Blogging into the void.
Content warning: suicide and death.
Edited 03 March 2023: My dear friend Hasi is fortunately quite loved. Her buddy Anu created a GoFundMe for her. Please consider donating and/or sharing to your networks
Edited 17 March 2023: Hasi’s GoFundMe met its goal! I have removed the link to the URL. Thank you so much to those who contributed, and please: Be kind to one another.
body text:
I suspect I may lose a friend to suicide soon.
She is very very sick, isolated, in a hostile situation, and has few resources.
She has chosen a date and made preparations.
This will not be unexpected. This will not be unavoidable.
If I were where she is, I’d physically restrain her by risking familial censure and plunking her into a spare room in my grandparents’ house. But I’m not where she is.
And if I had the money for it, I’d set her up in the best hospital available in her country and provide round-the-clock care. And after-care. And support for her recovery so that she will eventually be able to support herself.
And that’s the thing. If I had the money, it would be so easy.
Because she doesn’t actually want to die. She is just tired. Tired and ill and can’t see a way out of her situation that doesn’t involve The Permanent One.
Because despite her relative middle/upper-middle class Global South privilege (she is a brilliant writer in English, and she has access to the internet — hell, that’s how we met) she doesn’t have the resources to get herself out of her situation. Her situation is a national one. It’s societal.
This isn’t new.
Throughout the Global South, poverty has driven hundreds of thousands — millions to take their own lives (examples: Onion farmers in the Philippines, cotton, sugarcane, and other farmers in India, etc.). In the Global North the situation is better reported, but not much better overall (A Canadian woman with disabilities is pursuing medically assisted death after failing to secure affordable housing, higher poverty tied to increased youth suicide risk, many seniors are turning to suicide, and so on).
Countless people feel that the only way they can escape the crushing weight of poverty is to escape being alive altogether.
Because poverty un-persons people. Money disconnects us from our communities and our environments. A lack of it leaves us so profoundly adrift that we literally cannot survive. I cannot stress enough how real the consequences of that are.
I may lose my friend soon.
This loss is easily preventable if there were structural supports that could keep her from falling into the abyss.
If.
But there aren’t.
Addendum: If you want to help or donate to pay for her medical needs/create a fund to…help her eventually get out of her hostile situation so she can start to heal? I’ve asked for her permission to post this. Please comment or message here and let’s figure something out.
