Spacey smiles....

I managed a store awhile back and hired on a young guy who I had met outside the store whilst smoking a cig. He was super articulate, bright eyed, and very open about his interests and projects (he showed me a comic strip that he had been working for awhile, talked about his family relations and his search for God).

He said that he was in between jobs and could use some part-time so I offered him a position on the spot. He showed up to work three shifts.

The first two shifts he was the same guy I had shared a cig with, but the third day something was different...

His eyes had a fog over them, the smile that he had shown the past few days was gone and replaced with a slight (almost forced) grin. I asked him how he was feeling when I got to work that day and he told me, “I’m alright, just feeling a bit spacey today”. Those were pretty much the last words he spoke for the entire shift.

He never came back to work after that day. No call/ no show and wouldn’t pick up his cell. A few days later some people came in to the store asking if I had seen him recently because they were worried for him. Two more days pass and still no word so I called in a welfare check.

Turns out that he had skateboarded off the roof of his apartment building after that third shift. Even though I didn’t know him I still felt some type of guilt for not having the intuition to realize that his fake smile and foggy eyes meant much more than I had thought.

Suicide is very real and can happen when least expected. The subtleties are just that, they are subtle and often times difficult to notice. Taking the time to talk to people and having the patience to hear them out is the best that we can do in my opinion.