Serious Issue, need advice/ opinions.

slipss

If this should be in another forum please move it.
OK so hears the story. I was working in a house today, doing a few repairs and things for a landlord. The tenants had moved out recently and he wanted the place done up so he could show it to new tenants. I fixed a couple of leaky radiators, and replaced a cracked window and broken bathroom tiles, and painted the walls.

Well anyway there was furniture left in the place and I had to move it out of the way to get at the walls. When I was moving the bed in one of the rooms I flipped it onto it's side so there would be more room to walk around. When I did a diary fell out from under the matress. Now I know reading someone elses diary is a fukking scummy thing to do and I do regret it but curiosity got the better of me and I started to glance at a few pages at random. I got sucked in and started to read it properly.

It was written by a teenage girl as far as I could work out, it started when she was about 12 or 13 and finnished when she was about 16 or 17 I think, but there were only about 25 pages of writting, they were dated from 2002 to early this year. At first it was just the kinds of stuff you'd expect a teenage girl to write about, buys she fancied and how she was doing in school ect, she was foreign but had very good english. Anyway towards the end, the entries from late 2004 onwards she started saying she was feeling very depressed, and writteng very negative things about how she thought she was a complete dissapointment to her family because she wasn't keeping up her own culture and was becoming too Irish. She also said she was really upset about not being as pretty as other girls and not having a boyfriend. It got more and more depresing abd she started to say she wished that god would just take here life, and things like that. I felt really disgusted with myself for reading all this but I couldn't put it down.

Anyways after I read the last few entries I noticed an envelope in the middle of it, it wasn't sealed but it said "not to be opened untill needed" on it. So I took out the letter and read it, again I know I shouldn't have done this. Usually it takes something really major to even phase me but when I started reading it, it really sent a shiver down my spine. basically it was a suicide note. She had messages to her family and friends appologising to them and telling them not to be sad and that she loved them, it went on for 5 A4 pages
and on the last page she wrote "I'm going to leave this under my matress so you will find it when I'm gone" obviously no one did. It was dated early this year.

Now I amn't sure if she really did commit suicide, maybe she wrote it on a really bad day and never really ment that she was really going to do it. I really really hope thats the case. The thing is I don't know what I'm supposed
to do now. I took the letter with me because people were coming in this evening to clear out the rubbish and I couldn't just leave it there to end up in the rubbish. I spoke to the landlord and asked him why the people moved. He said he didn't know, that they just told him one day that they were going to go back to thier home country paid up the rent and left a few days later. He didn't know anything about the girl, he only spoke to the family once when they moved in, because they always paid the rent on time so he didn't need to. I think he has a frowarding address incase any important letters come to the house.

I really don't know what to do, I could try to get the forwarding address and get in contact with the family but I don't know If I should. I mean, what if she did just write it when she was really depressed but never went through with it? Would she really want her family knowing about it. Worse still, what if she did do it, would telling her family about the letter or sending it to them just cause them more pain? I mean thses could be the last words this poor girl ever wanted to communicate, do I have some kind of obligation to pass them on to the people she wanted to hear them? And what if it turns out the landlord deosn't have a forwarding address or a way to contact them, am I supposed to just throw it away, when I was reading the diary I really liked the girl, and I felt so sorry for her as the entries went from really happy and upbeat and started getting more and more sad..

Please I really want to hear any advice or opinions from people on this,

ChityWest

If thats for real go to the police.

MrJoeSoap

Jeez man thats a shocking situation to find yourself in. I wouldn't worry too much about having read the diary anyway, I'm sure most people would have.

As for what to do, I suppose getting a forwarding address mightn't be too bad an idea. Maybe ask a few neighbours about the family and what happened etc?

Best of luck with it anyway.

Donegal Lass

think that if you do eventually find out that its true, the family may be upset at first, but if it was me, id be so grateful in the end up that it ended up in our possesion and that someone actually gave enough of a **** to go and seek us out!

do some more research on the matter and youl kno what to do when you have more info available to you!!

good luck and dnt worry bout the diary- thats the last thing they'l care about if they get the letters!

