A story

[kenz]

I'm sharing this story in hopes that I'll find meaning in her death, but my expectations are low.

I met a boy in December 2024 on hinge, sparks flew and church bells rang. I spent the next consecutive 9 days by his side. We went home for winter break, came back to campus, and I moved in with him.

I got nosey, and looked through old letters hidden in his desk. They dated up to December 24th and were sent from an art student at RISD. I read each one intently. It was the best writing I'd ever read. True poetry and passion and love. This girl was in love with my boyfriend. I knew because she admitted it in the birthday card she wrote him. Turns out she's and ex, and they saw a movie together over the break.

It wasn't my place, he still doesn't know I read those letters.

Two months later he received a text asking for the Christmas gift he never mailed her. Treating it as a chore, he sent it. A journal of romantic entries written to her. A book of his feelings, love, passion. The entries stoped at December, when he met me. Sent. 3 days after it delivered, she was found dead in her dorm room. Suicide.

Her night stand was set up as a shrine: pictures she'd drawn of them, the journal, letters, trinkets of their love story. She blocked me on Instagram. Fuck.

She had a long history of mental health issues, taking antidepressants since she was 13. There's a whole host of reasons I'm struggling to grapple with this even 10 months later, most of which I won't get into. I never met this girl and it's not my place to grieve her, but here we are anyway. I'm haunted by the thought of her killing herself because he moved on to me, because I was with him, because I took the love of her life from her.

I picture her sitting in her dorm bed looking at my instagram and cringing. I picture her taking the pills and waiting for death to come. I picture her missing my boy. I wake up every day knowing I get to be with him at the expense of her life.

I'm quite aware that it isn't my fault. That a million things could have been happening and that I don't know the full story. That I couldn't be the sole reason. But let's be real, I am A reason. If it wasn't me, it would have been the next girl. I obsess and dwell over it every single day.

I talk to her when I'm driving. I've talked to mediums. I journal. I drew her. I think about suicide everyday just to picture how she must have felt. Everyday I'm looking for clarity and understanding of a girl I was never blessed to meet. I feel selfish and stupid and so much guilt and anguish.

I wonder if she used this website. I wonder what she thought of me. I wonder if she knows I think of her every second of every day. Idk why I'm going through this, or what lesson there is to learn. It's inspired suicidal ideation ever since March. Not great. I'm jealous of her in a lot of ways. My feelings overlap and contradict each other.

I hope that one day I get to ask her all of my questions. I crave understanding and clarity and resolution. I want to know.

 

[Ligottian]

Clarify something. Was he still with her when he began the relationship with you? If so, I'd never trust him.

 

[shiftingtendons]

I'm really, really sorry you're carrying something this heavy. But please please understand you did not cause her death.

Her struggles were much more complex and far bigger than any one person or relationship. People do not die by suicide because someone else lived, or loved, or moved on. They die because their pain becomes unbearable, and because something in their mind convinces them there is no other wsy out.

What you're feeling is a real and valid reaction to being blindsided by loss. But it is not evidence of culpability. It's evidence that you're human.

You didn't "take the love of her life." You didn't "replace" her. You didn't "push her over the edge." Someone else's suffering is not your crime.

You're grieving a person you never met, but you're also grieving the version of reality you built in your head: the letters, the journal, the shrine, the idea that she was somehow "better," more poetic, more tragic, the fear that you ruined something sacred. But that isn't the truth,. It's a story your pain is telling you.

I'm haunted by the thought of her killing herself because he moved on to me, because I was with him, because I took the love of her life from her.

No. Suicide is never that simple. Even she didn't believe her entire existence depended on another person; that's what depression tells you when you're at your lowest. It's not reality.

I picture her sitting in her dorm bed looking at my instagram and cringing.

You're imagining a scenario to justify your guilt. It's a trauma response, not fact. You are assigning yourself a role in her story that you were never actually part of.

Everyday I'm looking for clarity and understanding of a girl I was never blessed to meet.

And that's okay. Humans seek meaning when faced with senseless tragedy. But the answers you want doesnt exist, not because she's gone, but because the story in your head isn't the story that happened.

I think about suicide everyday just to picture how she must have felt.

Please, this is not empathy. This is self-harm through imagination. You don't owe anyone that kind of suffering. And she wouldn't want it for you.

You want closure, not her. Closure isn't found by joining the dead. Closure comes from accepting what you can't know.