It is a clear, crisp October afternoon in 1994. The shadows are long and I cycle home from Uni’ through the park. I am in a positive mood – I have just had a good tutorial and feel that I might be on to something with my work. Also, it is the first time I tell a member of staff that my dad is receiving ECT (electroconvulsive therapy also known as electroshock therapy). My tutor is great – understanding and sympathetic, if a little shocked (excuse the pun).
I push my bike up to the front door, the sun on my back, walk into the house and my world falls though the floor.
How to describe the * of the suicide of a parent (or brother, or sister, or mother, son or daughter I imagine) to someone who has not experienced it? There are no words, I think partly because suicide is not spoken of. Suicide robs us - of the words, of a person, of an explanation. There is no fault, no blame, no enemy but the person who has gone. After 12 years, I still skirt around the issue. I can now, at least, say “my father died x years ago”. This will be when I am confident that there is a way of diverting the conversation away from the cause – though actually, people rarely ask, already too embarrassed by the admission of death. Very occasionally I will lie – he had a heart-attack - which is close, in a way. If I were to meet someone whose father shot himself, would I want to know? I wonder how many others I have spoken to who have lost someone to suicide and neither of us have known?
So, this blog is for myself, to get it off my chest as and when. And just as much, it is meant for the I-don't-know-how-many-others who have lost someone to suicide. I don't know where it will go or if it will mean much to anyone else. But I hope it may help someone else who is going though what I've been though feel slightly less alone or slightly less crazy...
3 comments:
I also have a suicide in my family - my daughter but didn't find out till years later (bitter divorce between me and her mother). I've told my long story at Philosophy and Confession here at blogspot. It has caused me to do the same as you - get my feelings out in the open through blogging. No one should have to go through this sort of thing.
i feel fairly close to killing myself, but i started a blog in the wee hours last night...i was about to say "in the hope of talking myself out of it," but i'm not sure in what hope. at least in the hope of finding some community.
i have a daughter. i don't want to put her through what you have gone through. so i want to say thank you, and let you know that what you wrote and so bravely shared is helping me, maybe, i hope, to come back to accepting myself and being the loving dad that both she and i so enjoy my being.
i'm not too religious but i do believe there's more to life than the obvious and material plane, so i'll say god bless you. and again, thank you.
people who have the "curse" of a mind that turns to suicide have to speak. shame about the fact that we think this way, or fear doing what our parents may have done (my mother)colours our lives. Thank you for writing/blogging and speaking. It's hard. I'm only here for my children, but...I don't want to pass on the curse. I want to show them how to overcome. How to keep that moment of gratitude and strong grasp on life the author of this blog wrote about when she was hit by the truck. Once, when I felt suicidal for a long time, I went an d got lost in the woods. All thoughts of suicide were replaced by the need to get myself out of the situation - to get warm. so, I learned that for me, suicide is about wanting to control how I feel. I don't want to feel bad, I don't want to want the world to be different than it is, I don't want any more pain, and I don't want to hurt others with my depression - passing it along like a virus. I want control over those things and suicide is simply the simplest, most definative thing I can come up with. When my life is at risk, all I want to do is fight for it - simply for the joy of living. It's the mundane "never enoughness" of me, of life that brings the black thoughts...essentially: self centeredness. We just have to keep talking ourselves and others out of it. In any event, keep talking.
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