RIP Kayla_la aka Dani

We never met in person. Chances of us doing so were slim. We met online in a Live Journal group entitled “Artist Beware” which is a group that helps people with difficult customers and difficult artists. It also was a good place to go for information about selling art on the web and fair prices and setting up one’s Terms of Service. I had knowledge about the publishing world and how that worked along with having worked in theater and the like. She was looking for a moderator to help her keep up with the group. I volunteer and we got to know each other from that. She really was someone I knew from the Internet.

I found out through some mutual friends that she killed herself the other day. They are having some trouble getting the body back because she did it a couple of towns over from where she lived and this is her roommate trying to make sure she gets the funeral she wanted because she was estranged from her family for the most part.

I knew she dealt with depression but one would not think that given how she ‘sounded’ on the Internet. She had a public face and a private one. Occasionally we would get a message if we could pick up the slack as she was going off the Internet to help herself. She and I talked (ok wrote) about depression and how it would just take over. I gave her the way I work through it and offered an ear for whatever she needed to talk about.

I drifted away from being active in Live Journal. Then Live Journal did one of those hinky changes that made having a Mac a detriment to being able to do all that was needed to be done to post a beware on the site. It was decided that it would be better if I stood down as a moderator because I didn’t have the time to put in to it and there were parts of the system I just couldn’t get done because Mac. We parted on good terms and then occasionally check in and even that lapsed after a while.

I have kept reading the group but not as often as I had.

And now I come to find out that Dani is not longer with us.

And that’s sad. Sad for her friends and family. Sad for the community she created a nurtured. Sad for all the people she helped over the years. There is now a Kayla_la sized hole in the universe.

We will never know what finally led her to do what she did. Her roommate is going over the minutia of their lives to figure out what they missed. ‘If only’ is the thread through their musings.

And that’s kind of the depressing thing about depression. Sometimes you don’t know how unhappy or at the edge someone is. They seem to be doing fine. They seem to be themselves or they seemed to be getting better. So we question are they getting better or have they made a decision that puts them at peace knowing what they are going to do? It’s very hard to tell.

Hug your loved ones. Check in with those you care about. Life is too bloody short and we are all here on this big blue ball together.

My sympathies to everyone who knew Dani and loved her.

I am grateful to have known Kayla_la even though it was just online.