February is a month that I’ve always considered to be the hardest of the year. Each year around this time I begin to reflect, it was in February that I lost my dear friend from age 11 to suicide when we were in high school. This past September, I lost another dear friend to suicide. I want to talk about my friends, they are some of the most incredible spirits I have ever known. My friend Isa was my biggest supporter, he would text me on a random day, “do you know how loved you are?” or send memes that he found that reminded him of me that said things like, “when you do things from the heart, people love that shit.” He was always championing me and what I was doing, he was able to bring a crowd to any event a friend was having, he drove hours and miles to make sure you got there, he wrote long emails, he remembered birthdays, he remembered graduate shows and tough days in peoples’ lives and he checked on you. My friends were strong men, athletes, with flashing smiles and big full warm laughs, they were men of color, men who made jokes about race and what it meant to look the way they did and navigate this world but men whom sometimes you could see in the tightness of their cheek muscles were affected also by the weight they carried. These men were handsome, heartbreakers at times, strong lovers, good partners once mature. These men were dancers and style icons, I remember them dusting off tims, pulling a hairbrush constantly out of the back pocket. These men had heart. These men had laughs and gave me so many laughs. Suicide is something I do not understand, but I know that the incomprehensible is possible. I want to be better, I want to write letters and send texts more, I want to hug more and tell you I love you more, I want to always check in, I want to always ask about it, I want to encourage, to create community, to talk about hope and how we can all share it and have more of it, together. Suicide isn’t exclusive, it doesn’t claim only those who seem obviously affected, it isn’t something that only happens to those who appear outwardly sad, it doesn’t only happen to people you can describe as “crazy,” it doesn’t make sense. I don’t know how to stop the cycle, or what to say or do, but I am sad and I am trying to understand anger, and recently I sat by a fire and finally wept because I miss my friend so much and I don’t know how to talk about it and I just wanted to share in case it resonates.
“I loved my friend
He went away from me
There's nothing more to say
The poem ends,
Soft as it began-
I loved my friend.”
― Langston Hughes
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