One Was Accidental, Another Was Not

I didn’t post about this earlier, it’s been hard to think about.  I posted previously about how a student died on campus April 4th.  I now post a link to the news that was released shortly after about the real cause of death.  The rumors across campus had been suicide, then accidental death was the official pre-report.  The final report was autoerotic asphyxia, described as intentional deprivation of oxygen from the brain that is generally intended to increase arousal.  Essentially, my understanding of it is that is is strangling oneself, perhaps by hanging, while masturbating.  If done incorrectly, it causes death due to suffocation.  This is what has happened on this campus.  This act would not be condoned by this campus at all.  I haven’t heard much discussion over the cause of death since the incident.  I didn’t go to the memorial service that occurred on campus the Tuesday just after our Easter break.  I had gone to the service the night of his death, but I didn’t feel the memorial service was for me.  I didn’t know him.  As far as I know, I’d never met him.  I don’t know how to handle the cause of death.  This versus suicide.  I’m not sure if affects me more or less than if it had been a suicide.  A suicide has a certain connotation, it’s purposeful, it’s a slap in the face to those who think Taylor is some idyllic community.  I feel as if campus has been somewhat unaffected.  I know that’s not true, but I see life go by like normal, and it just feels like everything is status quo.

Thursday night, two weeks ago.  I didn’t know it then, but a girl that I know took three bottles of pills she had in her room.  Even that detail is unsure, but three bottles were empty is what she said to me.  One of those bottles contained a prescription pain medication that she knew she was allergic to.  I skipped my noon class on Friday and went to the hospital to be there with her.  Took a mutual friend with me, and we spent the afternoon in her hospital room in the intensive care wing.  When we got there, we thought she had accidentally taken the medication she is allergic to and that she was just experiencing an allergic reaction.  We soon discovered that was not the case.  She was hospitalized and not allowed to leave until a psych evaluation had been made.  It’s been termed as an overdose, and as far as I know it counts as a suicide attempt.  Calling it a suicide attempt is a bit iffy, since she went and told someone she wasn’t feeling well and had taken some pills and they convinced her she needed to go to the hospital.  I don’t know what all she actually said to them.  It was not known that she had taken the pills with no logical reason until Friday morning, and then only by authorities.  I was struck.  I didn’t know what to do, how to act, what to say.  I didn’t know how serious things were, I didn’t know how to handle it.

Over the past two weeks I’ve kept as close an eye on her as I can, I’ve been available as much as possible for her, I’ve talked to her, I’ve tried to help as much as I can.  Wednesday night this week I talked with my old roommate who has been through similar things, and we decided to talk to authority about how we knew she had been cutting at some point since the attempt.  We knew she wouldn’t like the breach of trust and confidentiality, but we decided it was necessary and would make us feel better to not feel like the whole responsibility was on our heads.  I’ve been scared a lot in the past two weeks.  I don’t know that I would have described myself as knowing her extremely well before all of this, but apparently she trusts me.  Her parents took her home that weekend and when she came back Sunday night she subtly asked for company, and her roommate asked that I try to talk to her.  I dropped the work I was supposed to be doing and we went out for food.  We talked a while, discussed stuff.  When I dropped her off and went back to my apartment, I thought of more things I wanted to say, so I got online and talked to her more.  I got very little done that night.  I want to tell someone how I feel.  I wanted to talk about it, but I didn’t.  I finally told my best friend from home a little over a week later.  I couldn’t not talk about it anymore.  I needed support and I’ve been feeling incredibly depressed recently.  I was already not doing well before this, when I didn’t know what to do when I graduate.  My best friend visited this week, and I got the job offer I’d been waiting for.  I’m better now, and it seems the friend is too.  But I’m still as broken and screwed up as I always have been.

She didn’t know what there was to live for anymore, and I didn’t know how to help her.  Talking to her just made me remember how lost I am.  I tried to support her, tried to do the right thing with her.  I think she’ll be okay.  But sometimes I just wish I could have an outlet like she does.  Or an outlet like I was trying to be.  I was trying to be to her everything I want someone to be for me.  It hurts.  It hurt to try to help her, to support her knowing I was just going to be tearing myself apart all the while.

