a few years ago a friend of mine killed herself. i'm closer friends with her brother but i am friends with the entire family. and aside from the general troubling nature of suicide, there are details that i don't have and though i plan to ask more over time, i may never know. it may take a minute to get to it.
the almost not worth telling backstory is when we were legitimately kids (10, 12, w/e) i like-liked her. she didn't feel similar. time passes, a lot. she eventually marries a guy, they have kids, things seem fine from a distance (again, i'm close friends with her brother so would only see the rest of the family sometimes). they end up getting divorced. she gets a house for her and her kids and family and friends help fix it up before they move in, me included. I just helped paint once. i felt weird though, as if it might be seen as me trying to step in when she was only just divorced.
i didn't like that i felt that way, as i had moved on 15+ years prior (20?) and she had never been interested, even at the time, but something about it felt like i should distance myself. she said something like if i ever wanted to hang out or talk, blah blah blah. and i wish i had taken her up on it. not because of feelings, they weren't there for me, but because worst case i'd have said, "no, thanks." and best case maybe our conversations would have kept her from where she went.
so, she ended up meeting some guy, himself divorced and with a kid. i don't recall what about him gave me a bad feeling, as i hadn't met him until much later, but hearing things about him just made me feel off. maybe i'm making more of it now in hindsight. i'm not sure. what little i have been told is that he wasn't nice to her. i don't know of physical abuse but it seems at least some verbal abuse, controlling behavior, i'm not sure what else.
what i want to know is the why. i have a bad suspicion that some of it may relate to the religion she practiced, which her family still practices, as does mine, and is what i grew up in though have been away from for about 15 years or so. being married is a big deal, and though being divorced isn't bad, it surely carries stigma. and i'm wondering if she felt the weight of a second failed marriage on her and she didn't see any better way out.
it would be one thing if she had mental or psychological issues that she hadn't addressed and that was the result. sad, of course, but an answer. if something like what i've described is accurate, then that haunts me, and surely haunts her family. i don't think that i had anything to do with what happened one way or the other, and it isn't about me at all. but i do wish we had been closer friends in that time where she was figuring things out and meeting people.
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