Bill Zeller, a 27 year old PhD student, took his own life last week. He left a letter on his web page before he committed suicide. The letter explains why he did what he did. In this letter, he said that he wanted it to be made public and circulated so more people can see. That's what I am doing here -
http://documents.from.bz/note.txt
The letter reveals that for the last 23 years, Bill Zeller had carried his secret and and fought with the darkness inside him everyday. It shows the great pain he had suffered when he was alive. He was desperate for love, for understanding, and for trust. This lonely and wounded soul had never stopped trying to live a respectful life, to love others while feeling being loved, to seek for solution to stay away from the hurtful past. My tears was running down my face like a stream when I read his letter. He is extremely cynical, and had trust problems. But these are because there is a hole in his heart and he was suffering unspeakable pain. He is not incapable of love; he understands love perfectly. When he met the one who loved him dearly, he wrote -
"She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in
those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally
planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of
this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing
this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a
possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only
dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one
more person in a long list of people I've hurt."
But his pain and his dark secret destroyed him and his relationships, including the one he described in details in his letter. He is an arrogant kid, too arrogant to tell anyone in the world what had happened to him before he took his own life. He was not born to be so arrogant and self-defensive; he was made to. I understand that the more one's life was crushed under the fate's feet, the more one wants to prove that he/she is worth living.
How much I wish that time can fly backward. How much I wish I could know him in person and was able to tell him that opening up your heart to trustful people would not make you inferior but could only save you. If they see you as "ruined or traumatized," and if they spread your secret, that's their problem. That's because they are not decent people, not understanding how much courage it takes for a wounded soul to talk.
HOw much I wish that his family could love him in the way that he wants to be loved. How much I wish that he could hug himself and told himself "I love you."
I feel extremely sad this morning, for Bill Zeller's death. I do not see him just as a victim of sexual violence and child abuse. In my eyes, he is much more than that. He had a soul that can fly, and he had the talent that many people do not have. Yet he died, so young and innocent. I understand that death might be the best solution he could find given what he had in his life. He wrote:
"Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people
have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I
really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day
for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore."
I don't think that he did not survive because he is not as strong as others. On the opposite, I think that he is very strong to be able to live up to 27 years, fighting the darkness every day. I just wished that he could be listened more carefully and intensively, and his pain could be dealt with more delicacy and love.
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