esterday my cousin committed suicide by jumping off of a bridge in a park. I’m a bundle of emotion. I’m angry. Angry that after he had attempted it five times before that no one thought he should be committed. Angry that his therapist did nothing. Angry that some of my family members treated him like a head case because a paranoid schizophrenic. I’m not angry at him. I feel horrible that he felt that only way to be free from those voices was to end his life. And I’m angry at the disease that took him from me. We grew up thick as thieves. We were both outcasts. The little black sheep of our family. We were two and half years apart and were more like brother and sister rather than cousins. In the last years of his life the medication that he was put on made him zombie like. You could tell that he had to separate you from the voices and images in his head. And I hated it. It wasn’t my cousin anymore. But I didn’t treat him any differently. His father, my uncle, passed in May last year. And now him. I hope and pray that he is finally at peace. I know he fought so long against his demons. I will miss him so very much. I always said that I would never get a memorial tattoo and that I thought they were dumb. Now I’m going to eat my words. It will be a birdcage with an open door and a bird flying away. I know it’s been done before but I don’t care. One of his favortie songs was blackbird by The Beatles. The cage is the schizophrenia and the bird is his soul. He is no longer imprisoned in himself. He is truly free.