Member-only story
The answers we want after a suicide
Trigger Warning: Suicide and suicidal ideation
I’ve never triggered warned anything I’ve written before, and I’ve written about infidelity, self-harm, drug and alcohol abuse, emotional abuse, and suicide.
Today, I am. Today, I’m writing in the aftermath of my friend’s suicide. Like everyone around me, I am hurting, and I suppose that will lead some to say my friend was selfish and didn’t consider the feelings of those who loved her.
My friend was not selfish.
She didn’t know how to tell her brain to fuck off when it lied and said she’d never feel better. Yes, there are hotlines and therapists, and she had concerned friends and family. But none of it mattered.
I know this first hand.
On three separate occasions, I have attempted suicide. Obviously, I was not successful because as my dear friend once joked — when it felt okay to do so — I’m terrible at suicide. After each attempt, my husband begged me to tell him why. Why did I want to die? Why would I want to hurt my family or children? Why couldn’t I see how much people loved me?
Here’s my truth: people in pain don’t want to die, they just want to not be.
The pain I felt during this time went so deep that my physical body actually hurt. My brain lied and said I was a burden to those who loved me and that I could never be happy again. I believed the only way to end my suffering and the suffering I had forced onto other was for me to leave this world.
But I suck at suicide, so I’m here today, trying to explain something that is, to be honest, unexplainable to anyone who has never hurt in the way depression or mental illness makes you hurt.
Why? Why? Why?
In the aftermath of suicide, our brains need to make sense of what seems senseless. Everyone — those who were close to the deceased and those who knew them tangentially — wonders if things could have been different. Could they themselves have done something? Did those closest to the deceased know something was wrong? Were there signs? Did they call the hotline?