X-SL

reading the diary was only natrual but that sure is a sticky situation. I think you should try get it to the family.. it's her last words and all. The police might be a good option

Degsy

How many years on 25 sheets of paper?Not much of a diary.Kids are allways talking about suicide.

Cormic

I agree with the other MrJoeSoap. It might be a good idea to ask the neighbours or even the landlord.

Keep us up to date with what happens.

Donegal Lass

Degsy
thats a bit harsh............ things like that happen when people just shrug and say that they're not goin to go through with it! never know!

nesf

Moved to PI. I shudder to think of the advice that could be given on AH.


*mutters about the lack of a smiley for fear*

bandraoi

Teenage girl whines in diary, is depressed and angry at the whole wide world, parents disappointed in her, parents don't understand her.

It's teenage drama.
I suspect that if I went back and read my own diary from around then it would have lots of similiar melancholic self pitying crap.
In fact I suspect at least 50% of female posters would have the same result.

Wouldn't worry about it.

iFight

X-SL wrote:

reading the diary was only natrual but that sure is a sticky situation. I think you should try get it to the family.. it's her last words and all. The police might be a good option

Yup, police Id say, wouldnt want to give her family her suicide note, they may not even know where she is(if sse ranaway etc). Leave it to the police

le-dub

I'm not sure what i would do, its a bit of a tough one. I think though you should ask the landlord for the address and forward everything on with her name attached to it. The end of the day if she has gone home, then more then likley she will get it and prob thank you for it, but if she has done what she says then maybe it would be best in there hands and not the bin. You said she seemed happy at one stage...i dont know to be honest.

kc66

Get the forward address and post it to the girl herself. If shes still alive she will open it and she can do what she wants with it. If not the parents will open it... probably.

simu

Meh, I'd let sleeping dogs lie. If she did kill herself, she would have found a way to leave notes if she wanted to. If she's alive, it could well have been teenage drama in the diary and she might be embarassed that somebody else had read it. As for the cry for help possibility, I don't think she would respond well to a total stranger coming and telling their family they were having suicidal thoughts.

Faith

bandraoi wrote:

Teenage girl whines in diary, is depressed and angry at the whole wide world, parents disappointed in her, parents don't understand her.

It's teenage drama.
I suspect that if I went back and read my own diary from around then it would have lots of similiar melancholic self pitying crap.
In fact I suspect at least 50% of female posters would have the same result.

This is true. My own past diaries embarrass the crap out of me. I've no doubt I wrote things in there about wanting to commit suicide in moments of serious self-pity, amongst other nonsense that was just private rambling.

I think you should talk to neighbours etc and ask them do they know what happened. One of them might know if the girl lived or died, and whether she moved back with them. If she's still alive, maybe you could get a name and contact address and post it back to her. If she died... well, that's up to you.

Don't worry about reading the diary, anyone would have done the same.

Rantorama

Like others have said post it on to the girl herself... what's the worst that can happen, she opens it reads it, throws it away.

Teenage girls can be a bit moody/dramaqueen , but I don't remember myself or any of my friends writing a suicide note that was 5 A4 pages long.

lost_for_words

If she were still alive would she not have taken the diary with her? or at least gotten rid of the diary so that a random stranger wouldnt find it.

Even for the sake of your own curiosity I would ask around the neighbours and see what the know about the family, if there was a suicide they will surely know about it.

LegacyUser

i wrote all kinds of crap when i was younger - poems, pages and pages about my feelings about things and people, and i dabbled in suicide notes for a while too.

but i'm still here today.

i hung on to some of the stuff i wrote for a while, thinking that maybe i'd find it interesting in years to come, but it really isn't. it interesting for other people, but for yourself its embarrasing. so i burned/destroyed everything. but thats not as easy as it seems, if u live in a house without a fire place and you have to figure out a way to destroy a whole book of embarrasing writing...

the same thing could've happened to this girl. she wrote the stuff, kept it because she didnt want to throw it away yet, and then wanted to disown it, so she left it behind in a forigne country, where somene might read it, and in years to come it might become this famous anonymous dairy of a beautiful young girls coming of age and her dramatic and inevitable destruction... you know?

on the other hand, maybe she did kill herself, and that is why they left. i dont know if someone i loved killed themselves if i'd want to read their diary. i imagine that she would have left a proper note easily found if she did. unless she was thinking like "oh the whole world will be so distraught by my passing that they will search every corner of my room for clues as to how and why..."

its just teenagers. if the neighbours say she killed herself, then you've got a problem. but if they just moved, then you've just got a diary of teenage angst that the author probably never wants to see again.

