I'm not scared of It anymore.
It is not a mythical beast sent to conquer.
Don't get too close. It might be the end of you.
You are too close to It's risk. A sad statistic.
You are just like them. It will snatch you soon. He whispers this our one last time.
His familiar heaviness makes It real. The forbidden rhythm numbs the pain.
The only tears I cry are as his life drips with sticky shame.
Just like that. They are gone. It pulled them under. Freshly gone; we are left.
Like daggers he speaks. I have you all. To myself. Just like we always wanted.
Together; until It soils you too.
How might you do It?
Different than they.
Take my belt. And when you do It. Feel my final hands remove the life that only I could give.
I still have the belt. Well worn. A staple of my life.
The gatekeeper of his piercing.
The weapon fashioned making skin so raw.
Crammed away I hear It taunt. It teases with It's destiny.
I remain after him but his hold lives on in leather form.
Too afraid to touch It. His belt is my own It. The last connection.
My pieces. Myself. We beg to throw It away.
That belt. It. His final grip.
I can only hope that courage wins to turn It over. To will It gone. Forever.
Until It is just a distant, formless it.
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Questions
Is this the last time you are going to feel like this?
Do you think you will feel better by the weekend?
Holy fuck.
How do I answer those kinds of questions?
I keep telling myself that this is hard on him. I know it is.
I know it is. Because I've lived in a house with a ranting suicidal maniac. But I'm not like that.
I'm just quiet. Writing here these past few days is the most I have ever talked about feeling this bad. But I have yet to scream and yell; throw things or make threats.
At my mother's worst, she showed up on the door step of my apartment and slit her wrists. She lived that time but it was fucked up to say the least. It also made suicide real to me.
A person. Distress. Blade. Blood. Tears. Anguish. In a way it began to desensitize me.
My sister. I saw that through to completion. It's hard to look at someone so beautiful with half their skull gone to relieve pressure without euthanizing a piece of your soul.
Yesterday I went to the apartment where my mother slit her wrists. I went to the door step without knowing what I was supposed to be looking for. I stared for a minute and then I left.
I then drove to my sister's old townhouse. Where she ended her own life. I looked out the window of my car searching for a hint of lingering. I didn't see her. The porch had pretty pots full of pansies. Someone who lives there is happy enough to care about flowers. I pretended the flowers were for my sister instead.
I stopped short of going by my parent's house where my mother ultimately succeeded. That was probably a good idea. Lots of other bad things happened there too.
It is probably morbid to do these things. I'm probably not supposed to even think about them. And I bet writing this in black and white is even worse. But I wanted to see what it felt like. As if they had a disease that was catching. And I want to know what makes me immune.
So to answer his first question; is this the last time I'm going to feel like this?
Yes, has a certain finality to it. And probably not the answer he really wants even if he doesn't realize it.
No. Well, I don't want this to be the answer because I hate feeling like this.
I don't know is really the only answer I can give.
I try to do the right things; I go to therapy, I see a shrink, I take my meds {mostly}, I write, and I would like to think that I am getting better at actually verbalizing what is in my head.
So I don't know if all the right things add up to erasing suicidal thoughts forever. My other thought is that I think far more people think about suicide than will admit to considering it as an out. It's taboo right along with admitting to struggling with a mental illness. But I can't be the only one.
I sincerely hope to push past this. It's an exhausting way to live. I just said that word again... hope.
And to answer his second question, sure. Which falls under the category of if you ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer.
I keep telling myself that this is hard for him.
Do you think you will feel better by the weekend?
Holy fuck.
How do I answer those kinds of questions?
I keep telling myself that this is hard on him. I know it is.
I know it is. Because I've lived in a house with a ranting suicidal maniac. But I'm not like that.
I'm just quiet. Writing here these past few days is the most I have ever talked about feeling this bad. But I have yet to scream and yell; throw things or make threats.
At my mother's worst, she showed up on the door step of my apartment and slit her wrists. She lived that time but it was fucked up to say the least. It also made suicide real to me.
A person. Distress. Blade. Blood. Tears. Anguish. In a way it began to desensitize me.
My sister. I saw that through to completion. It's hard to look at someone so beautiful with half their skull gone to relieve pressure without euthanizing a piece of your soul.
