Logging onto Facebook that day, I had no idea what I was about to find out.
Karis, a good friend of mine had written the following status:
RIP Lil Sue .... Such a shock....My heart didn't just skip a beat, it stopped entirely. It couldn't be my Lil Sue. It couldn't be my Mort. It just couldn't be.
I sent Karis a message, asking her. I then sent Sue an email, asking her if she was ok. The lack of reply was confounded by a message back from Karis confirming it was my little Mort. Was it a car accident? A sudden medical problem that caused it? No, she had killed herself
Sue had obviously been in such a dark place that she couldn't go on. My immediate thought was, could I have helped her? Could I have stopped her? Those answers weren't going to come easy. But let's track back a bit.
I met Sue in 2005. She always hung around with the moshers and emos at the fountain in Warrington. Sue was tiny. She was five foot nothing and a half stood on Yellow Pages. She was nothing sort of adorable. She had a wonderful personality aswell. So friendly, so kind, so caring.
I had been in a long term relationship during 2005, but once that had ended, my friendship with Sue moved to an entirely different level. We flirted, we hugged and we made our feelings about each other quite clear.
I remember our first kiss. It was on a bench at the temporary bus station in town. Our feelings had been overflowing for quite some time and they exploded in that one kiss.
Our relationship didn't last too long. I have no idea why. We worked well together. We looked good together and we made each other happy. It did end though, even if our feelings for each other didn't. Sue was one of the girlfriends I never had any regrets about. We flirted with another relationship for years afterwards, but the timing was never right for us.
After me, she seemed to choose over-protective boyfriends. What this meant for her friends was that she lost touch with a lot of them. Sue would still email me though. We'd exchange emails quite often. She wasn't controlled by boyfriends at work so we kept fairly close. She never gave me the impression that she was suffering from depression though.
I last saw her in 2010, around the time I was losing my job. She came to see me a couple of times and it was obvious there was still a spark there. The first visit, we behaved ourselves. We flirted beyond belief and we almost kissed, but we managed to hold off. About half an hour into the second visit though, we gave up all pretence and we kissed. It was just as good as our first.
Of course, the timing was bad. I was in the early stages of a massive breakdown and there was no way a relationship could be on the cards. We had a wonderful few hours together though. Had I known it would be the last time I'd ever see her, I wouldn't have let her leave.
The emails continued though and she was always interested to know about my problems and how i was coping with them. She always asked about my recovery too and my future plans. She was always vague about her own life, she never let on that she was in trouble and it shocked me to my core when I found out she had ended her own life.
The reason I called her Mort, was she bore a striking resemblance to Mort from the 'Madagascar' film series. The big, pleading eyes. The very similar height level and the face she pulled when she'd been naughty.
Seeing the death announcement on the local paper's website really brought it home. Luckily my medication took hold of any emotions before they could spiral out of control.
I'd only ever been to one funeral before in my life and I didn't even know the person in that one. Sue's was a tough one to bear though.
There were lots of old faces from my life outside the church. Lots of hugs exchanged and lots of tears held back. Then the funeral cortège appeared around the corner. The normal black hearse, followed by two black limousines. The tears flowed from most as Sue's tiny coffin came into view. Most of us would have been able to reach both ends of the coffin with our hands, while Sue's entire body fit inside it. That's when it hit home that it was really her.
My ex, Kirsty, the one who right royally fucked me up when my Dad was ill, had shown up to the funeral wearing a hoodie and jeans. As much as Sue went against the norm, that was utterly disrespectful. I just concentrated on saying goodbye to Sue though.
I've never seen a church so full of atheists before. While the god botherer at the front was spouting his nonsense, myself, as I'm sure all of her friends were thinking about Sue and the memories we had with her. Every few moments, a smile would creep onto my lips as I remembered the little angel, being naughty and then giving me her classic Mort look.
The funeral finished and Sue's family and boyfriend parted ways from her large group of friends. This separation mimicked her life. Not many of her friends ever got to meet her parents and vice versa.
I needed a drink.......or nineteen. There was no news of a wake for her friends, but after a few texts messages, a drinking session in her memory was quickly arranged. Halfway through my second pint, I was challenged to drink a half pint glass filled with whisky. Never one to pass up a challenge, down it went in one go. All of the rules were out of the window that night.
There was about 30 of us sat in the beer garden drinking in Sue's memory. People from all walks of life, many of which I had known for some time, some I had never met before. We all talked about our memories of Sue. Luckily, my medication and the alcohol dimmed the emotions that normally would have consumed me.
There was a point where it all got too much though. During an intense conversation with an old friend, he succumbed to his emotions and burst into tears. Watching a grown man question why he wasn't able to help a 21 year old from killing herself was what pushed me over the edge. I hate violence and I won't be violent against other people, so I walked to the back of the beer garden and put all my strength behind a punch to a metal grate.
It didn't actually cause me any pain, which was strange. My knuckles were cut up pretty badly though and the damage is still visible on my skin even 2 months later. That was the end of it though. The single punch had released all of my anger in one go and I went back to drinking.
I left the pub at about half ten in the evening. I had been drinking for a good 7 hours and I wasn't about to walk home, so off I went for a taxi.
Back at home, I crawled into bed and the rest of my emotions flowed out in floods of tears. I couldn't believe she had gone.
For a day or two after finding out about her death, I questioned whether I could, or why I couldn't help her. After putting my condition in the public eye and offering help to people, why didn't I see that Sue was in trouble?
I soon realised there was nothing I could have done though. Mort kept her emotions to herself and tried to soften them by helping other people. This meant nobody really knew what state of mind she was in. If the people she was closest too couldn't see it, I had no chance.
Losing Sue meant a big hit was taken in my own recovery. A bad couple of months followed, with some more loss and a spanner in the works of my own plans to move and start afresh pushed me into a major relapse. more on that to follow....
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