If you are sensitive to difficult things in life and they get you down, you may not want to read any further – its up to you. Just be aware that I am talking about some heavy things here which may upset some people. I’m not talking in an overly negative or hopeless way (well, I don’t think I am!) but I thought I’d give you the opportunity to exit early if you choose to.
/me gives you a hug and shows you some other fun things like Charlie goes to Candy Mountain, XKCD, Jazzercise, He-man and crimping.
OK, Before We Get Into This
I originally started dumping most of this just into textpad for my own venting/emotional discharge process, then I decided to post it.
Why would I post this? I have several reasons:
- for me, to get it out
- for anyone who might one day find something in here that will help them either understand, or prevent, or turn their path
- for some people out there who I think need to read about these particular events from a different perspective
- for me to openly appreciate some people who deserve it, and who I know won’t take it well if I say it to their faces
The other thing I want to say is this: this post is probably going to read “me me me”. Thats because it is my brain dump, its from my point of view. I am not trying to assert that these events revolve around me, or I am the focus, or anything like that. I also write in a style that some people may find offensive – it is me. When I am in writing mode, I feel first. That is what is coming through. (To the person to whom this is directed, read that paragraph a few times and let it sink in before reading on or calling me. You know who you are).
If I haven’t spoken to you about this, don’t take it personally. Don’t take it to mean I don’t love you. I just don’t want to sit and talk about it with everyone I know, I don’t want to bring others down, and I have the advantage of having several sets of completely disjoint friends, giving me a chance to have pockets of my life untouched by issues in other parts. I sort of like it that way as it gives me a chance to “leave things at the door” when I need to. I also don’t really need to talk about it: that’s under control, thanks, I’ve been talking to a few close friends – if that is the only reason you want to talk to me about it (because you think I need to), I’d really prefer you let it go.
Having said that, if you have anything that you want to talk about with this, please just ask me. I’ll be as open and honest as possible, and hope it helps in some way.
Apologies for it being so long.
Deep Breath
The last few weeks have been insane and intense and almost impossible to make sense of.
Last week I lost my friend Nik, to a combination of depression and drug habit. His death was determined to be an overdose, and while I’m not going to claim it was suicide, I’m certain that his motivation that night was to escape, without thought of the implications of his actions.
Nik is not the first friend I’ve lost. When I was 16 I lost a friend to a car accident, followed by two suicides (one drug related) in the next six months or so.
While I was travelling, Jason (in the same group of friends as Nik and I) committed suicide – between Christmas and New Years last year.
Here I should explain a few things. Nik and Jason were the two in that group that were heavily into drugs – the only two – mainly ice and a few things that are still unknown to me. In fact, it was one of the reasons that I stepped back from the boys a little, and why those two in particular started drifting from the group.
Jason and Nik were increasingly aggressive and emotionally out of control, and were regularly involved in fights. Jason was already depressed, more and more solitary and difficult to talk to. I had been worried about him for months but too far away to do much. The night Jason died, he and Nik had taken something, gotten into a fight, and words were said in the heat of the moment.
Nik blamed himself, and even while doing that blamed everyone around him (just an emotional anger/rejection reaction to it all). He blamed me for not being home, as if my very being there would have prevented it somehow. He blamed another friend with whom Jason was living at the time, who was trying to help him.
Of that group, some clearly and deliberately removed themselves – they needed space, they needed to protect themselves. Some sort of generally drifted away. We all understood why, and it was ok. By the time I got to Australia, it was really just Nik and Tomas left – Tomas didn’t share Nik’s risk-taking lifestyle and had moved back to his home in the country, but was staying in close touch with Nik in Sydney.
Unfortunately in the past some distance had opened up between Nik and his family, and over the next few months Nik became increasingly dependent on us for support as he became more and more depressed – extremes of phone calls at all hours of the night but then disappearing for days at a time on a binge. He lost his job. I found myself trying to babysit him from Melbourne, at times – calling friends and people I prefer not to associate with – trying to track him down and make sure he is alright. In some ways Tomas and the few other guys were in need of a rest and I think this was a natural handover to me when I came back into the country.
