i sat across from someone i know at dinner tonight as she repeated over and over how she wanted to kill herself. granted she has a hard life, after some food and a beer with some conversation the direction lightened up and talk of taking her life moved away.

for that past few months she had been sending me messages wanting to borrow money, explaining how she needed to make rent, pay this or that, or simply to go on living. i know she does not have a drug problem and also knew that she would make some ends meet, of which she did. but i also knew she was reaching out for help, and when you see an opportunity to help anyone beyond yourself you should step up. it takes alot for someone to ask for help, and when they do it is best to listen. alot of times someone simply wants someone to listen to, to feel like they have an attachment to the world. they need to also get out of their head for awhile.

at one point she asked me if I knew of anyone sadder then her in this world. i thought of many, i thought of the people locked up in our crazy institutions and jails in this world, I thought of immigrants running from their homes or simply in other awful situation from health, or happenstance. i thought of myself.  i felt like telling her this, but i do not think it would have improved the situation. so i simply kept listening.

she had a hard time understanding that everyone is going through something difficult at all times. that we are all suffering and that most keep it to themselves, force a smile on their face as they hold in the angst or pain that comes with having a body that in order to feel pleasure must also feel pain.

towards the end of the conversation i gave her what i feel everyone needs in life, hope. i offered her a bit of a buoy and said goodbye, hoping that the ocean she had been drowning in does not take her away and that she understands that the only think about being on the bottom that is good, is that it is mostly all up from there. like most things, this too will pass.

—
great article on the darkness that can come along with fame and fortune here: johnny depp, falling down a rabbit hole.