Hi Friends,
Today is..I dont even know. I think today is Thursday though it feels like a blur since last week. It was Thanksgiving night when I got the call that my father had taken his own life. I learned he had jumped off of a bridge at 1:30 in the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. From posts before it might be clear that I had been trying to get my Dad help for his bipolar or different meds or therapy or something. It took me a long time to realize that I couldnt fix him or control him. This event has really shattered me though. Has broken my heart in pieces. Has left me lost, confused, sad, and most of all empty. I miss my Dad. I miss my Dad and am confused and hurt by the intentionality of his death. I'd like to say I feel angry at him but I dont. I mostly feel angry at BiPolar Disorder. If BiPolar Disorder was a person I would run it over with my car.
I am left here, feeling lost, alone, and isolated with a particular pain that it seems not that many understand. The night my Dad died I was laying in bed reading about his death on my iPad. Online news had picked it up already. I think that was the worst part. The reading of the story as if it was a story that was separate from me. This idea that my Father was described as "an elderly man" and was made to sound like he was not loved, known, or important. There was no pain, only numbness, and more numbness in the first day or two. A feeling of disconnectedness took over my body and I wandered thru those first days feeling like a visitor from another planet. I thought, is this how my Dad felt when he was depressed? Maybe he felt worse, probably he did.
The truth is I'll never know the pain he felt, the despair, the loneliness and he'll never know the pain I felt at not being able to help him. Mental illness doesnt just hurt those who suffer in its grips..also hurt are the family members, like me, who stand helplessly on the sidelines while the people they loved are tortured and suffer.
I have read in the last few days about suicide and have learned that though I feel alone I am actually not alone. 30,000 people a year in this country kill themselves and that leaves a lot of people who are left wondering, like me, what they could have done differently to stop this from happening. As I told my own father a year or so ago when he said he felt responsible for his own mother's suicide--"Dad, that was NOT your fault"...I said this with total disbelief. I could not comprehend how my father could have truly felt responsible for his own mothers suicide just because he cancelled a visit a week before she died. Little did I know that I myself would be left to consider the very same feelings of responsibility, guilt, and grief. I wish I had known now the pain my Dad was trying to avoid or maybe just couldnt handle. I didnt. His answer was to never talk about it, pretend it didnt happen, and just move on. It is my true belief that this pain, guilt, and loss killed my father. That his loss combined with BiPolar disorder set up the perfect storm for his death.
I believed then and I believe now that the answer to this pain is honestly sharing it with loving, compassionate, and smart professionals and friends. That, and truly feeling it. As my favorite expression goes...The only way around, is thru. I used this often in early sobriety to remind myself that there are no shortcuts. We have to go thru the experiences of our lives sober in order to grow and learn. We have to feel the pain, the loss, and the despair in order to feel the happiness, love, and joy on the other side. And we have to be willing to talk about tough things if we want to do better, feel better, and make changes in family cycles and family diseases. Suicide is preventable. Mental Illness is treatable. But neither of these things will happen if we dont start talking about both of these things openly and without shame.
As for me, I dont know that I am going to take on suicide prevention as my next mission but I do know that it is important to me personally to speak openly with my own family and children about this. Right now they know that GrandPa's brain was sick and it made him think thoughts that made him unhappy and confused. I said I will never lie to them about this and I wont. I will not pretend that GrandPa's illness was any different then cancer or diabetes. It was chronic and it was treatable and it did make his very sick and ultimately take his life.
