14th
R.I.P. Jeff
I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in 5 years on Tuesday. We were talking about all the usual “oh my gosh, I haven’t seen you in 5 years!” type of things. As these conversations go, we started to get to the people in our lives that we had lost. She informed me that a friend of hers from high-school, Jeff Anderson, had killed himself. At first I thought I could put a face to the name, but wasn’t 100% sure that it was the right face. When I got home and googled “Jeff Anderson Suicide” the sad confirmation that I was looking for appeared in a grainy mug shot at the top of the screen.
I’m not going to pretend that me and Jeff were BFFs. We had three theatre classes together in high-school and were friends. Jeff was funny and charming with his boy next door classic good looks enhanced by his swimmer’s body and his polite manner. The girls in the classes had crushes on him, myself included, and the guys in the class wanted to be his friend. He was the kind of guy you knew you could count on, even though you weren’t close to him. Even though I wasn’t extremely close with Jeff, several of my own close friends were and was always spoken of highly. And Jeff always made me laugh when Mr. Feldman, the theatre teacher, was giving me shit.
I also won’t dance around the issue that what Jeff did was wrong. Yes, I feel that it was wrong. But what happened is such a grey area of moral standing in our culture that I even feel almost guilty for typing out the word “wrong” for other people to read. I could go more into my personal feeling as to the nature of the sentencing, but I won’t - I’ll just say I feel very conflicted.
I won’t describe what happened in detail, you can do the research for yourself if you would like to know.
I will say that I am a strong believer in forgiveness and that people can change. Everyone in life makes mistakes on many different levels of “wrongness”. The sad truth is that most people just never get caught. Jeff clearly felt endlessly horrible for what he did, so much so that he took his own life, and in turn only ended up hurting more people that deeply loved him. I truly believe that Jeff never meant to hurt anyone on purpose.
I just wish that he had stayed around to repent and atone for his actions.
I wish that - I just really wish that he was still here. I wish his family had him back in their lives.
I wish this whole crazy thing had never happened.
I wish that I wasn’t holding back tears in a coffee shop right now typing about it in a blog in a lonely corner with my lukewarm coffee that I’m too depressed to go fill up so it will at be somewhat enjoyable.
It makes me so frustrated that I want to throw my laptop across the room into the wall and scream. Because - because WHY? Why would something like this happen to everyone involved? And no will be able to answer that fully question.
I know that some people may view this post as disrespectful. However, the more I thought about it, the more that I found for me it was impossible to describe how I felt without being frank about the matter, as selfish as that may be. So I apologize to anyone I may have offended from the bottom of my heart and I can understand if reading this made you upset. I’m sorry.
I wish his family and friends nothing but the best and offer nothing but comfort in their grieving process, which I’m sure will continue for many for a long time. I know in my heart that they all remember the same sweet guy that I do.
Jeff, I hope that you are resting in peace.
Sincerely and with much love,
Lisa G.
