Yesterday morning, someone I follow in Twitter posted something about a guy called Jeff Barszcz, from Seattle. Jeff’s friends were trying to get in contact with him. Apparently Jeff suffered with depression and they were increasingly concerned for his welfare.
Within an hour a post appeared on his tumblr page. At almost the same time that his friends became aware of it, complete strangers across the Atlantic were also learning of Jeff’s fate.
I used to think the world was doomed. Now I realize that it’s only me who is doomed. Others are able to struggle and find a way through life peacefully. Love seems to help. Not me—I’m not one of those people and I never have been.
Don’t worry. This isn’t a suicide note. I left a proper note at the scene of my death. And I’ll spare you that outpouring of sadness and grief here.
I just wanted to say thanks to my friends who may be reading this. I wish I could have done so intimately, one-on-one or whatever, but you do that kind of thing and people get suspicious. So thanks to my friends who put up with me and tried to help. To those who gave up on me: I don’t blame you. I only blame myself.
His post had gone viral before the police had even arrived at his apartment and confirmed that Jeff had, in fact, taken his own life at 35 years of age.
I don’t know why this story affected me so deeply. Reading his blog, it is clear that he was in intense and crippling pain. I feel for his family, and his friends who obviously did everything they could. I lost a good friend to suicide when I was in school. He was 17 years old with a life of endless possibilities ahead of him.
I hope Jeff’s story helps save someones life. Whether its someone who is on the brink, and decides to just hold on for a little longer, or for someone to notice that a friend needs them to reach out and hold their hand while they get through the dark times.
Rest in Peace Jeff Barszcz. Your pain is over x
Like this:
Remember when I went to Tralee to inspire the young entrepreneurs of tomorrow? Well, last week they invited me back to attend their awards night. The event gave a group of 15 finalists the opportunity to present their business ideas to a group of about 1,000 people including Nora Casey (superdragon) and Jerry Kennelly (Stockbyte and Tweak genius).
These kiddywinks put us grown ups to shame. Their ideas were ingenious and imaginative, their presentations were flawless and us adults spent the night cringing at our own inadequacies. I’m a firm believer that encouraging Entrepreneurship is the only way our country can pull itself out of this black hole we’re sitting in at the moment. If any of these kids are an indication of whats to come, our country is on good hands.
I’m currently working my little ass off to bring a programme such as this to the South East, so may be a bit uncommunicative for a while. While in a meeting this morning though, I saw this amazing quote from Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech written in beautiful calligraphy, in a beautiful frame. I’ll leave you to ponder his words while I go home and demand an explanation as to why my 13 year old hasn’t invented the next big “app” yet. Some kids are so lazy..
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela, 1994
This is a photo of my big sister Shona and I taken somewhere near 1981. I’m the one not wearing the pink dungarees, and clearly not happy about getting the short end of the fashion stick. I had to wait an entire year before those dungarees were eventually handed down to me, and at that stage they had lost their allure. No self respecting three year old wants to be seen in last seasons clothes, especially when your big sister has already been photographed wearing it at all the big social events of the last twelve months. How embarrassing!
Anyway, clear fashion bias on my Mothers part aside, Shona and I were best friends. We bonded over a shared love of Ambrosia creamed rice, fancy pages and erasers that smelt like strawberries. Personality wise we were total opposites, Shona was a soft and gentle soul, happy to go along with whatever everyone else was doing and stare dreamily at the clouds on the way. I, on the other hand, had a steely determination to succeed at everything, even at that stage. If I had nobody to compete with, I’d compete with myself. (This is a trait that I still struggle with. I’m still trying to knock minutes off my personal best time for leaving the house in the morning for work. As a result I’m sitting at my desk most mornings before work even begins. I know, pathetic)
Anyway, Shona had a bright future in front of her. She was beautiful, smart, gentle and loving. Somebody would have been very lucky to have her as a wife someday, and she would have made an amazing mother to some very lucky children if she had been given the chance.
Sadly, this wasn’t to be. Between the ages of 13 and 15 Shona started struggling to do normal every day things and was eventually diagnosed with AVM Arteriovenous Malformations) Her health began deteriorating very quickly and my parents were told that she would probably pass away within about a year.
Shona turned 34 in December last year, a ripe old age that none of us thought she would see. Her life however, has been heartbreaking to watch. Her brain injury causes her to struggle with many personality issues. She is incredibly paranoid, at times thinking that her entire family wishes her dead and caused her illness. She has behavioural problems, at times shouting things that would make your Granny blush. Physically she has deteriorated over the years and now needs 24 hour nursing care, as she is doubly incontinent, needs feeding and washing, and has recurring infections and respiratory problems.
