One of my friends committed suicide.

One of my old elementary/middle/high-school friends shot himself in Kansas last night.

Robert O'Conner was an Iraq War veteran, working in Kansas for Army recruiting. He had told one of my other friends that he was feeling a bit down a couple of weeks ago, but talking to his mom on Thanksgiving he said he was feeling better. A lot of his stress was induced from the higher-up brass pushing the grunt-level recruiters to get higher numbers enlisted. He had previously served a tour in Iraq and although he did see some combat, as far as I know, his depression wasn't caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but the pressure to recruit.

Pretty sad all the way around. Never really understood how hollow and empty and pointless suicide is until now.

Robert used to be known as the group outsider... always had this dark side. He was very smart, and ended up making up a lot of stories and tall-tales, to which we always rolled our eyes and laughed at his stories. (During one late night IHOP outing, he once said that Fort Knox had at least a dozen nuclear warheads - he used the term 'thermonuclear' which only added more drama - set to blow up if someone were to try to steal the gold... to this day nobody is sure if he was bullshitting us or trying to deliver the joke deadpan. We still laugh about it.)

So yeah, don't hurt yourselves, guys. Life's already hard enough and short enough.

Bless his soul, and may he find his way to you, God.








(Pictures are from MySpace since I'm having problems getting my FTP working to host those pictures.)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Limits.

Here is a draft I found of something I wrote back in 2007. ................... I'm going to take this moment to sort of speak aloud. Which is really what blogs are for, am I right? A medium of one-sided discussion. I talk, and you listen. Only three or so people ever comment on my blog, so it really is like a one-way conversation. Google Analytics tells me I average about 11.5 (or so?) unique visitors a day, and about half of those are regular readers, and half are people that randomly get to my blog from a Google search or something. On a weekly basis, I end up having about 50 unique visitors. At any rate, the point is that I get to talk, and say stupid things, and you read, smirking to yourself while drinking your coffee. So, what's this post going to be about, Chris? This post is going to be about how awesome I am. Wait, wait - no I'm being serious. I really am awesome. But there will be some humility in this post also, because the second part of thi...
Read more

YES! YES! YES!

One of my favorite books is being released as a blockbuster movie - The Gates of Thermopylae . The movie will be called 300 - the supposed number of Spartans who held the narrow pass of Mt. Thermopylae for a number of days knowing they would eventually be smashed and killed to the last man, giving the Greek civilization a time to amass an organized defence from the well nigh million-strong marching force of Persians seething into the region. It's said that the events at Thermopolae were a hinge on which human history itself turned on for a day. Greek thought, very much a part of our foundation as Westerners - rationalism and belief that man is a logical being and can recognize the Truth through correct use of his noodle - survived the attempted murder by superstitious barbarism. You can read up on the Battle of Thermopylae here . It's probably one of the most inspiring stories I know. Told the Persian archers numbered so many that their arrows would blot out the sun, a so...
Read more

Australia gets progressive...

I read a story like this and I think to myself about how and why they chose 14 days as the limit. Think about it. It's completely arbitrary. Why not 15 days? Or 16? Or 20? Or 30? Or 100? Or how about 270 days? Wait, that's nine months. That would be barbaric! Really, the only thing that changes is the look of the human after conception. Wouldn't want to allow embryos to be farmed at 15 days! Oh, no! That would be bad! Maybe even... murder! Wait, when does it become murder? After it's born? Or wait, maybe right before it's born... hmm... but nothing changes in the 10 minutes it takes to exit the womb... so it's gotta be before that. Well, 6 months it looks too baby-like, like an actual person, and it cries and squirms as it gets ripped apart during abortions... so maybe like 3 months, or 9 weeks... yeah, something like that. Let's go with 14 days, because it's really small then and doesn't have arms or a head yet. Sounds good. W...
Read more