목요일, 4월 01, 2004
she might have been tired, might have been disgusted, or any other negative feeling that might have caused her to do what she did. whatever it is, she's not with us anymore, and that, quite frankly, makes me feel this strange feeling that burns in the pit of my stomach.

i never knew her well, i wouldn't even say that i knew her, but my brief exchanges with her were enough to make me feel the sting of her passing.

from what i knew of her, she was seen as being a bit strange, but she must have had her own reasons for being the way she was. there was some laughter and teasing behind her back of her eccentricities, but that was the furthest it went. no one really knew how delicate her spirit really was.

a person i kind of knew committed suicide. they found her washed up by the river. her death was reported through a mass email.

today i realised how fragile a life can be. somehow people are so empowered with dominion over their own lives, yet the world can force them to end it so easily. i wonder whether my smile at her as i passed her once or twice in the corridor might have made a difference, or if i had stopped to talk, or apologise for making too much noise in the hallway would have prevented her from doing what she did. we hardly met, but what little i saw of her is enough to make me wonder, whether that little iota of negligence might have been part of the driving force that made her waver on the wrong side of life and death.

life is that precious, isn't it. yet people can make a conscious choice to end it, just by giving up. the bottom line is that everyone was put here for a reason, and who are we to decide when we quit this mortal coil? i feel sorry for the fact that she was clinically depressed, and that no one could help her, but at the end of it, was it worth it at all?

death is indeed forever. the care and sympathy that comes inevitably with death is only symbolic of the lack of it when the person was alive. more often than not, people feel guilty, reassess their existence because of events like that that happen at some point or other. the message is not only to treasure the life that has been given, and which is given merely by the grace of God, but also to treasure the lives of others around you, because you never know when some little act you do might be the hand that pushes that someone over the edge.

i was just about to get annoyed with all the leslie cheung tributes that have been blaring over the media this afternoon when i got the news about this, i wouldn't call her friend, more like acquaintance of mine. at uni, people come and go, come and go; with this constant flow of people, it's hard to figure out where the flow starts and where it ends. it's easy to forget how many people actually don't make it through to the degree at the end of it, or even to the end of the year.

what's done has been done. no one can change anything, and nobody is about to live life the way they always wanted because tomorrow will most probably not be the end of the world (although that's not really for me to say), but i suppose it serves as a bookmark amongst the pages of the life story everyone is writing. as our pens go on writing, go on composing, we remember the pen that has stopped, the final chapter written, the book that has been closed.

all i hope is that maybe, somewhere up there, she has found her release. God bless you, even though in life, we couldn't.