I like to fork myself

She was beautiful and fun in a feisty and rebellious way, she was intelligent and sadly she was also lost.
Daul Kim was a young model from Seoul, South Korea who made it into the big time. At such a young age, her looks, her grace, her personality and her charisma took her into the pages of Vogue magazine which in its turn propelled her onto the global stage and so stunning she looked in magazines by the thousands and so elegant she walked upon the cat-walks of Paris and Milan, yet so lost was she.
Did it all come to soon?
Where were those to pick her up as she fell?
Last Thursday morning, Daul was found dead in her apartment in Paris and the world that was so open to her, so ready to give her anything and everything, was shocked and saddened to hear that she had thrown it all away. She was found hanged in her own apartment and the investigators say it was suicide.

"I like to fork myself" is no disrespect to her or any play on words on my part, it was the name of her blog, one painted picture of Daul herself with a fork stuck into her head was perhaps self imagery themed from her blog title and I'm pretty sure that some of us could imagine a little innuendo behind the title too. Her blog, http://iliketoforkmyself.blogspot.com/ has since been closed to the public probably from respect. The press once asked if this 'fork' symbolism meant that she wanted to do herself harm to which she always shook her head in the negative. Her blog was strangely worded at times with a play on words like some people are want to do. Being a word player myself, I sometimes tried to decipher her. She wrote of her guinea pigs and tried her hand at poetry and she often referred to herself as 'Daulmonster', a name I suspect being a play on the word 'Dual' and she wrote very much in extremes of love and hate (hi and bye) in ways that I myself used to write. I called myself the black queen and the white queen as opposite sides of myself. How easy it was to identify with her. Her fork as I imagined it would have the handle representing a thought or a graspable concept and the tines could represent the many subsequent points of view springing forth from the one single concept. An alternate symbolism if you like compared to the simple one that the journalists presented her with, who merely saw it as a weapon of harm but at least in my imagination it is a much more positive one.

Since her blog is now closed I can only lift the next few sentences from an online source:

It is accompanied by photos of paintings by Kim, one showing her with a fork in her head, but she wrote: "I'm definitely not depressed, and I don't want to kill myself I don't want to die."
In other posts, however, Kim, who sometimes called herself Daulmonster revealed a troubled personal life and profound mood swings; she frequently wrote about being depressed, admitted she suffered from insomnia, was often lonely and tired from overwork.
One of her first posts in April 2007, states: "My life as dual was so miserable and lonely. Please join my loneliness in another world. I love you all'. Sometime later she has added: 'KIDDING. I'm fine. Just tired.'
In her writing Kim revealed that she had left school with she was around 15 years old, and spent her days hanging out in the apartment of a neighbor who was a famous artist. She also told how she would sleep when depressed, and once stayed in bed for three days. In July she blamed a food allergy for her mood swings. "Why me?" she asked. "I never eat so much junk food, I don't drink like an alcoholic, I don't do drugs, I don't party I'm so quiet and I don't starve myself "
But often, just hours or days after writing that she was feeling down, her spirits would appear to have rebounded.
Much has been made of the fact that the last post on her blog was entitled 'hi to forever'. But most of the posts, dating back to April 2007 are entitled 'hi to ' something. Her last post early on Wednesday morning is accompanied by a You Tube clip of the house record 'I Go Deep' by British DJ artist Jim River.
Friends say the constant traveling that she had done since a teenager and the pressures of the fashion industry were beginning to take their toll. She had already announced she wanted to move into painting and video film-making.

One friend said she had become fed up with modeling and its demands, considering her life was too frenetic and incompatible with forming the sort of long-term relationship she hankered for.

In hindsight we can perhaps have seen ominous portents written in-between the lines and perhaps a cry, or more likely a quietly whimpered plea for help. All she wanted was some reason to go on and enjoy all she had, some perspective to make her life seem valuable once more to a clouded mind. Too late the deed is done and we chastise ourselves with so many "what if's"!

We may sit with our morning newspapers and hot tea and imagine to ourselves that there is no rationalization to suicide, the 'contemplation of' or indeed the act. Especially when as outsiders we look upon this beautiful girl and say "She had so much to live for." I'm not going say that suicide is irrational because there are times when I believe it is and I certainly do not know all the details of this wonderful person's life enough to make a judgment call.
Yes I believe that there are times when suicide can be rational however I will also say that most people who contemplate suicide are perhaps not in a rational frame of mind. I think, with the limited information I have, that this girl was clearly depressed and it seemed apparent from her writings that she suffered intense mood swings and she felt at such a loss. I know for a fact that depressed people believe all hope has gone and they cannot escape from whatever predicament they believe themselves to be constrained within. The modeling business is a high pressure business and when reaching for international success, the pressure and demands are tremendous and as for the many people around her kept pushing her forever forward, there should also have been a voice of cool calm reason, a voice that could reassure her and tell her when she'd had too much and its time to let the batteries recharge. Where was that voice for her, I wonder?
It's so easy to say you're fine rather than explain the reasons you aren't!

Notice the two contributors of this blog!

I am so sorry Ms Kim that you felt no other hand to hold as yours reached out in your moment of greatest need!