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Friday 25 March 2011

In a quiet room, raging.

In space, so the movie trailer goes, no one can hear you scream. Yet another year has passed and my sessions with the lady my husband has affectionately nicknamed "La Doctora Melfi" (in tribute to our one-time Soprano's habit) are rapidly coming to an end. I will have to say goodbye to the little beige room and my talking cure. I will have to go it "alone". Being alone with the aftermath of my Dad's suicide seems to be a key theme for me. Which is why it has been so important for me to share a little of it.

Initially I was spurred to write this blog for myself and also for those who also found themselves with no one to talk to in their life as a "suicide survivor" - a term which, I hope, is understood to mean those surviving another's suicide, not those who didn't manage to go through with it. I was hoping that I might be able to reach out and at least take someone's metaphorical hand just to say "you're not alone". Quite simple really. Some of you have been kind enough to contact me to say that my words have helped you in some way.

However, I've found it hard to 'blog on suicide'. It takes too much effort and courage to dig into the raw shit of it and to try to represent the experience on a regular basis. I find I have occasional epiphanies which I want to share but on a day to day basis I think that my blogs would be something like "saw some daffodils and remembered planting them with Dad" or "getting the freezing, crushing feeling AGAIN". Pretty dull and/or depressing reading, really.

So, going back to screaming in space, or rather, raging and ranting in quiet rooms; the room was mainly my head and the screaming was almost entirely silent. I still battle with the inner/outer selves who seem to be so often at odds with one another. The image that comes to mind is as if Pandora's box were made by Apple (the iPan?) - trying to keep the smoothest, whitest, most perfect of surfaces, utterly concealing the twisting, roiling inner horrors. Except now I don't feel that the inner stuff is quite so horrific and I also realise that being a looking glass has it's drawbacks. And whilst I probably haven't let myself go enough to totally rage and rant in the presence of another, in our real quiet room I have cried me a river or two.

I find it such a wonderful revelation to watch my young daughter and see her inner life written so plainly across her face, the total transparency is a joy - like a clear yet incredibly deep well. I can't see to the bottom of it but I feel that it is crystal and pure and good, even the temper tantrums and the crying. Having grown up around someone so closed, so unknowable, not to mention critical and occasionally volatile, I learned to keep myself to myself quite early on, to present a mask and to shrink away from my own sides so as not to be discovered and invaded. But although that was a good way to get through back then as a kid in a an unhappy family, it's not so good for me now that I'm a woman with a family of my own. Applying my keep-a-lid-on-it tactics to the suicide was the final fatal blow.

So the lid-lifting is to continue in another form - photography, art, installations... I'm not quite sure yet but it's coming and there's not much anyone (even I) can do about it.

You are not alone.

If you have lost a loved one to suicide, this may help you to realise that you are not alone. 
There are others out there who have been bereaved in this way. 
These are bits a pieces of my own experiences. 
I hope they may help in some way.