I feel like I did what I could at the time, while trying to juggle moving to a new city, job hunting, coming back into Australia and dealing with a weird situation of social politics with one of my only Melbourne friends at the time, as well as family.
At one point my friend Tomas saw that it was starting to wear me down a bit and stepped in to see if he could help by taking Nik out to his country property and essentially attempting to detox him and restore his focus.
The first week was especially terrible – I wasn’t there, and I suspect Tomas is not being overly detailed in his descriptions with me either.
I think the problem was that maybe Tomas thought that getting the drugs out of his system would fix it all. While I was hopeful that this would be the case (and didn’t realise how sad Nik really was) I have learnt that it requires a fundamental desire to want to fix things. A drive for it. A motivation, or at least a sincere willingness to try small things and step back from yourself to assess and mould your own behaviours.
So while Nik was with Tomas for just over a month, it wasn’t enough. His mood swings had improved a bit and the edge of his anger was gone, but his mood was still dark, and he still thought a lot about what he did wrong (more accurately what he thought he did wrong, which was not wrong at all), the past, the terrible things in the world. He was stuck in this place where – in his words – there was no way out.
We’ve all been stuck – or will be, if you’re shaking your head “no” at me – at some point in our lives, to varying degrees and in different circumstances and with slightly different effects. Me, I’ve seen more than is probably normal – in many of my friends, family and my own life, and am glad to say that for me, I’ve found my thing.
What I was left with in the aftermath of my friends dying when I was younger, was “What’s the point? Why am I here? What am I meant to do? The big question: Why?” No one I asked had answers back then. For me, I had the love and support of a close friend to help me until I happened to read Siddhartha’s Four Noble Truths at the right time in my life to be receptive to it (more than 5 years after I first asked those questions of myself). It really did hit me – followed quickly by a realisation (not a logical conclusion – a knowing) that I can train myself to do or be what I want, rather than at the mercy of it all, or (worse) oblivious to it.
Now I’m not suggesting that Buddhist philosophy – or religion, or anything in particular – is the answer to that feeling of being lost, depressed or hopeless. One of my friends read the Bible out of boredom and almost spite, to have it reach him. Another one just went out his front door one day and walked until he found himself in front of a nursing home. He went in and spent the entire day talking to people about their lives and regrets and hopes, and found his glimpse of clarity there. One more had her boyfriend take her face in his hands and say some words to her that reached her in her desperation. One moved to India.
I have a lot more to say on this but I’ll come back to it in another post. For now, I’m telling the story of how I arrived at this week, and what has happened. Back on track, Carly…
Nik left Tomas’ property and returned to Sydney to basically slip back into bad habits within a few weeks. We started to lose track of him bit-by-bit again. Tomas and I started discussing what else could be done (and looking for him in what we thought was part of his established pattern of disappearing for a few days) when we lost him for good.
Tomas was the one who found out first, and he called me. I was at work, it was late morning. I had worked an incredible number of hours over the last month so I was very tired, was already trying to muddle my way through several cases of social politics and complications, and really didn’t know what to do with the news. I kept turning it over in my head and couldn’t really afford to – so much work was planned for that day and the day after.
I guess I was angry with him for not trying harder, not trusting me to wait – but at the same time it broke my heart to think of him so alone and in such a dark place when he left us. It still does now, when I think of it. And immediately behind it are my memories of Jason and the same thing for him. Its so intertwined, I see their deaths as sort of being the same incident, the cumulative effect of which is… almost unbearable. I wander off in search of hugs if I think about it for too long: hugs from people I love, or even from the sun on a calm sunny afternoon alone, or from the stars, or doing nothing but listening to music alone in a nice blankie (they’re all similar comforting feelings for me, yes, I’m weird 
).
Dear Tomas stepped in to take care of most of those things that need taking care of – I helped as best I could from Melbourne, and I really appreciate him doing so much. I know how difficult it was, I know how much effort it was, I know how little sleep he got, and I know that even with all of it he was still trying to take care of me as well as the rest.