In December 2010 Shona was taken into Waterford Regional hospital suffering with a chest infection. Many of her medical team left on for their Christmas break, fully expecting her to have passed before the new year. She is still with us.
But heres the thing. Shona has been in a public hospital for a 18 months now. There is nowhere else for her to go. New health regulations put in place by HIQA Ireland, restrict nursing homes from accepting individuals under the age of 65. Okay, I get that nursing homes for the elderly are not the correct places for a young woman of 34, no matter how ill she is. BUT, they haven’t provided an alternative. Theres nowhere else for her to go, and as a result, she’s being kept in a hospital at a cost of God knows how much to the state.
While she has excellent medical care, and the nursing team are fantastic, patient and kind to Shona, she is otherwise left lying in her bed, with no stimulation. She has no quality of life, the system has given up on her. She falls between all the cracks in our health care system, and we her family have had to fight on her behalf, as it appears to be nobody’s responsibility in the HSE to ensure she has what she needs. While Shona can’t even hold a hot cup of tea, she is still considered a competent adult by the state, and we are now pursuing a case in the high court in order to have access to her medical information and control her finances on her behalf.
It has been difficult for us, her family, who have no medical training and no access to the inner workings of the HSE to fight her corner. We have had to become “managers” of her case, approaching it like a business project. It has become a fulltime job for my Mother with me stepping in where I can to take some of the burden. She has taken to asking health care professionals how they would feel if it was their child, especially those can come up with hundreds of reasons why not, and not one alternative solution.
Shona’s story is one of many involving the failings of our health system. I try not to complain too much about the state of our country here, there’s enough people doing that, and it just makes me more annoyed. This is Shona’s story though, and I want people to know about her, if for no other reason than that we feel she hasn’t been completely forgotten about.
I would like to offer huge respect and thanks to Samantha Brick for finally bringing to the spotlight a problem that so many of us struggle with. I have been living with beauty for 32 years now. It’s something I’ve always wanted to talk about, but the shame has meant that I’ve internalised my feelings, and it has been eating me up inside for some time.
I too find it hard to get through day without my beauty hampering my ability to do simple tasks. Just yesterday, I was in the library with my children. The librarian (a man, unfortunately) said that I owed fines of 73c on an overdue book. I looked in my purse and only had a 50c piece in change.
“I’ll tell you what,” he smiled, “I’ll take the 50 now and you can pay the rest the next time.”
I leaned over the counter and eyeballed him, outraged.
“Now listen here,” I said, “I’m sure it’s been a while since you’ve had a girlfriend, I mean look at you, you work in a library for Christ’s sake. But I am a married woman sir, and frankly I find your blatant flirting in front of my children distasteful.”
This is a prime example of the struggle I’ve had for many years. I haven’t been chatted up by a man since 1997, and this is a clear indicator of how intimidated they are by me. I’ve done everything I can to cover up my beauty. I eat a lot of chocolate hobnobs, and have been known to hang around the house from time to time in fleecy pyjamas and my slanket. This is obviously the only respite I get from beauty, as so far the postman has been just about able to restrain himself.
If you, or someone you know, suffers from beauty, try not to judge them. There but for the grace of God goes you. Don’t hate the player bicheez, hate the game.
There’s an air of unrest in the South East. Kofi Anan is currently sitting in the departures lounge, waiting to board a private jet to Waterford in order to defuse the situation before it becomes a national emergency.
Hamgate is sweeping the nation.
It began on Monday.
Well actually, it began on Saturday when I innocently bought two small hams in Tescos instead of one big one, under the illusion that they would cook quicker. I’m a working Mother, and time is of the essence in the evenings with five hungry mouths to feed and all the other daily running around with baths and bedtimes.
The instructions on the hams said that they needed to be covered in boiling water and allowed to boil for an hour. So I filled a big pot from the kettle, and put them on the hob while I went about the business of preparing the veg. (THESE DETAILS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE STORY, MAKE NOTES IF YOU NEED TO.)
“How long will dinner be?” Mr D. asked, wandering into the kitchen.
“The hams will take an hour, so sixish,” I said, blissfully unaware of the mountain of conflict I was about to unleash.
“But you’ve got two hams, so they’ll take longer, it’ll be about an hour and a half.”