Yesterday I went to the apartment where my mother slit her wrists. I went to the door step without knowing what I was supposed to be looking for. I stared for a minute and then I left.
I then drove to my sister's old townhouse. Where she ended her own life. I looked out the window of my car searching for a hint of lingering. I didn't see her. The porch had pretty pots full of pansies. Someone who lives there is happy enough to care about flowers. I pretended the flowers were for my sister instead.
I stopped short of going by my parent's house where my mother ultimately succeeded. That was probably a good idea. Lots of other bad things happened there too.
It is probably morbid to do these things. I'm probably not supposed to even think about them. And I bet writing this in black and white is even worse. But I wanted to see what it felt like. As if they had a disease that was catching. And I want to know what makes me immune.
So to answer his first question; is this the last time I'm going to feel like this?
Yes, has a certain finality to it. And probably not the answer he really wants even if he doesn't realize it.
No. Well, I don't want this to be the answer because I hate feeling like this.
I don't know is really the only answer I can give.
I try to do the right things; I go to therapy, I see a shrink, I take my meds {mostly}, I write, and I would like to think that I am getting better at actually verbalizing what is in my head.
So I don't know if all the right things add up to erasing suicidal thoughts forever. My other thought is that I think far more people think about suicide than will admit to considering it as an out. It's taboo right along with admitting to struggling with a mental illness. But I can't be the only one.
I sincerely hope to push past this. It's an exhausting way to live. I just said that word again... hope.
And to answer his second question, sure. Which falls under the category of if you ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer.
I keep telling myself that this is hard for him.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Air
I think about suicide every day.
That's what I told my husband last night. It's probably not the best way to qualify how I'm feeling right now but I needed him to understand that these struggles and thoughts are not out of the blue.
He did a stint in a mental hospital 10 years ago because he hit a bottom and had a plan and the materials to carry it out. He called his mother and off he went to the hospital. He stayed there 7 days, got on meds, had some therapy and straightened his thinking out. He did outpatient therapy for three months afterwards and discontinued his meds 6 months after that. And then he was all better.
So that's where he is coming from and he doesn't understand how I can feel like this all of a sudden when I'm on medication and already in therapy. I tried explaining things to him and he still didn't get it.
Finally I was over trying to make him feel better because I hardly think this is the best time to have to explain my feelings. They just are and they suck. So that's when I blurted out what I think about every day. He was shocked. So I described it like this:
His depression was like a brown paper bag. Sure, it gets a little dark sitting at the bottom of the bag but it's not stifling to exist in there either. He eventually wanted a way out and he figured it out with some help. He got out and the bag left in the wind.
My depression on a good day is like living in a straight jacket. I might be tied up but I can still walk and function in a limited way. And because I've lived like this for so long, I've grown accustomed to it and I can even free a hand or an arm on a good day. No, it's not pleasant to live like this so yes, I have thoughts of what it would be like to be free. That seems pretty normal to me.
But when this hits it is like being thrown in a trunk and buried. Still with the straight jacket on. It's dark. I can't move and the air begins to wane. I twist and fight but then I feel panicked and then I really can't breathe. So I get still and almost peaceful. That's where I am right now. That's also when I know that I need help.
That help doesn't include explaining the why's that support my feelings because those got buried along with the fucking trunk. I'm still trapped and need that last bit of air to free myself. Maybe then I can figure all this out.
Because it's a lot easier to breathe in just a straight jacket.
That's what I told my husband last night. It's probably not the best way to qualify how I'm feeling right now but I needed him to understand that these struggles and thoughts are not out of the blue.
He did a stint in a mental hospital 10 years ago because he hit a bottom and had a plan and the materials to carry it out. He called his mother and off he went to the hospital. He stayed there 7 days, got on meds, had some therapy and straightened his thinking out. He did outpatient therapy for three months afterwards and discontinued his meds 6 months after that. And then he was all better.
So that's where he is coming from and he doesn't understand how I can feel like this all of a sudden when I'm on medication and already in therapy. I tried explaining things to him and he still didn't get it.
