My housemate committed suicide yesterday. It's an awful situation, but for me it's probably more shocking
than sad; we live in a house with five people and despite our physical
closeness I never knew him all that well. Still, it's an odd feeling to
have one of the basic elements of your life suddenly pulled from
beneath you. Whether I knew him well or not, he was a day to day
reality and the new totality of his absence is keenly noted. A profound
lassitude creeps in to fill the spaces of my mind that he once occupied.
His suicide was, of course, unexpected. They all are, I guess. And,
once again, it proves how arbitrary this process can be; he was a
gentle, sweet-natured guy with heaps of friends and few material
worries. The concept that you could be living in such close proximity
to someone for an extended period of time and yet never discern such a
deep unhappiness within them is a vastly unsettling thought. I can only
imagine how it must be for his family and those that considered
themselves his close friends.
And yet, my housemate was also the most likely to commit suicide
too. A 20 year old, gay male, he found himself in a demographic that
accounts for over half of the young male suicides in this country.
Indeed, it is thought that 30% of young, gay Australian men will
attempt suicide at some point in their lives. Of course, it's impossible to know
what role, if any, the fact of his gayness played in his decision to
cease his time in this world, and it's not really a topic worthy of
supposition either. All suicides are a tragedy of singular and personal
nature and it demeans the memory of my housemate to see it simply as
some further proof of a statistical trend.
However, at a time when a debate over homosexual marriage is
bringing the deeply entrenched and charmlessly reprehensible homophobia
of so many people back to the surface, it is perhaps fitting to
consider again how we treat the young and homosexual in our country.
Now, let's get this absolutely and completely straight: there is no
possible justification - religious, scientific or otherwise - for being
of the opinion that homosexuals are lesser human beings than
heterosexuals. None. To continue to hold such a belief marks you out at
as a person unworthy of the many benefits that post-Enlightenment civil
society has to offer. It also marks you out as the kind of person who
would revile a fellow human merely for their attempt to find love,
family and happiness in a world otherwise saturated with affliction,
loneliness and discontentment. And, if that sounds like you, then,
really, how fucking dare you. Being young and working out the
parameters of your being is hard enough as is, without people making
you feel judged and hated for trying to love another fully consenting
human in the only way you know how. Surely this life is filled with
enough shit already. The last thing we need to do, as both individuals
and a society, is to scorn somebody for trying to bring forth some
light and warmth with which to push back the darkness.
My housemate might have felt judged, he might not have. He might
have felt loved, he might not have. He might not have cared, he might
have. But whatever the reason, he's gone now. And there is a giant,
inescapable void where once there glowed personality and life. It is a
tragedy that I cannot begin to comprehend. I just hope that perhaps,
one day, we'll pull our heads out of our asses, get our shit together as a society
and this will cease being such a well-worn story.
Until then, my thoughts to all his family and friends. He will be missed.
.........................
Places to go:
Beyond Blue
SuicideLine
Lifeline