A friend of mine died recently. I hadn't known her for long enough for us to be really close, so I'm more shocked than anything else. I can't even begin to imagine what her family and closer friends have been going through. I don't do vicarious grief, so I'm not going to give her name, and it feels wrong somehow to join in the chorus of Facebook messages. All I'm going to say is that I miss her, and that even though I've never been religious, I hope she's somewhere better. God knows she deserved something better than this.
I don't think suicide is something you can fully comprehend without seeing something like this. It's so tempting to think that you could have done more, that you could have seen it coming, that you could have stopped it. It must be so much worse for the people closer to her she left behind. For my part, I'm starting to understand just how much of a waste suicide is. My friend was a kind, intelligent, and fundamentally good person, with her whole life ahead of her - and now there's nothing, save a person-shaped hole in the world and a lot of unanswered questions.