Finally I was over trying to make him feel better because I hardly think this is the best time to have to explain my feelings. They just are and they suck. So that's when I blurted out what I think about every day. He was shocked. So I described it like this:
His depression was like a brown paper bag. Sure, it gets a little dark sitting at the bottom of the bag but it's not stifling to exist in there either. He eventually wanted a way out and he figured it out with some help. He got out and the bag left in the wind.
My depression on a good day is like living in a straight jacket. I might be tied up but I can still walk and function in a limited way. And because I've lived like this for so long, I've grown accustomed to it and I can even free a hand or an arm on a good day. No, it's not pleasant to live like this so yes, I have thoughts of what it would be like to be free. That seems pretty normal to me.
But when this hits it is like being thrown in a trunk and buried. Still with the straight jacket on. It's dark. I can't move and the air begins to wane. I twist and fight but then I feel panicked and then I really can't breathe. So I get still and almost peaceful. That's where I am right now. That's also when I know that I need help.
That help doesn't include explaining the why's that support my feelings because those got buried along with the fucking trunk. I'm still trapped and need that last bit of air to free myself. Maybe then I can figure all this out.
Because it's a lot easier to breathe in just a straight jacket.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Joke
Hope doesn't always float. Sometimes it drowns you instead. I feel like shit. The fuck-I-woke-up-again kind of shit feeling.
I despise people who throw these kinds of feelings around like they are nothing. I grew up with a mother who threatened to kill herself at least once a week and it sucked. And then my sister actually did. And then my mother did too. And all that really sucked. So I don't write these things without carefully considering how I really feel.
But with all that being said, because I know how bad it hurts to remain on the living end, I feel stuck with no options. And little hope. What if this is all there is for me? This vacillating between flat and the place I'm in now. It hurts almost as deeply as the shit done to me that got me here in the first place.
When I wake up and it's disappointing, I know I'm not on the right track. But when I wake up, take my daughter to school while thinking the whole time how everyone would be better off without me; that's when I know there is no faking my way out of this pit.
This morning I left for work without even drying my hair; I didn't feel safe alone and that scared the shit out of me. All of my typical reasons for not hurting myself were not working and that's when I knew I had to say something.
I called my husband and made the other appropriate phone calls. I promised to be safe. And because I keep my promises I will do just that: be safe.
But what will "safe" cost me? More disappointment... even more pain... devastated hope... an ever deepening loathe of my brokenness? Or the worst; revealing just how weak I really am? I hate this and how unjust it feels. If someone lives through abuse isn't that enough? That is the cruelest joke.
I'm so scared that this is as good as it gets. I can tell myself to keep going. To keep fighting. To hope. But I also have this nagging feeling that the joke is ultimately on me and I suddenly find myself very, very tired. Sometimes all the self pep talks in the world aren't enough to make this spinning descent stop.
Just a huge joke that stupid, miserable people hold on to in an attempt to feel better. What if that's all hope is?
What then?
I despise people who throw these kinds of feelings around like they are nothing. I grew up with a mother who threatened to kill herself at least once a week and it sucked. And then my sister actually did. And then my mother did too. And all that really sucked. So I don't write these things without carefully considering how I really feel.
But with all that being said, because I know how bad it hurts to remain on the living end, I feel stuck with no options. And little hope. What if this is all there is for me? This vacillating between flat and the place I'm in now. It hurts almost as deeply as the shit done to me that got me here in the first place.
When I wake up and it's disappointing, I know I'm not on the right track. But when I wake up, take my daughter to school while thinking the whole time how everyone would be better off without me; that's when I know there is no faking my way out of this pit.
This morning I left for work without even drying my hair; I didn't feel safe alone and that scared the shit out of me. All of my typical reasons for not hurting myself were not working and that's when I knew I had to say something.
I called my husband and made the other appropriate phone calls. I promised to be safe. And because I keep my promises I will do just that: be safe.
But what will "safe" cost me? More disappointment... even more pain... devastated hope... an ever deepening loathe of my brokenness? Or the worst; revealing just how weak I really am? I hate this and how unjust it feels. If someone lives through abuse isn't that enough? That is the cruelest joke.
I'm so scared that this is as good as it gets. I can tell myself to keep going. To keep fighting. To hope. But I also have this nagging feeling that the joke is ultimately on me and I suddenly find myself very, very tired. Sometimes all the self pep talks in the world aren't enough to make this spinning descent stop.
