Drew-
I just got back from attending a funeral service for a young woman who took her own life. I did not know her personally, but I have a business relationship with her father, and felt that it was right that I attend.
He told me that his daughter suffered from schizophrenia, and had been fighting mental illness for the better part of 10 years, before it became too much for her to bear.
I've been to a lot of funerals over the years. I've been to funerals for old people and I've been to funerals for young people. I've been to funerals for people who died suddenly, and I've been to funerals for people who lost long battles with disease. It's just a part of life, and the older you get, the more of it you see, and everyone knows this is just a fact, but I've never been to a funeral like the one I was at today.
The church was packed to capacity, every pew was full, and there were folding chairs in the side aisles, but that still wasn't enough, and people in the back were standing. There must have been 500 people in this little church, taking time out of their own lives to pay their respects to the grieving family.
I looked around the church, at the people with red eyes, women crying, men trying hard not to, and it occurred to me exactly how different a funeral for a suicide actually is. Even though the person we were there to memorialize had struggled for years with an incurable affliction, and even though many people in her life did everything they could to try and help her, there was still a sense of responsibility in the room. Every person that knew this girl felt to one degree or another that they could have helped her, that they should have tried harder to make her life bearable or at least liveable, and there was a heavy shroud of guilt hanging in the air.
I saw her father crying openly as he stood and received the condolences of hundreds of people, and it mad me sad to see the pain in her mother's face as she was taken into countless embraces by people who wanted her to know that they cared about her, and that her daughter's life was important to them. It was beyond memorable, and I think it will stay with me for a very long time, because the tremendous outpouring of support, and grief, and love was truly overwhelming, even (especially?) for someone as jaded as myself.
In the midst of all of this, I thought about you, Drew. I thought about what you said about how if someone killed themselves as a result of your work it would bring you fame, and that fame would bring you money, and I almost felt bad for you for a minute.
I almost felt bad for you, because you don't seem to understand that there are more important things in this world than fame, traffic and money. The fact that you would seek to engineer the type of misery I just witnessed in order to improve your own life makes me think that you probably don't have much of a life, because if you did, you'd be more respectful of the lives that others have built for themselves.
I can understand a young person such as yourself not grasping the fundamental concept that life itself is the sum total of someone's possessions, because young people rarely do. I can even understand your ability to subjugate other people's happiness to your own, because we all do that to one degree or another, every day of our lives.
What I can't understand is why your goddamn website is still online after everything that has happened already.
Somehow, you must still believe that you are going to come out of this on top and smiling, and that you will be allowed to attempt to profit directly from the pain suffering you seek to cause.
You will not.
You may think that all of this attention is somehow going to help you attain your goals, and that in the end, it will improve your life in some measurable way.
It will not.
People will say what they want to about how this project needs to have a goal, and how we should be trying to motivate you to take some kind of positive action from you instead of tearing down everything in your life. I don't know for sure if you are stupid, or just young and foolish, or if you are a genuine sociopath, and I don't care at this point.
I'm writing you this note to let you know that nothing you say or do from this point forward will mitigate your situation in any way, shape, or form. No acts of contrition, or apologies will be accepted, and nothing will change what is to come.
If you had any plans to try and make this right, scrap them. They are useless now.
All you can do at this point is pray for this to end quickly, and I'm posting this to assure you that that's not going to happen.
ITE