Doubt Pursued

I had a conversation with two friends the other day.  The only two Christian friends who know I’m lost.  They are getting married this year.  They are good friends, but they’ve both known that I struggle with Christianity for two years.  It’s hard when they know and that has changed our friendships, but it hasn’t solved anything.  I thought that finally telling someone would change something, would make something better.  I thought maybe finally someone would know I needed help and would know how to help me.  It helps a bit knowing that at least someone knows, but it doesn’t help as much as I’d like it too.  I still cry about it alone sometimes.  I don’t go to either of them when I’m having a hard time.  They barely ask anymore, how I’m doing.  And it’s not their responsibility, but sometimes it still hurts.  I shared this big dark secret of mine, yet it’s like nothing happened.  Or is it?  I don’t know.

I’ve been struggling with this odd concept of having been raised a Christian, and yet finally having to admit that I disbelieve it all so much that I can’t handle hearing about it anymore.  I picked a small Christian University for school because I don’t want to disbelieve.  I want to be a Christian, I just can’t reconcile what they believe, I can’t accept it and I can’t accept them.  I have doubts that I can’t stop.  I can’t even name them anymore.  I’ve given up.  To some extent at least.  I’ve stopped going to Chapel nearly entirely.  It’s three times a week here, voluntary but expected, I wouldn’t have chosen a school that required it and monitored that attendance.  I lived a life of required church for 18 years, why would I then choose to do that for another 4?  Oops, I suppose I did kind of do that regardless.  I’ve not gone to church voluntarily the entire year except the very first Sunday and whenever I’m with my family on vacations and thus have to go.  They know nothing about how I feel.  They don’t ask.  That bothers me as much as anything.  Not that I want to make it harder on myself to hide it from them, but they don’t ask about my faith at all?

I looked around the Internet today because of my short conversation with my friends about still being lost.  I don’t believe, but I wish I did.  It’s make everything simpler.  I found this blog today.  It should be interesting to look through.  I don’t have time today to go through as much as I’d like, but maybe it’ll be helpful.  This guy’s site also looks interesting and potentially helpful.

Faith

What is faith?  What does it really mean to have it?  To not have it?  How do you know who is truthful, who is lying?  Who is real and who is just walking listlessly down the path.  The path of faith?  What does faith mean for life?  What does it mean to not have it?  I don’t understand.  I don’t know how to live without faith, but I don’t know how to live with it either.  My family always taught me about faith, about believing this thing they say is truth.  But how do I know that?  How can I discover what is truth?  Where is faith in this world?

Why did this inspire me?

TV Show Life Season 1 Episode 5
Reese – “My faith has been gone for so long I can’t remember when it was that I lost it. Or if I ever even had it.”

Why does it hurt so badly?  Why can’t I find this faith thing?  Why can I ignore it so much and have no one ask?  Why do people respect privacy too much sometimes and not enough other times?  I don’t understand.

I don’t know how to be okay

There must be some way to be okay.  Some way to get through the mess of my life, to figure out where it is that I am going.  Life isn’t something that just fits together and comes together out of all the puzzle pieces that you have.  Puzzle pieces can be so easy to come by, but putting everything together just gets more an more complicated.  I’m my own person now, I have to learn how to be myself and ignore what people expect of me.  I don’t know how to find someone to be with as I am, I’m scared of letting people know who I am, how I really feel.  This song, is interesting to watch be performed.  I’ve got all the pieces I need, I’ll be finishing college in a year and should have a good outlook on my future.  But I don’t believer in myself.  I don’t believe that I can continue with life the way it is.  I’ve been keeping a secret for years, and it can’t go well to stop keeping it.  But I have to until I finish school.  But am I really going to come clean after that?  Not likely.  I need to though.  I can’t go on with the lie I live.  I’m caught between two worlds, and I don’t know how to mix the two, nor how to live in just one.  I can’t live in either one.  I feel out of place in the one, and I feel dismissive of the other.  They both make me angry.  I don’t know how to find anyone who feels as I do.  People don’t stay where I am, where I’ve been for years.  You have to pick a side, you always do.  This is a major reason my boyfriend and I ended things after 3 years.  We had a lot of good times in our relationship, but it was doomed from the beginning.  But I think even if I chose his side of things, we wouldn’t have made it.  We’re different, I want something different from who he is.  And that doesn’t mean he has to change, and it doesn’t mean I do.  It just means we needed to end things.  But it leaves me where I’ve been trying to not think about for the last 4 years.  In a place where I’m lost.  I’ve fallen apart, and nothing is holding me together anymore.