The news came to me as a shock today… I was there, in the teachers’meeting room, when the Dean walked in and announced in a shattered voice the suicide of Rozenn…

She was one of my pupils. I have been in this school for only a week, and I only met her twice, but it nevertheless stunned me. I remember her pretty face and her dark hair, and where she was sitting last Friday in my class…

When driving back from work, I kept thinking about Rozenn, and about myself. I was listening to Nirvana and that’s when I remembered how that music helped me not to take the step Rozenn did when teenage years were so hard on me, I thought. Nirvana’s music, and rock/metal music in general, saved me, undeniably!

Listening to it would let my malaise and my despair ooze out of me, it would help me expel these inner violence and self-hatred that were consuming me… until they would come back again…

It helped me turn into someone I like better, from a meaningless and despicable caterpillar into a dark butterfly… Today I am someone I can withstand the look of when in front of a mirror, even if life has stolen part, and a huge one that is, of my happiness.

Now, when I think of Rozenn, I realize how close I was to wanting the end she chose for herself. Out of lack of bravery, or thanks to courage, I don’t really know, I followed the path to my life as it is today. That is exactly how I have always regarded suicide, as a desperate act of utter ambiguity…

And now I’m thinking about Rozenn’s family, because I know how much the loss of a beloved one will sadden and appal you. They will be angry at her and will not understand her decision, but it was all a lot of bravery and lack of courage… bravery to take the step to eternal emptiness and nothingness, lack of courage to survive, just to see if it could get any better.

That’s how the life and death of a stranger, who decided that it was not worth living, altered other’s existence so much more than she probably ever thought she would, as she is missed and will be remembered by so many of us.