No Place to Sit

I’ve spent the past hour searching through pictures for a photo that I know I took of my friend Will. I’m guessing now that it got left on a phone that is out of commission. These are the kinds of things that are particularly heartbreaking after a friend dies. I found out that Will had died a few days after it happened, and because of his lifestyle I just assumed it was an OD without asking. It wasn’t until the following Tuesday when I was doing outreach at the Frances, the hotel I usually saw him at, and a place he had many friends, that I learned it was a suicide. He hung himself in the hotel next door. It’s called the Yug now, it was something else a few years ago, but now we call it the Tangerine Dream because of the wildly bright orange color the new owners painted it. The decor in these SRO hotels is often pretty wild due to the fact they usually just buy whatever carpet and paint they can get for the cheapest.

I’ve known Will for years, he was best friends with one of my favorite clients, and he could often be found at the Frances hanging out with her. He became the de facto caretaker for many of the women there. He would go to all the lady’s rooms and let them know when we arrived, and he would often whisper in my ear to let me know if one of the women were having any particular issues. He was also my biggest fan; every time he saw me he lit up and gave me a giant hug, often tearing up telling me how wonderful we were to come every week. He always made all of us feel really good to be doing something that was often hard and stressful. A few years ago I started bringing Christmas dinner to this hotel, and Will was always there to meet me and make sure the food got distributed fairly.

The picture I did find is of the room in the Krishna where one of our clients was killed several years ago. This seemed appropriate for two reasons: firstly, it is symbolic of the frequent violence that my clients experience; it comes from all angles, domestic violence, random violence, sociocultural violence, and the direct and indirect violence that many inflict upon themselves as a result of years of trauma and unresolved pain. Secondly, Will was extremely affected by this violence. When one of the women was abused he would implore me to fix things that there was was no way I could. It was difficult on us, but it was harder on him because he couldn’t accept that there were problems he couldn’t solve. He just kept trying to take care of people and save people until one day he admitted to us that he was feeling worn out. He felt like everyone relied on him, but that he didn’t have anyone that he could rely on. We counseled him to practice self-care and attempted to convince him he couldn’t take on everyone’s problems. We saw him a bit less after that and he confided that he was trying to take more time for himself, and that he appreciated our advice.

One thought that keeps popping into my head is that his suicide and subsequent “abandonment” of the people he cared about, might have been one of the biggest permissions for self-care that he ever gave himself. From what I know about him I imagine that it was very hard for him to make a decision that would end his ability to care for others in order to ease his own pain. I wish so much that he had reached out to us or someone else before taking such an irreversible course; I believe that there are medications that can be very successful at treating depression and other psych issues. It’s also possible that he was emotionally rundown from drug use, and was less able to imagine ever feeling okay again, and that that could have passed. But I can’t go back and change what happened, so I hope that he found relief, he was truly one of those humans that is just too sensitive to the pain of this world, and he was in a place where that pain and violence is made obvious every day.