Predetermined? Am I a foregone conclusion?

The ways that the suicide plague in my family arises in conversations, relationships, etc

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the delicate balance…the complicated emotions that I feel about self-disclosing my family history with others. I also think about some of the responses that I receive when making myself vulnerable and people know my family history and background.

Please —let me know if you’re not okay.

I know that these sentiments come from a good place, from friends and others.

After all, I share them. Do I wish my brother would have just talked to me about a plan to carry out his own demise? Of course .

If I had a friend or other loved one that was significantly plotting and planning their suicide, would I want to know? Of course.

There is a reason why the exact terminology that we’re supposed to ask if, “Do you have thoughts to harm yourself? Do you have a plan?”

I would rather ask those things and face uncomfortable conversations than to go to funerals. I’ve been to too many in my immediate family.

But I also think this—arguably, I have (had to) to think a lot more about depression and suicide given my family members’ deaths and my own struggles with major depression. Therefore, perhaps I, even better than most, know when I am not okay and when to ask for help.

I am not so impulsive. I have personal experience here. I know how suicide really messes with/fucks up the survivors.

For a survivor, this is tricky. For someone who has done a lot of mental health work—therapy, medications, alternative forms of healing and a lot of self-reflection, every single time I have to have this conversation, it still hits home.

Why? Because I am forever tied to my family. Therefore, I am forever tied to the reality that there are two suicides in my immediate family.

This means that at any conversation or interchange with an acquaintance or on a first date, I must make the split second decision of whether or not I want to disclose that both my brother and/or my father completed suicide. (well, see, um, both did?)

That’s an awful lot of pressure.

First dates are hard enough with normal junk of social awkwardness.

I get the concern, truly, I do. And it is not unwarranted. There is a reason why PCPs (family doctors) and psychiatrists want to know your family’s mental health history in addition to your own.

We certainly still have oh so much to learn about mental illness and we do know that—at least, for some—there seems to be important genetic components to be weighed in to diagnosis, treatment plan, etc.

And yet.

And yet.

For me, in that split second, nano-second moment, when that date or that colleague asks me about my family members and I [decide to lie], it is difficult. It is challenging. It is painful.

I don’t want to lie. I don’t want to have to [feel that I must] lie.

In those moments, all the mental health work that I have done to make my path different doesn’t seem to matter. In that split second, all the therapy and the growth and emotional homework, it feels irredeemably reduced. These people don’t know me. They can’t see that. All that work.

And they’re asking for the factual response, so the indisputable reality is still this: my dad killed himself. Then five years later, my brother killed himself.

I am thankful for friends and support, therapy and better self care, to realize that I am not my family’s stories and choices, that their choices and life paths are not my own.

I am not a foregone of conclusion of imminent suicide.

Hence: the start of this blog.

And yet, often, for just a fraction of a second I feel like one. Because I wonder if this is how others will see me.

I do not accept that this. But I also do not think that these feelings and thoughts are without warrant. They come about for a reason. Holding two contradictory truths is hard here, but necessary.

We do not yet live at a time where/when mental health is truly de-stigmatized. It is still viewed by many as simply having a weaker character, a deficit, a lack of morale, maybe you need more faith, you’re simply not strong enough….all the bullshit reasons that we profess.

Reasons why we think it different than say—

Diabetes? Always recognizing it as an actual medical condition but major depression is not.

Or terminal cancer? Succumbing to cancer is not something survivors are ever ashamed to admit, but suicide survivors must hem and haw, deciding whether to lie or risk extreme vulnerability.

Even though cancer runs in families too.

Perhaps this seems silly that I worry about the message getting out. After all, my story is very much “out there.” It’s here. It’s on podcasts and social media. I am not shy about sharing my suicide survivorship and multiple suicides in writing or interviews.

But still, I think about the concerned look of my former partner’s mother’s face when discussing my family history. I think about how my first boyfriend in college, his mother did not approve of me (and my family) and that was before two family members offed themselves.

The point is—it’s always there. It will still be there forevermore, it will always be there. Sometimes it’s a drizzle, sometimes a gray cloud overhead, other times it has felt like a raging storm, but the truth is—

I am a survivor of multiple family suicides. I was born into a family where two of my immediate family members took their own lives.

That will always be my story and I can do nothing to change that.

I will always have to decide if/when I want to disclose that information and when I lie. Change the subject quickly about causes of death of family members. Most times these decisions made in fractions of seconds.

It plagues you. It follows you.

Unlike my recent break up from a four year relationship, as hard as that was it sit with and feel the lies and deep levels of betrayal, this—all the suicides in the family— is not something you close the chapter on. You may not opt out of it to forget that it was a part of your life. How it was. Instead, you carry this. Everywhere. Everyday. For the rest of your life.

(Ie—no one asks you to recount all failed relationships the way they do when they ask about your family members. What if I said that brother just didn’t work out?

…Um, say what now?)

I am not sure that I truly understood carrying stories and embodying them until after my brother died by suicide and I sat with the reality of that and the grief from my father’s death as well (since I did not have time to adequately grieve during my doctoral program).

I get this now. What the indigenous elders and my Native American mentors meant when they said that we carry our stories. We embody our personal, lived experiences and carry our trauma deep within us. Our blood, our bones, even within our DNA.

We are influenced by our family. Undoubtedly. Our upbringing. Our background. The family dynamic. The DNA. In oh so many ways.

But we are, we may be so indescribably different. We have free will. We make our own choices. We have education and medicine and therapies. We change direction. We mold our own futures.

(Consider how often serial killers stem from completely functional families? I don’t believe that there are always skeletons hidden in the closet to warrant them all becoming mass murderers.)

We are not always foregone conclusions of where we came from, from our family life and background, their levels of function or dysfunction.

I must keep reminding myself, and the world, you—dear readers, of this.

Because the world hasn’t caught up. Even our privileged, advanced, developed, first world, American society/culture.

This is why mental health advocacy is important.

I am not a foregone conclusion. I am not just a victim of suicides, or a survivor of them.

I thrive. In my own right. On my own.

I author my own story.

I learn from the shit and spin it into gold (Doyle).

I am flying. And I will soar.