Our initial contact with Nik’s family indicated that they did not wish to be part of the process, wishes we respected, but did push a little as we thought it would be a better idea for them to be involved. That aside, Tomas and I planned and enacted cremation and farewell for our friend, and I finally arrived to Sydney on Saturday afternoon into what ended up being an impromptu wake at Nik’s house that night. We opened up the invitation to Nik’s other friends, even if we didn’t know them very well. We went out and found the streeter that has helped Nik home on a few occasions and gave him a bottle of Nik’s whiskey as a thank you. He seemed really upset at the news. We invited Nik’s family.
In the end it was just the five of us: Tomas, Jack, Luke, LB and I, that sat in that house in silence and tears and hugs for a long time before we opened the first bottle in Nik’s whiskey collection and talking about our memories of him.
I remember listening to Nik’s music with the guys earlier in the night – we laughed at how terrible some of it was: Britney Spears? I mean.. Really, Nik? Really?
I remember an argument breaking out over responsibility of funeral arrangements, two of the boys being physically restrained, and words said in haste immediately retracted, slate wiped clean with tearful hugs.
I remember one of the boys finding some evidence of Niks drug use in the house later in the night and losing control to anger. I rambled to him while I did a terrible job of tending some small cuts on his hands. I don’t even remember what I said.
I remember (stupidly) looking through one of Nik’s writing pads to see my own name so many times in his thoughts on paper, lost in his handwriting, to have someone turn me from the desk and take me outside to look at the stars. (The stars and clouds always give me perspective on my troubles).
I remember laying in Nik’s bedroom talking to Tomas for hours before being joined by the others, falling asleep in that room as a huddle of exhausted, broken, hurt children.
In the morning (and a beautiful morning it was) we got up to farewell our friend. According to Nik’s wishes, we went out into the open water North of Sydney and scattered his ashes in the ocean. In accordance with the boys’ wishes, the best bottle of whiskey from Nik’s collection got poured over the side as well.
When we arrived at the marina (before we got on the boat), we were met by some of Nik’s family. I tend to trust my intuition with these things and, sensing something was about to happen, sent Tomas away to get me some water while I was talking to Nik’s father and mother. I let them talk. I let them say what they needed to and pin blame and point fingers and accuse because I knew what they were feeling. They had just lost their son – their only son. They were asking themselves the same things as the rest of us: “Did I do everything I can? Did I tell him what I wanted to tell him in the time I had with him? Am I to blame for this?”
All I have to say to you is this: you did everything you were capable of doing at the time. If you were able to do more (emotionally, physically, financially, energetically even) you would have done it. And never doubt that he knew how much we all loved him. I’m sure I could find a sheet of paper in his room about every person in his life, full of praise for how wonderful they are and how much he adores them. Us loving him wasn’t the issue.
You are not to blame.
Nor am I, or the boys. Or Nik, or Jason. Mu – unask the question. Blame has no meaning in this place. Sometimes there really is no one to blame. Really.
What do you hope to achieve by blaming someone? Do you mean criminal blame? Do you want to push something into court? There is no criminal issue here. Do you need someone to take the blame? Do you need to hear someone take that from your shoulders so that you can bear this?
Then blame me if you need to. Blame me for not listening to him more closely, for not moving to Sydney or bringing him to me in Melbourne. For not pushing harder with his boss when he lost his job (I did call, did you know that?). For not arranging for longer care when he went back to Sydney. Blame me for not being there for him when Jason died. If you need someone for that, let it be me.
For myself, I know I did everything I could. And I know that “everything I could” is not just physically, but all those things I said before: emotionally, spiritually, financially, mentally etc. If I were to meet Nik again now I wouldn’t stand before him in guilt. I’d walk to up him the same way I have been, they way I try to be with everyone: with open arms, open heart, open mind, ready to try and help.
I’ve disabled comments for this post deliberately as I don’t really want to have this post become a place for discussion.
If you require any information or support for suicide or drug dependency in Australia you may like to try these resources:
There are many more resources available from these, or by using google. I’d also suggest talking to your friends, family, spiritual advisor / priest, or GP if you or your friend need help and support.
