Dear Jenny

One of my good friends from high school posted some pictures of her and another old friend from high school, so naturally I wanted to check in on them to see how they were doing. From the looks of it, they’re doing well—they have since transitioned, had top surgery and are currently on HRT. I always knew them as someone who seemed to be experimenting with their gender a lot back in high school and even prior to that so I’m happy they are comfortable in their skin and it honestly put a smile on my face despite our strained relationship. That was my fault—I was 19, fucking stupid as shit, and messed around with their boyfriend. I don’t have many regrets, but that’s one that still haunts me to this day. We briefly reconciled when my mother passed and they offered support but neither one of us have made any effort to continue the friendship. I’m sure if we bumped into each other randomly on the street, it would be a cordial conversation but too much time has passed, too much has happened, and there is really no interest on either of our parts to continue any type of relationship. I’m not sure their stance on it, but I’m okay with letting that sleeping dog lie..

But I didn’t want to talk about that.

Upon my brief snoop session, I discovered this old friend of mine’s sister passed away a couple of years ago from an apparent suicide. This is a person I haven’t seen in well over fifteen years now, but I did hang out with them a lot during my middle school years when she’d come back down and visit from Berkeley on breaks.

Her name was Jenny. She was extremely smart, like naturally smart. Well-read, tall (if I recall, she was just shy of six foot). My friend and I loved hearing her stories about college and dating. Jenny was even nice enough to impersonate her aunt so I could go to a Dresden Dolls concert in San Diego. My dad would only allow me to go if we were able to spend the night in San Diego because he didn’t like the idea of my friend driving two hours back home so late at night. She was able to fool him and no one was the wiser.

Jenny made attempts to join some activist spaces, including the Black Panthers but considering the fact she was a white girl, her presence wasn’t all that warmly welcomed but it didn’t stop her making an effort to be politically conscious. My friend looked up to her so much in some regards and was rather close with her during high school. Their parents had their own problems and issues, plus politically they were on different wavelengths and it made it difficult for them to have a normal conversation so their sister was their rock in certain ways. But my friend was also very worried about her.

Jenny often times found herself in some precarious predicaments that were dangerous and sometimes she was lucky to get out alive. One story I remember my friend telling me was she was on a bad part of town in Oakland walking around by herself at night when someone attempted to rape her. Luckily she had some powerful lungs and screamed bloody murder, barely getting away but things like this would happen a little too frequently than my friend liked. They would get into arguments with her about some of her choices and behaviors towards certain things, they felt as if she was self-destructive, and looking back on it, I think she was.

It was no secret Jenny suffered from bouts of depression. Back then it was such a stigmatized word. “Depression” for a long time equated to some sort of boogeyman for me, something that would pop up out of nowhere and scare you so when my friend confided that they weren’t doing well, I always felt a sort of sadness for Jenny. Ever since I knew Jenny, I always viewed her as a sad girl. It just always seemed like there was something gnawing at her that she kept to herself.

After my falling out with my friend, I never heard much about Jenny except from mutual friends that alerted me of her goings on. For a while Jenny considered going to med school, and I’m sure she would have gotten in considering how smart she was but something happened and she never followed through. At one point she apparently moved to Las Vegas and worked at a casino. She always jumped from thing to thing, dabbling here and there in different industries and hobbies. For a brief period of time she was a sex worker but didn’t really enjoy it as much as she thought she would and quit that, too. Like any other Millennial, she was a smart kid trying to make ends meet and figure out what she wanted to do but never found it. She was just aimless.

The casino gig was the last update I ever got about her. And now she’s dead. I can’t say I’m too surprised by the suicide knowing what she was like. It just reminds me of how cruel this world can be and how crushing it is to just live. Jenny decided she just didn’t want to do it anymore. She never found that thing that gave her reason to keep going. Not even her sibling was enough to stay alive.

I guess in a weird way I relate to the aimlessness, the internal suffering. The pain she must have felt. According to my friend’s caption, she was going through some other health problems and been in pain for a while.

Suicides are always weird for me. My brush ups with that mental anguish tells me how bad it had to get in order for something like suicide to be the only option. It’s a mirror of my own fears when I go into bouts of depression. If one day it will get to that point of no return, and that’s frightening to think about. I’ve gotten close to that point, and I hope I never get that close again.