I saw my brother on the phone and
trembling, only slightly, as his voice ploughed to the next plane.
Wilting as it involuntarily rose to the upper level of his range. If
our siblings could be marketed as a superstar pop group he would
unquestionably be 'The Sensitive One', though if you stuck us in a
yearbook he would also doubtless be 'Least Likely To Show Needless
Emotion', I saw tears develop.
This was not the usual 'Life is Shit
for the 20-Something' kind of deal, reading his face I knew something
serious had happened. What had happened was that a Japanese friend of
ours, Ayumi, had taken her own life.
She had been here a few years on a
travel/work holiday and her English never advanced to the point that
she could express the pain she was in, though common wisdom on
suicide might mean that translation difficulties would have meant
little either way. It is this sort of question that ricochets around
your head when someone goes like this, only hushes, never fully
leaving.
I first met Ayumi, probably in 2014.
It may have been late 2013, though my date memory is notoriously bad.
She had become the third room mate in a sharehouse of two of our
other friends when a third friend moved out. I am 6'3 and ,though not
exactly Andre the Giant, fairly used of being marginally taller than
others. But Ayumi was petite, practically
four-foot-nothing with a thick head of jet-black hair, a perpetual
smile and a real enthusiasm for the world.
As we
did, and as we do, we would mainly run into each other on drinking
occasions (Saturday or Wednesday nights, or come to think of it, any
night people had the next day free or could slog through it with a
fog-head) at the house. Ayumi, probably due to her miniscule stature,
was among the cheapest drunks I have ever seen. Three drinks in she
would be rolling drunk, but always smiling and laughing more heartily
at herself than anything else, which is a rare quality in drunk
people.
I
have a penchant on a certain amount of drinks of trying to learn
words in other languages. It's nothing really new, but pronounced
when I drink. So I would bore or crack-up Ayumi with my drunken and
way off the mark Japanese pronunciations. She would work hard to
correct me in between syllables of complete laughter and I would work
hard to try again, with zero progress and more hysterical noise at my
utter failing.
It
was great to watch her laugh. Even in my failings, my fortified
confidence being drenched would usually turn me to a sulky beer-soaked
cretin, but that laugh could cut through the worlds pettiness in a
heartbeat. You never got the feeling she was laughing at you or
with you. Just that she was
laughing, laughing at everything and you felt OK about being a part
of everything.
In
all this I became attracted to her and worked up the courage to ask
her out...on Facebook. She accepted and I decided I wanted to show
her some Polish food. I cancelled under the strain of school work,
but rescheduled. I was excited on the prospect and thought long and
hard about how to make a date good, and how to make it good for this
girl, then I cancelled again under the strain of self-doubt and sheer
weakness. I tried to reschedule, a glutton for self-punishment.
'I
have the feeling you will just cancel again' she told me.
'I
probably will, but I don't want to disappoint you'
'If you were my boyfriend it would be
disappointing, but you are my friend so it's OK'
Her logic and realness let me know I
had let myself lose something I really wanted. Another question to
ricochet around the mind for eternity.
I miss you Ayumi.
NP.
Note: The name has been changed to
spare family and others who might be concerned.
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