I’m still desperate to understand why some people see suicide as their only option. I read books from health professionals. I read interviews with people who have attempted suicide, but lived. I buy medical books with words and terms I honestly don’t quite understand. I have found articles relating gut health to depression. I have found articles linking alcohol abuse to suicide. But I have found no answers, truly. I have simply formed more questions.
Why do some of us put up with the garbage life deals us and carry on, while others crumble and slip away. I don’t know. Why do our lives go in cycles, sometimes giving us the strength to get through anything, while the next week, we can barely hang on. Why do some things cause the most seeming stable person to click, and shift, and slip away.

I have read that some suicide attempts (from the surviving who have attempted) took less than 15 minutes to come to their mind. That means the thought of suicide, and the attempt came in a blink of an eye. How are we, as those left behind, supposed to have seen that? I still have guilt over John. I curse myself that I didn’t see the signs. And there were signs. But he hid them well.
But they seem so obvious now.
A few too many glasses of wine…. a few too many days in bed….a few too many comments about his worth…. a few too many distant lost stares.
I wish I could have seen this… and stopped him. I did see it in another person, but was still unable to stop it. They led me to believe the were fighting and had many things to look forward to. They fooled me, they fooled their spouse, they fooled everyone. They slipped away.

I must recognize that stopping suicide is a never ending battle. It is an all consuming task and every one of us at some point, needs supervision. Sometimes it does look like the way out, when you believe that your imprint on this world is minimal, that maybe your imprint doesn’t even matter. But it does. We do matter. I matter. You matter. Everyone matters.

The articles I read are very cold and clinical and I think they must be written this way to allow the author to keep their sanity. I can read the scientific journals and articles without tears.
The interviews of survivors leave me with my mouth agape. Shocked. I’m in shock over how these people all lost control over themselves and the idea that leaving made sense for a few crucial moments is terrifying. Most of them do not recognize who they became in the hours and minutes before they wanted to die.
The accounts of those of us left behind, in the shrapnel that suicide leaves in its wake, leave me crumpled up and lost. Because I feel their pain , and there is nothing we can do. It is over. We are here to pick up the pieces. And it never stops. After our loved ones leave, we wait for abit and breathe, then start the collections of these pieces: pieces of our hearts, pieces of our lives, chunks of our future.
Just when we think we’ve got most of them, it’s like putting away your Christmas decorations. You always find one weeks later, hiding.

Right now, one reason for reading so much about suicide loss is my concern for one suicide loss survivor. The daughter who’s mum left her not even three months ago.
I’m not sure she even sees the blast yet. I worry she is doing “too well”.
I understand there is no correct way to grieve, but I worry she isn’t grieving enough now. She isn’t picking up her pieces, merely sweeping them under rugs.
I worry that she is walking on her pieces and breaking them into millions of little shards that will cut, and be much more difficult to pick up later.
I recall hearing a story of a soldier who managed to hide his PTSD from WW2 for decades. Then he was in a passenger train accident, and the screeching metal and crashing sounds broke him. He found all of the pieces he had been hiding all at once. He never recovered.
This is what I worry will happen to her.
I worry every day about almost everything these days.
But I am desperately trying to help. To heal, not just myself, but as many as I can.
I am on the path to complete my peer support certification. Still waiting for my course, but I feel I must do this. It will give me the tools to assist someone through finding the light after the darkness of losing someone to suicide.
It will give me the strength to help someone maneuver through their grief. I also hope it will help me help someone stop. Stop leaving. And stay. I hope I can help.
I don’t know what else to do.

Gotta run.