Brad Warner wrote an article about suicide, which combined with Sherrillee's blog, decided me on writing this:
The very first girlfriend I ever had killed herself in my barn. She was my best, and really, my only, friend when I was growing up. She walked the few miles to our farm, went into the upper barn, and climbed up into the loft---where we had done all the things kids do, and all the things young dykes do, and argued Radical Feminist politics to boot.
She undressed, carefully folding her clothes and stacking them by our make-shift bookshelf, underwear on top. She climbed up onto the low beam (a large beam running the length of the barn, useful for all sorts of work), worked her way out from the wall a bit, tied off her rope---which I guess she prepared in advance---looped it around her neck, and rolled off the beam.
When I came back through the barn around 0600, up from the milking barn, something made me glance over my shoulder, and something caused me to throw a glance upward. There was my love, my friend, my whole world, dangling, looking horribly wrong. I rushed up into the loft. I I cut her down, and howled for forgiveness because I couldn't hold the rope with one hand, so she fell the 9 feet or so to the floor of the loft---and it was a dreadful sound. Worse, she was laying in her own urine. I remember trying to clean it off of her, I remember believing that if I could just get her tongue back into her mouth it would clear the airway and I could start CPR. I do not remember that I had to be prised off of her, though I remember spending a very long four days in a mental hospital.
When my daughters were born, when I walked in my first Gay Pride march, the first time I used the word lesbian about myself out loud, when I had Cancer, when I met my g/f, when I met my partner; all those moment were diminished, because she was not there.
She left me no note, though the psychiatrists tell me the walk to my barn and up to "our" loft, her clothes, and the preparation, are a note of their own kind. Apparently, she went to where she had been happy, where she felt safe, where someone who loved her could find her.
She was 16 years old.
The very first girlfriend I ever had killed herself in my barn. She was my best, and really, my only, friend when I was growing up. She walked the few miles to our farm, went into the upper barn, and climbed up into the loft---where we had done all the things kids do, and all the things young dykes do, and argued Radical Feminist politics to boot.
She undressed, carefully folding her clothes and stacking them by our make-shift bookshelf, underwear on top. She climbed up onto the low beam (a large beam running the length of the barn, useful for all sorts of work), worked her way out from the wall a bit, tied off her rope---which I guess she prepared in advance---looped it around her neck, and rolled off the beam.
When I came back through the barn around 0600, up from the milking barn, something made me glance over my shoulder, and something caused me to throw a glance upward. There was my love, my friend, my whole world, dangling, looking horribly wrong. I rushed up into the loft. I I cut her down, and howled for forgiveness because I couldn't hold the rope with one hand, so she fell the 9 feet or so to the floor of the loft---and it was a dreadful sound. Worse, she was laying in her own urine. I remember trying to clean it off of her, I remember believing that if I could just get her tongue back into her mouth it would clear the airway and I could start CPR. I do not remember that I had to be prised off of her, though I remember spending a very long four days in a mental hospital.
When my daughters were born, when I walked in my first Gay Pride march, the first time I used the word lesbian about myself out loud, when I had Cancer, when I met my g/f, when I met my partner; all those moment were diminished, because she was not there.
She left me no note, though the psychiatrists tell me the walk to my barn and up to "our" loft, her clothes, and the preparation, are a note of their own kind. Apparently, she went to where she had been happy, where she felt safe, where someone who loved her could find her.
She was 16 years old.
VIEW 21 of 21 COMMENTS
merlowe:
OH my u gotta get a body pillow but for her...make her sleep with it..between her legs..then we she leaves YOU can sleep with it ..Hell up your nose if you wanna!! 
merlowe:
This is one cupcake that needs to update her blog 