This blog has been going for almost two years. At first, I wrote as a means to understand and document my journey from darkness to light, for in November 2015, I very nearly ended my life.  These days, it is just musings of my imperfect and irregular world, food and the things I believe in.

Today, my daughter, her father and I talked about a friend of hers, who cuts her wrists regularly. This girl would phone my daughter up at all hours and say that she is about to kill herself.  I told my daughter to tell an adult, rather than take it upon herself to talk her friend out of slitting her wrists yet again.  Quite uncharitably, I think this girl is attention-seeking (I have known her for two years and am exhausted by her drama).

And then today, one of my Facebook friends in Australia wrote that her son’s girlfriend’s friend, a teenage boy, committed suicide by jumping in front of a train.  Last week, as I was walking in Whitstable, Kent, England, I saw floral tributes on a railway bridge. I stopped to read the obituary.  A young boy took his life here. A few short years ago, in Kuala Lumpur, one of my children’s friends who lived opposite the school jumped from his high-rise apartment.  He was a privileged kid from Japan and it shook our whole community, especially since it took place opposite the school.

My friend wrote: Hugs your kids more, love them wholeheartedly and demand less from them.

I would like to add, give them a home that they can come home to always.

I know three people in recent years who chose the same route out by jumping off bridges or in front of a train, despite being healthy, attractive, educated, have good jobs and no physical illness. The common factor in these three cases: they did not have a loving home to run back to when their world turned sour.  They had no place safe to weather the murderous darkness in their heads, despite having credit cards that can buy them a room in a hotel.

Recently, I chided my mum for telling my daughter, “Never mind darling, if you fail to get into university, you can come home and live with Nanny. There’s plenty of room in this house.” My mum’s repetitive litany annoyed me, and then the event of yet another young person’s needless death made me see what my mum was up to: she was reassuring my daughter, who is about to become an adult, that you are never too old to come home, no judgements, no ugly words, just love and cakes.

Photo: my parents’ drawing room, which never changed over the years. I will do what I can to ensure that it will be there for my parents’ grandchildren.

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