Your “Slow Monday Before Xmas And Also A Kind Of Wednesday Motivational On a Monday” Daytime Open Thread.

Also, I will share a thing or two.

My wife growing up had a best friend, Judy. The two of them were together every day. There were signs, but no one really knew them. Judy never acted very different. However, before she committed suicide, she cleaned up a lot of things. She got rid of a lot of things. She was putting her life in order, getting rid of those things that might leave a mess.

After Judy killed herself, Judy’s mom blamed my wife. Mind you, they were in high school at the time, and my wife was a goody-two shoes. They were both grieving, but there are ways an adult should handle things. Everyone was at a loss and nothing was okay for anyone. If only someone told Judy that life can get better.

There was an incident with my sister. She OD’d on some household pills on purpose, but she recovered and is fine now. After her divorce from her first husband, he hung himself a year later in his mom’s back yard. His mom found him. Based on what we experienced with him, he was just not mentally stable to begin with. He needed more than someone to talk to. He needed professional help for serious mental health issues other than just suicide.

Back in HS, a bunch of us on the soccer team would hang around together, maybe just say ‘hi’. We had a good group of people that were just good people. That summer, I was excited to see everyone return. I said hello to many people, but one person was missing. She was a colonel’s daughter, and lived in base housing in an area away from everyone else. So, no one really got a chance to ever hang out with her. Word got around that she had killed herself during the summer, but no one really batted an eye. She was smart and cute and friendly, but not popular. It seemed like no one cared. She didn’t have many, if any, close personal friends that we knew of. She was just kind of a blip on the radar. I sincerely hope her family was just transferred out, but a rumor like that isn’t really something that was a rumor. A good person lost to the world is a not anything we need ever.

Speaking of living on base, there were these towers for base housing. Apartments. My dad was stationed on this base in Japan, so we all lived on this base (though we lived in a duplex). And I remember there being an epidemic of people jumping off the roofs/out the windows. There was always something very solemn about walking through the parking lot of these towers. I remember having a minor feeling of fear, like the ghosts of those who took their own lives lived there in some gruesome way. I was young still. These things even affected how I felt not knowing the persons or the reasons why they did what they did.