Just a huge joke that stupid, miserable people hold on to in an attempt to feel better. What if that's all hope is?
What then?
Monday, January 9, 2012
Completed
My mothers sister killed herself in November. I spent part of my Thanksgiving week traveling to view and claim her body. Of all the horror I have witnessed; this was one of my more disturbing moments. I went in alone and I still wish that I had not.
She is number three. My sister. My mother. And now her. They are a group of three while I am on the outside looking in.
I wish people would leave my life without forcing themselves, by their own hands, through that narrow tunnel of death. Forced is never easy. For the person dying or the one left behind.
I try not to imagine what their final moments might have been like. I walk that fine edge of looking but then ripping my eyes away. I want to know but at the final moment I turn away because I am not a part of their sacred group.
I wander into another kind of group that is supposed to support people like myself. Those left behind to answer all the questions that never have an answer.
There are six of us. A group of six with little in common except a forcible death in our lives.
Completed suicide. That's the phrase they use when introducing their loved one.
When I think of the word completed, I think in terms of... completed 1st grade... completed a project... completed a task.
Completing death? Creepy. And a nice way of dressing up the fact that there are some people who off themselves because things suck really bad for them.
The circle stops at my chair I say my name and rattle off my group of three. The leader repeats back my group of three and it suddenly sounds so much worse.
The circle begins again as each describes how their loved one completed suicide. There's that word again.
In graphic detail... three gunshots, a hanging and an overdose. Blood... eyeballs bulging... vomit... brains and walls. If completed didn't sound strange before it has certainly become the fucking understatement of the evening now.
The circle stops at me again and I stare. I finally just say no thank you and the circle keeps on rolling down the steep descent.
Now it's time for the grief and feelings. The other five members have all lost their children. I'm the only one who has lost a parent, sibling, and an aunt. I tell myself that doesn't matter. Grief is grief. Feelings are feelings.
But as I listen to the parents grieve their children I am stunned as I hear their words.
... anything to take their place...
... I would have taken their pain...
... miss them so much...
I hear their words but hear my mother's louder as she wished aloud that it was me instead of my sister lying in that hospital bed. And once again speaking her wishes once my sister passed away. Quite the contrast.
I break out in a cold sweat. I shiver as my stomach lurches. My head is screaming as the voices gain momentum. I try to gather a few feelings to speak but they are drowned out by the frantic pitch my mind is at.
It's once again my turn to share. My heart is pounding and the room is spinning. I know what comes next. I grab my keys and excuse myself. I get sick in the parking lot and then I drive away. My head hasn't stopped screaming yet.
I completed my first attempt at a support group and that was the only time that evening that word was used correctly.
She is number three. My sister. My mother. And now her. They are a group of three while I am on the outside looking in.
I wish people would leave my life without forcing themselves, by their own hands, through that narrow tunnel of death. Forced is never easy. For the person dying or the one left behind.
I try not to imagine what their final moments might have been like. I walk that fine edge of looking but then ripping my eyes away. I want to know but at the final moment I turn away because I am not a part of their sacred group.
I wander into another kind of group that is supposed to support people like myself. Those left behind to answer all the questions that never have an answer.
There are six of us. A group of six with little in common except a forcible death in our lives.
Completed suicide. That's the phrase they use when introducing their loved one.
When I think of the word completed, I think in terms of... completed 1st grade... completed a project... completed a task.
Completing death? Creepy. And a nice way of dressing up the fact that there are some people who off themselves because things suck really bad for them.
The circle stops at my chair I say my name and rattle off my group of three. The leader repeats back my group of three and it suddenly sounds so much worse.
The circle begins again as each describes how their loved one completed suicide. There's that word again.
In graphic detail... three gunshots, a hanging and an overdose. Blood... eyeballs bulging... vomit... brains and walls. If completed didn't sound strange before it has certainly become the fucking understatement of the evening now.
The circle stops at me again and I stare. I finally just say no thank you and the circle keeps on rolling down the steep descent.
