What it feels like to lose your ___ to suicide.
It feels like being at the epicenter of an explosion, emotionally. The moment of detonation is deafening. The force feels like itâs ripping you apart, the most pain youâve ever felt. Youâre in abject shock. Youâre obliterated.
Once the initial numbness has worn off, thoughts race through the survivorsâs minds. What if I had done something differently, what if I missed obvious signs, what if I did something to make it worse, what if, what if, what if? The hypotheticals of suicide are relentless, constant. But ultimately the hypotheticals are useless: the bomb has already exploded. There is nothing left to fix.
If you find yourself at the epicenter of suicide, you likely needed your deceased ___. You likely shared genetics or companionship, experiences or trauma, rib-breaking belly laughs or tearfully swollen eyelids. In life, you leaned on each otherâs shoulders. In death, the weight of an entire person is transferred to your back. Violently overpowering you, threatening to crush you to death.
If you were well before this, youâll become sick. If you were sick before this, youâll become sicker. Your physical body, your routines, your consciousness, your future plans, your previously held beliefs, your desperate hopes and dreams will tailspin.
Your life will become full of confounding paradoxes. Talking about it hurts, but not talking about it also hurts. You think you couldâve saved them, but you think nothing couldâve saved them. You ceaselessly love them, but you ceaselessly hate them for having done this. You know they could have fought harder, yet you know they couldnât fight anymore.
People will ask how they died. You wonât know what to say. Youâll consider saying their terminal illness was cancer instead. Youâll wonder if people who say âsorry for your lossâ really want to say âyour loved one was a selfish cowardâ. Youâll wonder if people are judging the sum of your incredible ___âs life solely by the way it ended.
There are texts, hundreds of conversations that scroll infinitely upward: each one, at the time, so innocuously sent. You can get lost in rereading them. You read and reread shared memes, silly comments, deep conversations, snapped photos, and the unremarkable âyou left your phone charger hereâ statements. If you read them for long enough, youâll perhaps forget for just a moment that you live in a world without them. Inevitably, the crash back to earth breaks your bones as loudly as the day it happened.
Life begins to move on. There are two different responses to this passage of time, but you might experience a mix of both. Option A: You become angry that the sun still rises and the birds still chirp. Youâll be enraged that the world turns as if nothing happened, and long for time to stand still so that memories stay fresh. Option B: you bury yourself within the comfort of schedule. Youâll numb yourself with the ticking of the clock, compartmentalize the pain and long to fast-forward to the part where it doesnât hurt.
No matter the response, time continues its predictable march forward. You realize just how irreplaceable the relationship was. First birthdays, first holidays, first traditions without them debilitate you. Youâll need to navigate around the crater they left.
Though your topology has changed forever, youâll begin to grow used to its altered terrain. Warning: youâll fight the familiarity with viciousness. Acceptance feels like agreeing with the lies of suicidal ideation. âSee, you really ARE better off without me.â âI really WAS a burden.â âMy loved ones will feel sad for a while, but eventually theyâll get over it.â
Youâll want to prove the lies wrong. âYou were NEVER a burden. See how much pain youâve left in your wake? Itâs because I loved you SO incredibly much!â But fighting the acceptance leads to more agony. More guilt, more shame that you couldâve done more: what if, what if, what if? You cycle through the stages of grief once more and nothing ever feels like progress.
The truth is: suicide is an exhaustion of coping resources. Your beautiful ___ had to make the choice to do this, but they felt deep within their souls that they were out of choices. This wasnât your incredible ___âs fault. Their disease killed them.
When your ____ commits suicide, your history is divided into two pieces: your life before and your life after. As for myself, Iâm still navigating the after. These are just a few things Iâve learned, and I have a feeling the learning is never over.
If youâre still within the thick of the epicenter, know that the pain lessens over time. Time, introspection, asking for help, and not suppressing feelings are your road map out of this.
When your ___ commits suicide, the old adage becomes so immeasurably true: âIf love couldâve saved them, they wouldâve lived forever.â