It never rains, but it pours. No sooner had I finished furiously writing out my years-belated and repressed grief for Loryn, than I found out that Faith had also committed suicide. On the second Friday in June. 12 years to the weekday after Loryn.

I met Faith here on SitDiary, 18 years ago. Her username was silentears, and her favorite book was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Faith was a poet, an artist, a sculptor, an all-around creative. They were compassionate, loving, a little bit crazy, and absolutely gorgeous. I had the hugest crush on them from the pictures they would occasionally post. We added each other on myspace, livejournal, and eventually facebook, and against all odds, we kept in touch. Sporadically, since we both had our mental health issues and difficulty reaching out.

When we were teenagers, Faith and I used to discuss our experiences with mental illness, processing our traumas together across the internet and writing notes and poetry back and forth. We truly understood each other's thoughts and ways of relating to the world. We would constantly talk on AIM, exploring our feelings and how to deal with them, Faith sharing their art that gave such beautiful creative expression to their innermost feelings of pain, hope, love, desire, and wonder. I remember one conversation where Faith told me they didn't remember all the details of some traumatic events, just that certain things had happened and been forgotten.

I remember about 9 years ago randomly going to livejournal, though I hadn't in ages, and reading that Faith was pregnant. I remember being so scared for them during that pregnancy, as I knew that Faith had never had the opportunity to have a healthy and stable relationship, and that it would be harder for them to get out of the relationship with their baby's dad, a guy I didn't really trust. I never trusted anyone to be good enough for Faith. Maybe it was because I was secretly in love with them since we were 12 and 13.

Faith never regretted having their son, a beautiful and wonderful child who inherited his Mama's love and compassion for others, and who looks so much like Faith. They were such a good mom, always putting in the work and effort to make sure that he felt loved and safe. Until the last few months.

A few months back, Faith had a major mental health crisis. Some things in their life were going on, and triggered some of the other things. They got diagnosed with DID after a suicide attempt, and they were working so hard on trying to recover but facing so many obstacles. They still couldn't remember all the details of that trauma we had talked about so many years earlier, and they tried desperately to fill it in. They had a psychotic episode and fought hard to get through and out of it. They were trying to rebuild. Trying to be the Mom and artist and friend they knew they could be. But some part of them was always suicidal, always had been. And at some point, that part of them took control and ended their life.

I haven't really had time to process this yet. I was just in the middle of processing this other catastrophe. I am so hurt and broken from all of it, and everything I am going through with all of this just hurts so much. My body physically hurts right now.

I miss being broken together. Very few know the pain of dissociative amnesia and can talk about it, the way Faith did with me. It's a cruel and terrible process. The past is stolen from us, and we have to fight every day to hold on to the present, and that shimmering sliver of hope for the future.

I am so unfathomably sad that they ended the fight where they did. Diagnosis is the beginning of hope, the beginning of a new era of recovery, but it is always darkest before the dawn. I can't feel any of my emotions right now except as physical pain, because I know it would be too much to bear emotionally.

Faith, I love you. I miss you. I hope that I will find both you and Loryn again. I know that my soul knows where to find you.