Now it's time for the grief and feelings. The other five members have all lost their children. I'm the only one who has lost a parent, sibling, and an aunt. I tell myself that doesn't matter. Grief is grief. Feelings are feelings.
But as I listen to the parents grieve their children I am stunned as I hear their words.
... anything to take their place...
... I would have taken their pain...
... miss them so much...
I hear their words but hear my mother's louder as she wished aloud that it was me instead of my sister lying in that hospital bed. And once again speaking her wishes once my sister passed away. Quite the contrast.
I break out in a cold sweat. I shiver as my stomach lurches. My head is screaming as the voices gain momentum. I try to gather a few feelings to speak but they are drowned out by the frantic pitch my mind is at.
It's once again my turn to share. My heart is pounding and the room is spinning. I know what comes next. I grab my keys and excuse myself. I get sick in the parking lot and then I drive away. My head hasn't stopped screaming yet.
I completed my first attempt at a support group and that was the only time that evening that word was used correctly.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Celebrate
Today is the fourth. Every fourth of June we used to celebrate my sister's birthday. But now the fourth is filled is guilt. Hurt. Anger. Sadness. Anything but celebration.
She would want you to celebrate her life...
This is the type of phrase often turned by the grieving left behind. I don't believe that this is true about her and I don't believe she would have ever desired such a celebration. I cannot celebrate a life so shattered, so damaged, so wilted that it funneled down to one eventual option of death.
Our lives closely resembled one another until she shot a hole in that toxic fork in the road. How do you celebrate a life gone by when you can't even celebrate your own? She's dead. I'm alive. I consider myself lucky and nothing more. Not exactly reasons to reflect, release some balloons or even visit the final marking of her earthly existence.
And then the selfish side... I don't want to fucking celebrate a person who placed so much responsibility, need, and cries for soothing squarely upon my shoulders. I gave so much but in the end perhaps I gave too much. When she left she took a piece of me that I cannot recover. Now I'm left with the scar of death barely stitched together with the thread of hope that I truly did all that I could do.
How do I celebrate a life passed too early? How do I remember her with anything but painful regret?
She would want you to celebrate her life...
This is the type of phrase often turned by the grieving left behind. I don't believe that this is true about her and I don't believe she would have ever desired such a celebration. I cannot celebrate a life so shattered, so damaged, so wilted that it funneled down to one eventual option of death.
Our lives closely resembled one another until she shot a hole in that toxic fork in the road. How do you celebrate a life gone by when you can't even celebrate your own? She's dead. I'm alive. I consider myself lucky and nothing more. Not exactly reasons to reflect, release some balloons or even visit the final marking of her earthly existence.
And then the selfish side... I don't want to fucking celebrate a person who placed so much responsibility, need, and cries for soothing squarely upon my shoulders. I gave so much but in the end perhaps I gave too much. When she left she took a piece of me that I cannot recover. Now I'm left with the scar of death barely stitched together with the thread of hope that I truly did all that I could do.
How do I celebrate a life passed too early? How do I remember her with anything but painful regret?
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Thankful
Four years, 18 days ago my sister shot and killed herself.
Four years, 22 days ago my mother overdosed.
Four years ago I stopped sleeping with my father stopped raping me.
Four years ago my daughter was almost two and I barely knew how to be a mother.
Four years ago today I met my my husband.
As I am writing this, I am looking out our study window and I can see my daughter riding her bike with friends and my husband hanging Christmas lights, something he has been doing since this past Sunday. Yes, he is that guy. If you had told me four years ago that this is where I would be today, I would have probably told you to fuck off and I definitely would have laughed at you.
I have much, very much, to be thankful for. My husband is perfect for me. My daughter is thriving. It's a risky thought but it is very possible that I am thriving too. Things aren't perfect and yes, I still struggle but things are so much better than four years ago. I have a family to love and I have a family that loves me. I have a home, not just a house, and we are raising our daughter with the example I always dreamed of for myself. My daughter made this toilet paper wedding cake today for no particular reason and it struck me as funny that she knew what a married couple looks like. Had I made that cake when I was her age, God knows how I would have depicted a married couple; perhaps with punches being thrown and broken glass topping the cake. It made me smile to see her model a healthy family. Something... lots of things... are finally going right.
