Re:my 85 yr old friend attempted suicide -- Unofficial Chris Cornell Forum

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Date Posted: 23:35:32 02/07/06 Tue
Author: chrys
Subject: Re:my 85 yr old friend attempted suicide
In reply to: chrys 's message, "my 85 yr old friend attempted suicide" on 16:02:57 02/07/06 Tue

yes, the woman who stabbed herself and then drowned herself is really a mindfuck. not only that, she drowned herself in a pond of all things, on one of our insanely windy nights when no one would be out. i guss she was also raving about being possessed by demons. i never met her or even knew of her until this happened, so it dosn't have the personal connection that the other one does.

yeah i don't believe the chipper attitude either, the blazee complaints about the food and her roommate and all that. she was obviously too embarrassed about the $ thing in the first place to even tell anyone. the poor housekeeper though, she went over to discuss finances bottom line, and my friend was ordering her around about changing the water in her flowers! jesus christ! i guess i sort of think she's taking the housekeeper for granted, and i feel like i saw firsthand how much hell she had been through in the past two weeks - missing work, working w/o pay, wondering whether to call the hospital or not, crying up a storm and so on, and being the one to take care of the financial aspects of things, and it's like, this is her thanks?!

can i be extremely selfish in this situation and say i'm so glad it's not me? i love my friend dearly, but i think that burden is maybe too much for anyone to handle, to come over and see all those notes, and not know what to do.

so yes, the back to happy as a lark is probably a front. i think she is still in a lot of denial. she was very forthcoming with our other friend, almost joking about her attempted suicide and how planned it was, but she hasn't said anything to me except mentions of "the psychiatrist i saw in the psych ward..."

and now i am rethinking other things...like the night before it happened. like i said we were supposed to have our writers group at her house, and earlier that week she'd sent out an email asking who would be there. i never answered cuz i figured i was a given. then that night she e'd me to ask if i was coming and asked me how things were going with AJ. i wrote back telling her i'd be there and things were great and we talked about this other dude who lives on my property who's sorta creepy, and that was that. it was sort of late too. then the next morning, poof. so now i'm like, did she know when she wrote those emails that she might be dead the next day??? or did she decide later? was it something she had planned for a long time but just chose that night to do it for some reason that no one will ever know? or did she orchestrate it all right then? also our writing group had gotten more social than writerly and in the other group member's responses, some of them mentioned a re-focusing on our main intention, and i wonder how that affected her?

it's funny cuz our little group i think has been a bit of a lifeline to her. well, to all of us really. but it was her house and she LOVED playing hostess. it was getting more and more elaborate. she'd have these meals that had to be set out on the perfect plates and we had to use the real silver soup spoons. all of us kind of went along with it, but felt weird about it, cuz we could see how much it was taxing her physically. she'd get tired and need to sit down periodically and would never let anyone help her w/dishes or anything. the last month or so, i know i wasn't the only one who was getting uncomfortable with the whole thing, and really feeling like the writing part of things was down the tubes. in private, we thought it was like her way of hanging on to failing physical health, but i think now it was also holding on to an older lifestyle full of elegant dinner parties and such things. she was so adamant about doing all these things, having us at her place, and so on. so of course i wonder if some of the group saying we wanted to focus more on writing and less on the social/food aspect, if that triggered something.

anyway, at least things are getting worked out now, and all her friends far and wide are helping her. i am sure they would have helped if she had asked, but i think she didn't know how, like it was a pride/shame thing, and that is one of the saddest parts. she has such a strong circle of people who just love her (some of them quite well off) that it's like, man, she could have just asked.

and what does it mean at that age when someone is willing to kill themselves over finances? what does that say, in a bigger picture?

and yes, this winter has been one of the absolute toughest. last year was colder, but i think this one has been more dreary. usually i don't mind that stuff, even prefer it, but i think it's getting to me too - lots of petty fights lately, and just general crankiness that i can't understand. and i have seen it not just in myself but in lots of other people either. this whole thing leaves me feeling kind of lost too, like i just don't know how to process it or if a person ever truly does. have been weepy for the last two weeks or so, think i've cried more during this time (and definitely not jsut over this) than i have the whole last two years or something, lol.

eddie says:
no matter how cold the winter, there's a springtime ahead.
let's hope he's right...

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Replies:

[> Re: my 85 yr old friend attempted suicide -- a light, 06:55:58 02/08/06 Wed [1]

Chrys, you know I'm hearing you and feeling for you in everything you're saying. I just wanted to add this thought about trying to understand and make sense of your friend's behaviors. It's more than possible that all the thoughts you've had about it contain a lot of truth, but I'd also guess she is in a condition where it's likely she'll be acting in ways that aren't going to make real sense to anyone with a normally coherent mind.

From what you've said about her, it seems that until fairly recently she's been an alert and sociable woman, probably even unusually so for someone in her mid-eighties. Even for people so blessed there is usually some fragility, with the mind as well as body, that does come with advanced years. If she was prescribed and presumably taking pain-killers they might have altered her usual thought-patterns and mental/emotional states, affecting her more than they would a younger person. The traumas of a suicide attempt, the stresses that caused it, a drug overdose and prolonged unconsciousness could all have been extremely detrimental to her mental condition. As she recovers, it seems that parts of her personality and various 'old selfs', even chipper and blase ones, crop up, sometimes seemingly incongruous to the current situation. During those times it might seem 'all is well' with her mental functioning, disregarding the questionable or unseemly behavior you've noticed. My guess, as awful as it is to say or think about, is that it isn't. I don't think she has as much awareness and control of her own mind as we've come to expect people to have.

That's what I'm picking up from this, anyway. No doubt it could be completely off-base. Still, when you consider it, maybe it could make the situation a little less uncomfortable to deal with in a certain way-- seeing her as a person in a vulnerable state of recovery, even if she outwardly appears to be anything but.

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