Dors1976

i agree with kc66 post it back and hope for the best.

LegacyUser

Hand it in to the garda, if there was a suicide it could close the investigation for them and give the family some sort of reasoning behind what she did. If there was no suicide there's no problem.

-Funk

Was there any sort of name given anywhere?

One possible thing is to try and find a list of deaths within a given time-frame matching that name. They should be kept on record somewhere as far as I can tell?

You have a timeframe to work with somewhat- from when the last page was written, to possibly when they moved out. Its a possible way to find out whether ot not she did commit suicide. Now, thats only if she did do it here, if at all.

joebhoy1916

I'm sure its nothing young people write that kinda stuff the whole time.

But if you are worried why not do a search on the net for the local paper have a look for anything about a suicide.

LegacyUser

joebhoy1916 wrote:

I'm sure its nothing young people write that kinda stuff the whole time.

But if you are worried why not do a search on the net for the local paper have a look for anything about a suicide.

the media doesn't actually report cases of suicide so as not to glorify it. i don't know about obituaries, but i imagine its the same.

ST*

Hand the diary and the letter over to the police. Advise them who the landlord is. If he has contact information for them, they in turn will get in touch with her parents and ask of her whereabouts. I would imagine that they would be professional about it, and won't worry them unnecessarily.

It's a tough situation to find yourself in, but handing over the diary and letter is the right thing to do, and that way you won't be involved any further in the matter.

Funkstard

Can you search for obituaries on ireland.com? If so you can PM me the name...if she even said her name anywhere and I could search for it.

But surely she would have taken the diary with her when she was moving house? Has no one thought of that?


EDIT: There is an archive of obituaries on ireland.com.

DublinWriter

Slipss - I wouldn't sweat too much about this one. It's a common thing for teens to write stuff like that into their diaries.

If I was you, I'd post the diary onto the forwarding address, addressed to her parents.

Fair play to you for caring.

Kooli

I wouldn't post it to the parents. What if she did kill herself? Do you really think it would help the parents to read a diary saying she felt she had let them down? That would be the WORST thing you could do. Basically saying to them 'this was your fault'.

And I don't think a 5 page suicide note is a normal-teenage-girl thing to do. It doesn't mean she definitely did it, but it's pretty serious, and it doesn't help to be dismissive about these things.

LegacyUser

well thanks to anyone that awnsered, it turns out the landlord deosn't have a forwarding address. I do know the girls full name for the people that asked, and the first name of 6 of her friends and class mates, I also know her brothers full name, I googled and bebod them all but didn't get any hits, I think maybe I'll just hand it into the garda, or better yet post it anomynously to them as there just looking for a reason to start raiding my house again, although I reckon that unless the name flashes up on the murder squads files straight away they'll just bin it, to avoid having to do any actuall work, but any ways thanks for the advice, its appreciated.

galah

sorry, but the guards are absolutely useless when it comes to suicide (personal experience - had a very real, written, suicide threat from a (now former) friend of mine, went to the guards, and they did not do anything. Nothing. They did not even know how to react or deal with the problem. And they played "not our responsibility, try other garda station" ping pong with me for a couple of hours...until I gave up. That ex-friend is still alive (turned out she was a complete psycho using suicide threads to blackmail me, but that is a completely different story) - but it could have turned nasty, and she could have been dead, with noone to find out until it was too late.

If you can, find out where the family lives now, and post it to the girl, otherwise, I guess there is nothing much you can do - but it's good to know that people care!

Velvet Vocals

wouldn't the landlord know if the daughter had died? He sure would be the best place to start anyway. I think you should tell him what you found and he might then take your requst for forwarding address more seriously.