I miss my Dad. I miss how he used to remind me what was good, what was right. He was a gentlemen from a different time I sometimes felt. A few weeks before he died I was panicking about his depression and we did not have easy or terribly good interactions. In retrospect I think that I knew he was going and I was mad. I was mad at him for not fighting harder. I am not mad anymore. My Dad is with God now, is with his Mother and Father, is back to his true self...the person he was before the BiPolar, before the illness. I am glad he is back to that. At some point I know I'll be back to my true self too. I will not be the same as I was before...I will be a different new version of myself. My broken heart will heal and I hope and believe that when it does it will be just a little bit bigger than before. xx
Today is..I dont even know. I think today is Thursday though it feels like a blur since last week. It was Thanksgiving night when I got the call that my father had taken his own life. I learned he had jumped off of a bridge at 1:30 in the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. From posts before it might be clear that I had been trying to get my Dad help for his bipolar or different meds or therapy or something. It took me a long time to realize that I couldnt fix him or control him. This event has really shattered me though. Has broken my heart in pieces. Has left me lost, confused, sad, and most of all empty. I miss my Dad. I miss my Dad and am confused and hurt by the intentionality of his death. I'd like to say I feel angry at him but I dont. I mostly feel angry at BiPolar Disorder. If BiPolar Disorder was a person I would run it over with my car.
I am left here, feeling lost, alone, and isolated with a particular pain that it seems not that many understand. The night my Dad died I was laying in bed reading about his death on my iPad. Online news had picked it up already. I think that was the worst part. The reading of the story as if it was a story that was separate from me. This idea that my Father was described as "an elderly man" and was made to sound like he was not loved, known, or important. There was no pain, only numbness, and more numbness in the first day or two. A feeling of disconnectedness took over my body and I wandered thru those first days feeling like a visitor from another planet. I thought, is this how my Dad felt when he was depressed? Maybe he felt worse, probably he did.
The truth is I'll never know the pain he felt, the despair, the loneliness and he'll never know the pain I felt at not being able to help him. Mental illness doesnt just hurt those who suffer in its grips..also hurt are the family members, like me, who stand helplessly on the sidelines while the people they loved are tortured and suffer.
I have read in the last few days about suicide and have learned that though I feel alone I am actually not alone. 30,000 people a year in this country kill themselves and that leaves a lot of people who are left wondering, like me, what they could have done differently to stop this from happening. As I told my own father a year or so ago when he said he felt responsible for his own mother's suicide--"Dad, that was NOT your fault"...I said this with total disbelief. I could not comprehend how my father could have truly felt responsible for his own mothers suicide just because he cancelled a visit a week before she died. Little did I know that I myself would be left to consider the very same feelings of responsibility, guilt, and grief. I wish I had known now the pain my Dad was trying to avoid or maybe just couldnt handle. I didnt. His answer was to never talk about it, pretend it didnt happen, and just move on. It is my true belief that this pain, guilt, and loss killed my father. That his loss combined with BiPolar disorder set up the perfect storm for his death.
I believed then and I believe now that the answer to this pain is honestly sharing it with loving, compassionate, and smart professionals and friends. That, and truly feeling it. As my favorite expression goes...The only way around, is thru. I used this often in early sobriety to remind myself that there are no shortcuts. We have to go thru the experiences of our lives sober in order to grow and learn. We have to feel the pain, the loss, and the despair in order to feel the happiness, love, and joy on the other side. And we have to be willing to talk about tough things if we want to do better, feel better, and make changes in family cycles and family diseases. Suicide is preventable. Mental Illness is treatable. But neither of these things will happen if we dont start talking about both of these things openly and without shame.
As for me, I dont know that I am going to take on suicide prevention as my next mission but I do know that it is important to me personally to speak openly with my own family and children about this. Right now they know that GrandPa's brain was sick and it made him think thoughts that made him unhappy and confused. I said I will never lie to them about this and I wont. I will not pretend that GrandPa's illness was any different then cancer or diabetes. It was chronic and it was treatable and it did make his very sick and ultimately take his life.
I miss my Dad. I miss how he used to remind me what was good, what was right. He was a gentlemen from a different time I sometimes felt. A few weeks before he died I was panicking about his depression and we did not have easy or terribly good interactions. In retrospect I think that I knew he was going and I was mad. I was mad at him for not fighting harder. I am not mad anymore. My Dad is with God now, is with his Mother and Father, is back to his true self...the person he was before the BiPolar, before the illness. I am glad he is back to that. At some point I know I'll be back to my true self too. I will not be the same as I was before...I will be a different new version of myself. My broken heart will heal and I hope and believe that when it does it will be just a little bit bigger than before. xx
