A good man took his own life

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I just got the news that one of my good friends took his own life. How do you sum up a life or even a relationship in a few words?

I can’t help but think about my writing on loneliness. I can’t help but desperately wish I’d taken him up on the Zoom call we talked about when I still could have. Not for him. For me.

It’s easier and more comfortable to write about the numbers and statistics about men and loneliness. It’s harder to deal with the stories. It’s hardest to tell the stories that break my own heart while it’s still breaking.

I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why he made his choice. I certainly don’t hold any anger or resentment towards his memory. I’ve been in enough pain to never judge anyone for deciding it’s too much.

These numbers and statistics on deaths of despair I throw around so casually, each and every one is my friend. But they’re not him. Because each one is a different person with a different life and a different set of people who will never be the same. What a devastating way to be forced to reckon with the reality that these are individual human beings.

My friend devoted his life to what he believed in. He worked so hard to make the world a freer and more prosperous place. He loved to read. He’d read all my posts and things I cared about and would have talking points and questions prepared for our Zooms. He took me to Black Beach when he visited me in SF. I took him to 80’s night at DNA Lounge.

I’m so angry. At what, I’m not sure yet. At a world that didn’t offer him enough to make him want to stick around. At a world that was too painful for him to exist in. And maybe just a little that he doesn’t have to suffer anymore, but we do.

I hope to God he had a terminal diagnosis or something. But I fear that’s not the case. I fear we just failed him.

What I’m left with is that it’s really just not optional. Every person needs people who depend on them to keep getting up in the morning and trudging through the suffering endemic to existence.

Community is necessary, but insufficient. We need tight, inextricable bonds. We need deep interdependence. We need to rely on people and to know that people rely on us.

Maybe there will never be a time when everyone has that. But damn it if we can’t do better than we’re doing now.

It’s time to be impatient. It’s time to be incensed. It’s time to treat loneliness like the deadly, preventable disease it is. It’s passed time.