Vee

It always amazes me just how easily a person can leave a life-long impression on a person... One moment, I'm browsing Facebook, reading a bit about critical thinking and science, glancing off to the side looking at the 'Suggested Pages' that I never click or actually show any significant interest in, and then—

BAM!

—it hits me...

A dedication page to a person I once knew online, from a whole other side of the world, South Africa, whom I've never even seen the face of.

Years ago, in my turbulent, early adolescence, hormones going crazy, bipolar going crazy, schizo going crazy, bouncing off and on the rails, I sought out an online support group for mental illness, in general. And I found one, Walkers in Darkness, and I liked it. The community was great, a worldwide chat room for people with mental health issues to seek help and community from moderators and administrators who also had mental health issues, but who always seemed so 'put together,' despite that fact. The admins and mods would give little insights into their own struggles, but they mostly held themselves together to support everyone else who came to them for help and support.

One of them was simply named, "Vee." Everyone liked Vee, everyone knew Vee (some even knew her in-person, if I remember correctly.) Vee was really quite great. But this group had trouble with funding, and they'd have to close shop now and then. Me being me, I usually came and went for long intervals, regardless of funding and if the site was running. I do that. I come, I stay for a little while, then I go for a much, much longer while. Well, one time, I went to look into the group again, some years later.

I found a Facebook page. They still had funding troubles. Okay, I joined the Facebook group. Then I heard. "Vee committed suicide." Maybe not phrased exactly like that, but it hit me just as unceremoniously...

I burst into tears, and I kept thinking, "I didn't even really know her. Why am I so overwhelmed by this? I'd completely forgotten about her..." Well, Vee prevented a few potential suicide attempts of my own. Vee got me through the suicidal thoughts. She helped me when I felt completely alone and hopeless. They may have been very brief interactions, only moments out of my whole life, but they mattered more than anyone could know. They made a difference. They kept me alive.

My mom came into my room, that day I first heard, and I was already consumed by my own tears, unable to catch my breath, unable to talk, barely uttering that someone I once knew online committed suicide, and it was a while ago, and I was just learning about it, so it was hitting me really hard and really suddenly. About every year since, only one or two days a year, I very briefly remember Vee and I burst into tears all over again.

How can you completely forget a person for most of your life, and then so spontaneously, out of the blue, become crushed and overwhelmed by this tremendous, profound, inexplicable weight, cracking your ribs and drowning your airways? How can three letters - V-E-E - so suddenly turn on this long-forgotten switch inside of me where an entire ocean pours forth from reserves I keep becoming so oblivious of for so long at a time?

And so, today, I'm listening to one of my favorite soundtracks from one of my favorite animes from that time in my life when I met and spoke with Vee. I had just happened to think of it earlier in the week and tracked it back down, downloading it. I put that on immediately before, not knowing what was to come just moments later...

"Can you feel?" the singer shouts at the top of his lungs.

"Can you feel that hybrid rainbow?"

Yes, I feel it. Too much. Too strong. I feel it all, like ripping stitches out of an old open wound I thought healed and scarred over, but is just as fresh as the first time... Like being punched as hard as can be in the gut, your gut wrapping and wrenching around the fist, the breath completely gone. You struggle to get your breath back, gasping, choking, feeling like you got sucked into outer space with no air to breathe, blood boiling, eyes getting ready to burst like grapes...

I'm alive, thanks in no small part to her. She took her own life. Life is sad, and gruesome, and some people die, and some people keep living, and there's absolutely no sense why. It's just is how it is...

It fucking sucks.