Another friend dead… 10 Years Ostracised, 10 Storeys to find his peace…

It’s a hard one to start this one…

The 4^th friend within a year or two lost…

It’s hard to be candid sometimes when you worry you might come off as flippant, so I’ll start by saying that I didn’t like Simon when I first met him.

He was argumentative, often the ‘devil’s advocate’ even if he agreed with you and in general when I have that sort of relationship with someone it grates on me, because people can often come across as arrogant and that’s a trait that I let out to play on occasion, which is not always endearing…

That said, over years of what can only be described as ‘eclectic/diverse’ and very intense conversations about the planet and its inhabitants, I grew, not necessarily to understand, but certainly to respect and enjoy Simon, for all his ‘quirks’ and the emotive intelligence we shared in our setting the world to rights…

Now he’s dead!

Why do I put it like that? Because you need to sit up and f**king listen NOW if you want to do something about the person sitting next to you!

Here’s a guy who went through hell with a girl he loved 10 years ago, clung on to that habitual dream, never to love again, obsessed with his car, online games, safe in the chasm of fiction and he never worked beyond his allotted 37.5 hours per week; possibly as a means of control, possibly as a means of abject and enforced isolation…

10KM runs, religiously, every Sunday, so you can’t say the guy was destroying his body or neglecting his mind on every front. But his family neglected him… ostracising him those 10 years ago, at point of relationship led self-destruction.

Now he’s dead!

He’s dead, because for 10 years, those closest to him decided felt their public perception; not measuring up to his lawyer sister and not stable of mind on every front, was more important than loving their son, or their brother and really getting to grips with what made him tick. (Seemingly a posh public perception is shattered if your sons got mental health issues; I might have gone the same way if deep down there wasn’t such a deep connection to my mum, who in part saved me.)

Do I blame myself in any way for losing Simon… f**k yes I blame myself and this isn’t about me, but I’m physically sick at the thought I was arm’s length from the truth, just a bit more digging, just a bit more questioning who this man really was and where was the missing piece, that perhaps I could have filled, to remedy the void within his mind…

If we are as ‘humankind’ to look beyond the bullshit that goes on around us, to ask those questions and really care about the answers, then perhaps a change can be made.

We see businesses changing their internal policies because they want to ensure sustainable profits, but do we really look out for those around us?

If you take away anything from this life take away this… the words left unspoken can never be undone, don’t ever let protocol, or pretence suppress the potential for change… help people, help more people, we learn so much from one another and if I’d have been on the top of that building I’d have thrown myself to the edge to drag him back in and to let him know everything would be ok.

Everything would not have been OK, but when we reach that ‘Journey’s End’ – where there is life… there is hope!