondered what she meant. Surely I couldn't go on to anything great in my life?
Ten years have now passed since J's death and I am still saddened that she died so needlessly. If only psychiatric intervention had happened when she was at her darkest point, maybe just maybe she'd still be alive?
I went on that year to change my life. I left my then violent husband, left the country town that was home, left everything behind. I enrolled in study and became a qualified mental health worker. My story is not yet over, it is a semicolon at this stage because I still have battles with my illness even today. But at least I have an angel on my side called J, my best friend forever.
Thank you for reading.
