I don't know a lot about Ellie's story outside the tank as I don't religiously follow the thread during off-season. But it seems the only avenue for real support this girl had was her sister and she failed her, right along with her parents.
She likely knows most if not all of the bullshit that Ellie experienced growing up. A girl her age trying to parse that trauma would have struggled. She knew Ellie had been suicidal since she was young, she knew Ellie had what was clearly chronic depressed but states there was no mental illness diagnosed. Are you fucking serious? Do you need a doctor to tell you your sister is having a hard enough time that you need to do something about it instead of popping out more kids?
And what did the sister do with this information, likely having lived through some of this bullshit herself at a younger age? Nothing. Or at the very least not enough.
She knew Ellie enjoyed physical affection and her sister, probably due to trauma of her own, could not afford that to Ellie. No compromise, no hand holding at minimum, no alternative ways in which to shower this girl with the affection she was clearly in desperate need of. Because she was a goddamned child who lacked loving parents and a solid home.
The sister told her to do the dishes at 10pm and didn't check in to say goodnight, likely swamped with having to care for three children of her own. Even still, she took on the responsibility of caring for Ellie. Perhaps I'm expecting too much from a guardian who allowed a 19 year old girl to appear on Fish Tank and didn't once pull a 'family emergency' call to get her out.
Ellie was the first one to suggest medical intervention. She was looking for a diagnosis and I honestly believe she probably wanted the label as a safety net more than the medication. "You're not crazy, you're not imagining things, you do have problems and there is a way to fix them. It's not just endless noise in your mind, it's not that you're weird and broken for no reason. There is a path to getting over this pain, there is a way to get through this." She wanted reassurance that acknowledged her pain, her trauma, her suffering. Probably because she felt she could not do that with her sister: she took Ellie in, she likely saw herself as a burden, she probably knew her sister had pain she carried as well. And what do some children do in that situation? They tuck their own pain under the bed and smile big and bright for the adults and say everything's fine, don't worry about me!
SSRIs are topical here, I know, but a psychiatrist's job is diagnosis and prescription. They are not therapists or psychologists. You get in, explain your symptoms, get your prescription, and get out. If she could clearly explain her mental problems, it would be easy to tell what she needed. While I do not champion SSRIs, what their purpose should be is to try and help clear some of the noise in one's mind so that the patient has the ability to function on a base level from day to day. It should be a tool, not a crutch. This is to allow them to course correct and find stability that can then allow them to be weened off the medication. The bad thoughts remain, yes, because this is literally how the patient feels regardless. It's just not heightened to a crescendo every second of the day.
If she felt 'numb' and 'indifferent', a trip should have been taken to the psychiatrist to lessen her dosage or even take her off the medication entirely. Steps should have been taken to address the core of the issues, not just bandage them up and leave it all to fester beneath the surface. The goal shouldn't be hollowing out a person of their emotions, it's to quiet the storm enough to allow one the ability to focus on other thoughts, other feelings, to give some leeway so the patient can gradually take back their life.
How scared are you really if hearing a 18-19 year old girl say she feels horrific but at least she doesn't cry doesn't immediately send you into 'what the fuck, let's sort this shit out' mode? If after roughly a year things have not gotten better, why was there no push to change? The situation at home likely did not change, her relationships did not change, nothing shifted. She was thrown right back into the thick of things with a pack of pills and told to deal with it on her own, again.
"She left me nothing. [...] I think that hurts most of all." Considering recent discussion, it's possible this wasn't even intentional and Ellie was trying a test run. But fuck you. A lot of grief and mourns centres around the self, yes, but how can the fact that your sister didn't say bye or console you on her suicide bed hurt more than the fact she was fucking gone?
There was a post earlier stating that Ellie was an adult that made an adult decision. She was 19. A broken, lost 19 year old girl. She did not know better and she felt like there would never be better. No one helped her see that there was more to life than the ache she felt inside her, the same ache she had been carrying for all of her life. No one truly helped her.
So many figures failed her. So many. I'm not here to gunt guard Jet; if he fucked her he absolutely added to the pile of shit she was suffering through, but he was one of the last adults in this conga-line and even falling into his clutches was a failure of the adults that were in her life before him. Going onto Fishtank itself probably didn't help either, though I can see how she may have found some happiness over getting to be on the show itself.
This shit is bigger than Jet. Her life and her struggles were more than just her stint on Fishtank. It feels sick to reduce all of her suffering to just this show. Her life was more, and should have continued to be more, than just that. Jet does not deserve to be deified in her story.
While I'm sorry for the sister's loss I truly do believe she's doing her sister a continued disservice in death to openly and repeatedly claim no one is to blame for this. But this is often the case with suicides that occur when the victim is this young; those tasked with caring for them cannot or refuse to see their hand in things. If anyone does eventually get blamed, it's the doctor or the last boyfriend or one of the branches she hit in life. Never the people that watched passively as her seed of trauma grew and grew until it consumed her whole person while they never did anything to dig it out.