“No they won’t they take an hour each,”
“Are you serious? That’s for one ham, you’re increasing the ham mass, YOU’VE GOT TWO HAMS!”
Thus began world war two. What started as a minor disagreement soon turned into:
“You think you’re always right, you’re so stubborn,”
“Just admit that you’re wrong”
“But I’m not wrong!”
(I would like to point out that my husband and I were previously happily married reasonable people, and one may wonder if this argument was even, honestly, about ham at all)
His argument was that the energy from the heat would be absorbed slower if it needed to be shared between two hams, mine was that the cooking time was based on the mass of each individual ham, which are cooking independently of each other.
I lost you there for a minute, blinding you with my science, bear with me.
With my marriage on the line, it was deemed necessary that a science expert be drafted in. So we called Breakfast Dave, Mr D’s friend, who works in a science based job. Breakfast Dave refused to commit, having heard both arguments and we were forced to lodge an appeal via the mediums of facebook and twitter. Feedback on both was mixed.
The following morning I broached the subject in my office and sat back to observe the fallout. Voices were raised, google was consulted furiously and we all said things we now regret. Then there was the argument as to whether the original argument was a science or a cooking based issue. Who is the authority on the subject? Who could be trusted to diffuse the situation?
So of course, we emailed the Ray Darcy show, a man for whom wisdom knows no bounds. They called me back. They immediately understood the gravity of the situation. They’re going to everything they can. No stone will remain unturned. A tentative armistice has been called in the meantime, but tensions are high.
Folks, we are all lucky enough to freedom of expression. Have your say now. Stand beside me, brethren in ham, and reap the rewards when we are vindicated tomorrow. United we stand, divided we fall.
We’ve all done it, practiced our resignation, for when we get the call offering us a ten book deal. Some of our bosses would consider it proof that we’ve spent the last year huddled behind our monitor putting the final touches to our book, instead of actively promoting their business, which is probably we’ve had so much time to spend on aforementioned book. A vicious circle, if you will.
I’m not one of those people, obviously.
Letters of Note, a dinky little website I love, sent me this wonderful piece this morning. Feel free to copy, should you be blessed enough to have the opportunity:
Before becoming a full-time author, Sherwood Anderson worked as a copy-writer for a Chicago-based advertising agency named Taylor Critchfield Co, and it wasn’t until 1918, by which time he was 41 years of age, that he was able to take the leap and devote himself to his craft.
When it came to resigning from the agency, he took a less traditional route and wrote the following letter to his boss, Bayard Barton.
(Source: Homage to Sherwood Anderson, 1876-1941; Image: Sherwood Anderson, via Virginia Tech.)
Chicago
June 25, 1918Dear Barton:
You have a man in your employ that I have thought for a long time should be fired. I refer to Sherwood Anderson. He is a fellow of a good deal of ability, but for a long time I have been convinced that his heart is not in his work.
There is no question but that this man Anderson has in some ways been an ornament to our organization. His hair, for one thing being long and mussy gives an artistic carelessness to his personal appearance that somewhat impresses such men as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mr. Curtenius of Kalamazoo when they come into the office.
But Anderson is not really productive. As I have said his heart is not in his work. I think he should be fired and if you will not do the job I should like permission to fire him myself. I therefore suggest that Anderson be asked to sever his connections with the Company on August 1st. He is a nice fellow. We will let him down easy but let’s can him.
Respectfully submitted,
Sherwood Anderson
This is the book which was gifted to me by the iridescent Monica McInerney at a writing workshop on Saturday. I’m trying to do more writering you see, and to get gooder at it, so I can produce a betterer standard in the future and hopefully eventually make some spondulicks at it.
Monica is the kind of person who probably hasn’t raised her voice since 1983. She doesn’t need to. Her treacle tones would induce the listener to prop her chin on her elbow and absorb every word. This woman should get a job doing voice over’s for radio ad’s (as one of her characters does). I for one would buy any product she endorsed:
What’s that Monica?
“Buy the room, get the TV?” Sign me up
“Regain antibaldness spray?” Well I was under the impression I had the hair of a wet yak, but if you think I need a boost, off to Boots with me!!
I’ve read half the book already and in my head, it’s as if she’s reading it to me in her lovely Aussie tone. Hopefully someday there’ll be a lovely lady in Korea somewhere, who, having bought my bestselling novel, will fall asleep with my flat Waterford drawl in her head.
God help her, Mr D says that sometimes he hears my voice in his dreams, and wakes up crying.
