"After you'd gone, I looked up and was struck by the indomitable normality of a bird and a blue sky, and in that same moment was struck down by the realisation that that same Sun had no longer shone for you."

trigger warning - suicide

In the Spring of 2017, my friend took her own life in the garden of my family home. 

The event itself of course bled with sorrow and screamed of the deep-rooted despair and desperation that must have accompanied the life that lead to her final moments.

But also one of the most profound realisations after the suicide was just how far-reaching and overwhelming its effects are, not just on the immediate victim, but on those whom they leave behind; when a person kills themselves, it is not just that one person who dies.

I speak only from my personal experience, but having been one of the people who found and tried to revive her, I know that for a time I lost all hope: I experienced a complete crisis of confidence in people; became engulfed by terror, depression, instability, and loneliness; and ultimately, I lost the ability to see the beauty in anything - an outlook of indomitable optimism from which I had felt able to draw upon my whole life.

I wanted her to know that even if she had thought she and her hidden illness were a burden on those around her, and that people would be better off without her, that she wasn’t. We aren’t. That she was and is still, so loved.

We know from increased talk and knowledge surrounding mental health, that in the moment in which somebody succeeds in ending their life, that it is the illness which usurps rationality and makes that fatal decision - not the person in which that illness is housed. But again, from experience, I know that if there is anything at all that can stop a person from doing it, then it is the fear and the knowledge of what that act might do to the people they love - to the people who love them back.

So, thinking in this way, I am putting together a body of work that speaks to just that love. That reminds people of it. That reminds people before they reach that most helpless and desolate point, that they are worthwhile and that their life is worth saving - that there are people who want to help them save themselves - even if they do not remember or cannot feel that safety right now. That they must seek those people out or be supported by them. A reminder that comes in the everyday relationships that we have, but so often do not recognise the significance of, whilst we still have time.

To help me to do this, I am asking contributors for two things, together:

1.     a screenshot of the last message you sent to and received from somebody you love (whether that be via text, WhatsApp, DM, messenger - whatever);

2.     and the message that you would send to that person, if you knew it was going to be the last message they ever received from you. It doesn’t have to be in the sense of ‘if someone were about to die’ (Heaven forbid); though of course it can be, I’m not necessarily asking for anything heavy. It’s just something that you’d always want them to know, something that’s a reminder of the significance of your relationship.

In short, I’m asking for letters of care and letters of hope: the embrace of each other that the sunshine in our world depends on.

"It will take time to feel warm again, but in time now and always, we must embrace those we love with every fibre of our being - and in that embrace we will find your sunshine again and we will live it."