I was channel surfing and came across this show on a guy who believed he could control the weather.

It was a documentary on mental illness.

I was about to skip to another channel when a photograph came on that looked like someone I used to know, who committed suicide.

The dead guy’s mother came on. By the time I’d gotten D-Missus out of bed to know whether she recognized the woman talking on the TV, the segment on that guy had finished.

But we caught up with a good friend of ours on the weekend and it turns out it looked like someone I used to know, because it was someone I used to know.

He used to be the boyfriend of our good friend.

Suicide Guy got me my first job when we were living in London. We knew he was mentally ill, but we weren’t allowed to let him know that we knew, even though sometimes I’d look into his eyes after an episode and I think that he knew that we knew. Or something.

On a couple of occasions when he went missing, we had to rush our friend out to a train station in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with enough money for a taxi ride home, because he’d yet again psyched himself out of throwing himself on the tracks.

I’d like to say that he was a friend during that duration, but the whole not being able to acknowledge the issue was a barrier.

He seemed OK when he took his medication.

I was relieved when he broke up with our friend. He dumped her because he couldn’t keep his promise to her that he wouldn’t hurt himself. So he needed her out of his life.

She came and lived with us in our bedsit apartment for about three months.
It fucked her up for a while. She drank a lot.

But then time went by and she seemed to have healed.
We returned home. So did she.

Then a little later we found out he’d also returned to NZ, booked into a motel, and taken an overdose of pills.

My sister-in-law had to identify the body.

And then I discovered that he’d come home and hooked back up with our friend, prior to offing himself. WTF?

I didn’t go to his funeral.

During that time abroad, she’d shown me one of his suicide note threats, with his requests for his funeral. Songs, etc. Pre-planned. Like death.

She was going to take care of it all. And did.

I was worried about the affect it would have on our friend, having him come back in to her life, only to check out in a way that no one should have to deal with.

But she seemed …OK. It was closure for her.
And she seems OK even now after the TV show (which she had no prior-warning of).

Strength.

But we had to laugh.

“That fucker is still haunting us.”

And life delivered another shit sandwich to our friend last week when her boss was fatally stabbed after stepping out of the office and helping a woman who had just been assaulted.

Which is just nice.