Dear Jacob II
Dear Jacob,
It’s been a whole year already, time really flies. You’ve missed a pretty awful year at that - a global pandemic, Brexit, social injustice, climate change - it’s been a lot. They had to suspend the NBA season back in March, and they still haven’t finished the playoffs yet; the season resumed in a “bubble” with all the players at Walt Disney World, it was nuts. LeBron looks like he might take the Lakers to a championship - which reminds me that Kobe died in a helicopter crash. As I said, it’s been a bad year.
Once again, it’s “World Suicide Prevention Day”, and it feels different this year. You were never a cynic, but I always was, and I must admit I still feel cynical about having a day where everyone tells you to check in with your friends and goes on about how “things will get better”. I think suicides could be best prevented with addressing income inequality, better funding for universal access to mental health resources, detoxification of the media and, well, dismantling the capitalist machine that dehumanises us all into nothing but our economic purchasing power. Nobody really mentions that in their Instagram posts. But I digress.
I still think about you, and it hurts, but in a different way. I actually burst into tears outside Folies a few weeks ago because I really wished I could’ve bumped into you in there. The concept of suicide feels so much more real to me now - I understand the finality of it in a way I’m not sure I did previously. Perhaps that’s a good thing, perhaps it helped me grow up a little. The biggest thing that I’ve realised is how much discomfort there was in my alleged comfort zone, how I couldn’t keep doing the same thing if I wasn’t happy. I have to take risks, because not taking them is a risk too. I’m still scared of a lot of things, but now that fear doesn’t stop me from actually doing them the way it once did.
It’s been a really rough twelve months, but I’ve tried really hard to get through it, I think you’d be proud of me. I had so many festivals lined up this summer, you would’ve been so jealous, I had to cancel them all though so you would’ve had the last laugh. I still have big plans for the future though. I finally got my first tattoo, after all those conversations we had about it, and I thought about you while I was in the chair. Fraser, Vicky, Alex and I shared stories about you in Albion on Boxing Day, I hope your ears weren’t burning too much - clearly I’m not the only one that thought highly of you.
Wherever you are, I hope you’re doing good buddy. I miss you.