DEAR CHICO AND DELAMAR...

I don’t even know if you guys are the right people to go to for my problem, but right now I just can’t talk about it with people who know me personally. I feel like they’ll try to soften the blow, and I want people who can be brutally honest with me.

I used to have a best friend who was prone to a lot of drama. Every problem was always a tragedy. She wasn’t just sad, she was miserable. But for all the hyperbole, she was always joyful and constantly the life of any party. People just naturally gravitated to her and wanted to be with her. I certainly saw a lot of that during the almost 10 years we’ve been friends.

A couple of weeks ago, she was in yet another “tragedy” – she and her boyfriend had broken up – and while we were all supportive of what she was going through, we just expected that she would get over it like she always does after a couple of days. Imagine our surprise and heartbreak when she ended up killing herself.

As her closest friend I feel guilty that I didn’t see the signs when they were there. I feel like if I had been a better friend I would have seen that she was going through something much more painful than her “drama”. I could have spoken to her and maybe prevented all of these from happening.

Do you guys feel that I could have done more? How can I ever forgive myself for not being there when she needed me the most? What can I do to overcome all of this guilt that I am feeling? – Andy

CHICO SAYS…

I never really spoke publicly about this, but I too have had a dear friend take his own life, although in many people’s opinion, perhaps unwittingly.

This friend of ours was also, like you described your own late friend, full of “drama”. He always made it a point to have emotional meltdowns conveniently when there is an ample audience to witness the unraveling. So I suppose it was quite understandable that we, his barkada, grew increasingly suspicious of his breakdowns.

Not that we doubted that he had problems, for he truly had many, but more of making them seem larger than they actually are, for purposes of making a show and attracting more attention.

Eventually the meltdowns evolved into “suicide attempts.” I put the term in quotes because we too, grew suspicious of those, mainly because he had so many that we actually got used to them. Besides, he always made it a point to call somebody up, early enough to stop what he had started - until that one fateful day.

One day we got the news that he actually succeeded. Many of us felt he didn’t mean to. It was probably another one of his “attempts,” only something had gone terribly wrong. He didn’t call someone early enough.

But whatever the case was, everyone felt guilty for not taking him seriously; for making him the boy who cried wolf; for allowing ourselves to get inured to his cries for help; for getting tired of being the supportive friends we were expected to be.

But in the end, we as friends, can only fight this fight for him so much. In the end, this is his battle with his own demons, only unfortunately, he lost.

I understand the guilt you feel right now. Could you have made a difference had you been more supportive of your friend? Maybe. Could you have stopped her had you paid closer attention to her cries for help? Maybe. But in my humble opinion, unless she got to the bottom of her pain, only for so long.

We can ask all these questions all we want, and all we’ll get are hypothetical answers. There are no definitive answers to what ifs. I’m not saying it absolves us of the guilt that we feel, but what I am saying is, we can only look back for so long, after which we need to look forward.

It’s too late for our lost friends, but it’s not too late for those still alive. If you feel you weren’t as involved as you should’ve been with her, it’s too late to redress that. But it isn’t too late to start being involved more, in general, with the people you love now. You can’t change your past, but you can make changes for the future.

More than anything, it’s a lesson learned. True, it came at a price too heavy to pay, but we all have our demons to battle. Like I said, we can support, we can stand by, we can prop up, we can rally behind, we can be there for people fighting their battles, but in the final round, they fight alone.

Don’t beat yourself up too much about something, the results of which, you can no longer change. Take what you can from this experience, learn from it, and try and see if you can become a better person because of it. This is the best we can do as homage to our fallen comrades. It may have been too late for them, but it isn’t too late for us.

DELAMAR SAYS...

The truth is, as a friend, you will always hold yourself to a higher standard in terms of caring for your late friend. You will always want to have done more for her precisely because out of everybody, it is you and those close to her who should have known, who should have seen that there was something different about this most recent break up.

Never mind that you are not trained professionals who can more or less watch for some of the signs of someone who is likely to take her own life. You will not listen to that just because you believe deep down you know that you should have known. You should have helped. You should have known better.

But here’s the thing with people who take their own lives, their thought process is really different from people whose will to live is intact. It is an instinct innate in all living things to protect their own lives, to self-preserve. Killing one’s self goes against this most basic instinct. So immediately you know that there is something very basic in her way of thinking that is not right. Many people’s hearts have been broken, are still breaking and still to be broken. But it is only a minority who will hurt themselves
because of it, much less those who will want to kill themselves over it. Unseen to most people in her life, it turns out she is one of those people who will choose death over life.

I also would like to introduce you to the thought that more than anything or anyone, WE ARE MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR OURSELVES. More than what you did not do as a friend (which is still arguable) the more important point here is that SHE had chosen to hurt and kill herself. That is something that is of her own doing.

The biggest crime here was against the self. Remember: she did it. Not because you were mean to her or did not care. I mean, all other times in the 10 years of friendship, I’m sure she knows that you cared for her and patiently listened to all her drama. But this offing one’s self…well, this is bigger than your issue of friendship. It was self inflicted. That should tell you that she wasn’t normal. Maybe all the years of her misery had caught up with her. And although you could argue that you should have been there more for her in any capacity…well, in the end it was her life, her choice and her own way of escaping the blows that life has to offer.

Could you have stopped her from doing what she did? We don’t know. Would it have mattered if you spoke with her or spent time with her more? We don’t know. Could you have been a better friend? Only you can answer this question.

The truth is, there is nothing you can do to take away this guilt. AND MAYBE THERE SHOULDN’T. WE SHOULDN’T FORORGET THAT WE NEED TO ALWAYS FEEL OUR WAY THROROUGH OUT DEALINGS WITH PEOPLE. We need to really see and seek out how our loved ones are feeling. We always need to show that we love and we care. Even if they never see it or never choose to acknowledge that we do, we need to do it for ourselves.

We should always connect to the ones closest to us. Maybe you have to remember how much you have lost in this friend of yours so that hopefully, it doesn’t happen again to someone you love.

(Chico and Delle welcome your letters. Write to: youth@mb.com.ph or fax through 527-7511. Listen to the Dynamic Duo Monday to Saturday, 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. over Monster Radio RX 93.1)