nothing as it seems

Had to ride my bike in and out of Burlington in the pouring rain today.  Aside from that though, I haven't done much.  I'm exhausted.  I was all caught up and ready for school on Monday, but after both three hour classes,  I was done.  I didn't ride out to the produce share, like I'm supposed to, didn't go to kickboxing like I'd planned.  Not doing much better today, but maybe tomorrow.  Kinda has to be tomorrow, as I'm out of time to procrastinate.  I'm constantly falling apart, just barely managing to pull it back together, before falling apart again.

Aside from grieving, suicide can be a shock because it's so often unexpected.  The Jenny I knew wasn't suicidal, she only spoke of it as something she'd thought about in the past, when her depression was worse.  Well, I guess her depression was worse again.  It's so easy to forget how often that does tend to happen at some point or another.

I knew that she was making choices on the presumption of never being that depressed again.  I tried to warn her at the time, but it probably just came off as bitterness.  Especially since I was quite bitter, but that doesn't mean I was wrong.  Finally seeing some hope, some opportunity, what can we do though?  Aren't I doing the same thing?  We have to go out on a limb, in the hopes of being able to handle all the stress. We're supposed to do it even when the odds are against us, pretending we're above the risks.

It's so easy to identify with feeling better, ourselves and each other.  That is; you are a suicidal person, I am not, or vice versa.  I thought Jenny was happy, certainly not that she was suicidal.  She wasn't who I thought, in a very serious way.  An oversight that's often forgiven, but probably shouldn't be made so easily.  It's conceivable that she'd even been suicidal when we were together, and I hadn't realized at the time.  Particularly towards the end there, when neither of us were doing so well.

I wonder how much this varies from one person to another, but so much of my reality is predicated on my understanding of other people.  To realize that people aren't feeling at all what we'd thought can be jarring.  My emotional responses, how I feel about everything, chain reactions of interpretation.  Figuring it all out as best I can, but need to be more mindful of just how wrong I can be.

Need to err on the side of being nicer to people.  Need to be able to deal with the stress that entails.

 · º · OCT. 18, 2018  ·º  ·

Now that my emotions have have settled, I've also been thinking about how I can be tragically right.  Instead of trusting reason and comprehension, I let my emotions dominate my understanding of.. so many things.  I remember noticing that she wasn't wearing her engagement ring.  I never cared about the damn thing, but I knew what it meant to her.  At first, she made up an excuse, but a week later, she still wasn't wearing it, so I asked again.

"I can't do this anymore."

As if she were carrying me, but part of why I feel guilty has to do with why I never put up a fight.  I guess you could say, I couldn't do it anymore, either.  Her burdens certainly weren't going to be any lighter in my absence, I thought, but what I thought didn't seem to matter.  Losing her made me feel so low, so full of self-doubt, and I let that carry me instead.  I just left, shaking my head in futility.

That is to say, in part, I left for my own reasons.  I abandoned her, knowing she still needed help.  It's strange how people feel compelled to jump in, and argue that there was nothing anyone could have done, let alone me.  It's an oddly defeatist position to take such a strong stand on, but suicide clearly confuses a lot of people.

I didn't think she was happy.  I was afraid she was happy, because that would mean I was wrong about so much, and I had in fact been dragging her down.  My concerns were petty.