P.S. I love how creative my daughter is; she came up with this all by herself!
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Scabs
So, I started a new job last month and I actually made a friend in my office. That may not seem like much of a feat but for me it is because I have a distinct lack of friends in my life. This new friend left work suddenly the other day. About an hour later, she calls me and she is sobbing. The short story is that her mom tried to kill herself. My friend was following the ambulance to the hospital when she called me.
She doesn't know me that well or my background. Why she called me, I'm not sure. What I do know is that I'm probably the most ill-equipped person to talk someone else through a situation like this.
Her mom is fine now and is mad as hell at my friend. I've been in her shoes as the daughter of an angry, suicidal mother and it hurts to watch her go through this. It hurts almost too much to be considered a supportive friend. I have since told her that I have been through situations similar to what she is going through and I honestly thought that would be the end of my help for her in this ordeal.
But it didn't stop there and now I'm walking through this with a friend I hardly know, albeit I'm getting to know her better, and my own feelings are so strong that my chest hurts. I haven't been able to actually sort out the exact words for these feelings; all I can say is that suicide is an awful solution to any problem. It doesn't just hurt the person who is making the attempt...
Almost selfishly, this events of this week have pulled a few of my own scabs off. I want to tell my friend exactly what I think about her mother's actions but I know that would not be helpful or healthy. But as I type this I'm surprised by my anger towards my friend's mother and I wonder why I can't seem to be angry about my own situation.
She doesn't know me that well or my background. Why she called me, I'm not sure. What I do know is that I'm probably the most ill-equipped person to talk someone else through a situation like this.
Her mom is fine now and is mad as hell at my friend. I've been in her shoes as the daughter of an angry, suicidal mother and it hurts to watch her go through this. It hurts almost too much to be considered a supportive friend. I have since told her that I have been through situations similar to what she is going through and I honestly thought that would be the end of my help for her in this ordeal.
But it didn't stop there and now I'm walking through this with a friend I hardly know, albeit I'm getting to know her better, and my own feelings are so strong that my chest hurts. I haven't been able to actually sort out the exact words for these feelings; all I can say is that suicide is an awful solution to any problem. It doesn't just hurt the person who is making the attempt...
Almost selfishly, this events of this week have pulled a few of my own scabs off. I want to tell my friend exactly what I think about her mother's actions but I know that would not be helpful or healthy. But as I type this I'm surprised by my anger towards my friend's mother and I wonder why I can't seem to be angry about my own situation.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Failed
At the risk of sounding completely crazy... I see dead people. I know there's some sort of psycho-babble term for it; "ghosting" or something of that sort. So if it has a term then perhaps I'm not completely crazy. Right?
My most confused and contorted feelings of recent years are in regards to losing my sister and my mother. I like saying that I lost them; like we were all at a shopping mall and we got separated within the clothes racks at Macy's. But we didn't. I actually didn't lose them at all. They left.
It's been nearly four years since my baby sister ended her torment on her own terms. She always refused to confront the truth about our childhood, our home, and our family. Instead I was the crazy one; the angry sister; the disgruntled daughter. She and my mother routinely joined forces in an attempt to cover my truth and twist them into lies. It hurt. Hurt like it did as a child when I was told that even if I did tell, no one would believe me. In the end it was lies that killed my sister. My mother too.
My sister shot herself in the head. I have since learned that that act is uncommon for a female to carry out. I think it shows the enormity of her pain. She lingered in this world for a few days. Long enough for me to sit by her side and listen to my mother spew that she wished it had been me in that bed. Long enough for my father to make passes at me; at the fucking hospital of all places where my sister, his daughter, was approaching death. Sarcasm: my family reeks of appropriateness.
My mother exited this world a few days later. Overdose. The hateful part of me wonders all too clearly if she just couldn't stand to be upstaged by my sister. I went from a painful existence within a family to nothing. I was alone with my daughter and I couldn't get away from my father fast enough. As ugly as it sounds, for the first time in my life, I felt like I had a real chance for a life.
I went to work the days after both their deaths. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't wrap my mind around who to grieve for first. Do I do it in death order? By age? By who I loved the most? I've been told that those feelings are referred to as complex grief. "Complex" is a polite word for you have a fucked up family and now they are dead.
