Odd Feeling

Hi

Weird nature about the internet. It's both a place to share and not share. What's ok to share, what's not?
Why do I feel more comfortable sending this here as opposed to other online communities, my online friends?

I don't need to share this. I could write this personally just for myself. In this case I already have but I think it's still a fascinating thing to think about.
Maybe it isn't at all and I'm just weird. I already know I am aha.

I'm kind of fortunate enough to have not suffered any major death in my life yet. My grandfather died whilst I was still in the weird "baby comatose state", so that didn't really effect me. I lost a dog, which sucks but at the end of the day isn't a human. A great uncle died and whilst it was a little upsetting, didn't effect me too much.

On Tuesday (yesterday for me) my whole class was gathered up. Someone from our grade had taken their own life. I was quite shocked. Still am.
I didn't really speak to the girl. We had spoken before but we weren't even 'just say hi acquaintances', very neutral to each other I suppose.
I think this is why I wasn't able to have a deeper, more physical emotional response. I simply didn't have that connection. I felt hit in a more "abstract", general or broader way. I just felt (and again still feel) numb, plain, blank, empty.

I couldn't relate to some of the other people in the class. I hadn't really lost somebody before and in this particular situation I didn't lose a friend or family member. Yet it still kind of really hit me. Nobody wants to think or expects that suicide is the path someone will take. Then to hear and have it confirmed they did is pretty heavy hitting.

I didn't speak to her but I saw her, I heard her. She was in my classes, she spoke, she did things. She had a presence within the grade.
Obviously what is shown to the outside doesn't always accurately reflect what somebody is feeling on the inside. Even knowing this concept it's still such a surprise. She was with me on a trip only two weeks ago, speaking and laughing with her friends. She was here last week. She was here Monday, alive. In between me leaving school and arriving in the morning on Tuesday she took her own life.

She's a young adult just like me, at a big opening point in life. She's a person just like me. There's an acknowledgement of her as a person that exists. It's not some far away, unrecognisable name or person.

It's also kind of struck me because I've never applied the thought of mortality to people at school. Obviously I know that death is a thing. Accidents, illnesses and unfortunately things like this can happen. Still, I don't think of a person at school, especially a student, especially one within my grade as being mortal. People dying within your grade isn't a thing that feels like it should happen.

Nobody will be able to gauge exactly all her thoughts and feelings, especially in the moment. I can't confirm whether she did or didn't try to reach out to somebody, whether in the past or even right before it happened. But to think how she must have felt. For however long she had been suffering and before taking her life. To think that at the end of it all, the only perceived option for her was to take her own life over anything else.

I guess it just makes me feel empty. I feel sad and weird because it happened. I then feel weird that I care so much despite having no real connection with her. I feel guilty that I get to just live right now. I feel guilty that I feel this way considering the way her friends and family must feel. I don't know what I can do support or help in the situation, I don't know whether I should.

I just don't know...


Journal over. A weirdly comforting song from a movie genre not so associated with comforting...