What they did is called a suicide cluster. I can't lie and say that I wasn't tempted to join their exclusive little group. I saw that their problems went away. But in reality their problems might have disappeared but a whole new set of problems were pushed onto me. Ultimately, I knew that I couldn't pile my own problems upon my sweet daughter.
For nearly a week I have been seeing my sister. Not as I would like to remember her either. She stands there, holding a piece of her skull, brains, and blood in her hands. She is asking me to fix her head. I can barely stand to look at her and the ugly part of me wants to tell her to fuck off. Nice, I know. But she did it to herself and I am so very tired of cleaning up messes that only hurt me more in the end. I told her the other night in therapy to go away because I couldn't help her. My therapist said that I did good a good job. She left but I am still struggling with my response to her.
I always took care of her. I brought my father upon myself to keep him away from her. When she was very young, I would get her out of her own toddler bed and put her into bed with me. I wasn't more than 6 years old but in my child's mind I believed that we would be safe together. We were until he came in and moved her over to get to me. But when he was done, at least I knew that she was with me and he would not be walking into her room next.
I need to stop here because in many ways, I still feel that in her death the ultimate statement was made that I failed to protect her; failed to keep her safe. I'll pick this up later when I can string my words together in a sequence that makes sense because right now, everything is getting very jumbled up...
My most confused and contorted feelings of recent years are in regards to losing my sister and my mother. I like saying that I lost them; like we were all at a shopping mall and we got separated within the clothes racks at Macy's. But we didn't. I actually didn't lose them at all. They left.
It's been nearly four years since my baby sister ended her torment on her own terms. She always refused to confront the truth about our childhood, our home, and our family. Instead I was the crazy one; the angry sister; the disgruntled daughter. She and my mother routinely joined forces in an attempt to cover my truth and twist them into lies. It hurt. Hurt like it did as a child when I was told that even if I did tell, no one would believe me. In the end it was lies that killed my sister. My mother too.
My sister shot herself in the head. I have since learned that that act is uncommon for a female to carry out. I think it shows the enormity of her pain. She lingered in this world for a few days. Long enough for me to sit by her side and listen to my mother spew that she wished it had been me in that bed. Long enough for my father to make passes at me; at the fucking hospital of all places where my sister, his daughter, was approaching death. Sarcasm: my family reeks of appropriateness.
My mother exited this world a few days later. Overdose. The hateful part of me wonders all too clearly if she just couldn't stand to be upstaged by my sister. I went from a painful existence within a family to nothing. I was alone with my daughter and I couldn't get away from my father fast enough. As ugly as it sounds, for the first time in my life, I felt like I had a real chance for a life.
I went to work the days after both their deaths. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't wrap my mind around who to grieve for first. Do I do it in death order? By age? By who I loved the most? I've been told that those feelings are referred to as complex grief. "Complex" is a polite word for you have a fucked up family and now they are dead.
What they did is called a suicide cluster. I can't lie and say that I wasn't tempted to join their exclusive little group. I saw that their problems went away. But in reality their problems might have disappeared but a whole new set of problems were pushed onto me. Ultimately, I knew that I couldn't pile my own problems upon my sweet daughter.
For nearly a week I have been seeing my sister. Not as I would like to remember her either. She stands there, holding a piece of her skull, brains, and blood in her hands. She is asking me to fix her head. I can barely stand to look at her and the ugly part of me wants to tell her to fuck off. Nice, I know. But she did it to herself and I am so very tired of cleaning up messes that only hurt me more in the end. I told her the other night in therapy to go away because I couldn't help her. My therapist said that I did good a good job. She left but I am still struggling with my response to her.
I always took care of her. I brought my father upon myself to keep him away from her. When she was very young, I would get her out of her own toddler bed and put her into bed with me. I wasn't more than 6 years old but in my child's mind I believed that we would be safe together. We were until he came in and moved her over to get to me. But when he was done, at least I knew that she was with me and he would not be walking into her room next.
I need to stop here because in many ways, I still feel that in her death the ultimate statement was made that I failed to protect her; failed to keep her safe. I'll pick this up later when I can string my words together in a sequence that makes sense because right now, everything is getting very jumbled up...
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