Suicide:

What we continue to carry and how it informs our stories

As a survivor of two family suicides, you think an awful lot about—why me?

It’s hard not to.

Even when you’ve moved beyond “survivor’s guilt,” and that obsession, which—of course—isn’t healthy.

Sure, there are still pangs of it here and there. Momentary flashes or thoughts or nudges—

Why am I here and they aren’t?

I grappled with this especially when considering my brother’s death, since he was still young (43) and (physically) well and, most importantly, had a young child.

Whereas I do not have children.

And yet, I am still here. He is not.

I used to feel the guilt, that consistently nagging, all-encompassing and overwhelming sentiment of—

I shouldn’t be the one still here. I am not a parent. I didn’t have a child I left behind.

Now, years later, and healthier, I don’t allow myself that line of thinking. I don’t go down that down-ward spiral, that rabbit hole.

I do know that it is not healthy or constructive; it’s an endless pit that may overtake you if you let it, entertaining those thoughts for too long.

Now, it’s not survivor’s guilt any more. I wouldn’t say that.

But, in understanding my own identity which has been so heavily shaped by family suicides, and also my own existential questions of—

Who is Danielle?

I often ask—

Why me? What has made me different that I am still here?

That I could stand the depression and trauma and losses and suicide ideation, and not plan for or execute, complete suicide or engage in passive suicide, like my beloved mother. Because, as I’ve said often, there is more than one way to complete suicide. Actively and all-at-once ending your life by a tool is just one means.

I think I also set with this because I shared with a dear friend/colleague of mine that my father’s death-versary was coming up this Sunday (today).

I often times don’t talk about it in conversation with others. If I do, we’re close and we’re friends.

And I don’t because—I’ve written about before at length—suicides make people so uncomfortable. And I’m an empath and intuitive and I don’t like to ‘put that’ upon others.

If I open up. I trust you. We have an established relationship.

So, I started this newsletter at my cousin’s suggestion, with the idea for a tagline being, “On not becoming another suicide statistic…” After I had read that those with a parent who completes suicides are 4 times more likely to complete it themselves.

Sometimes my dark (coping) humor rears its head, it’s been a survival mechanism. And I said to my friend over cocktails last Friday evening—

“So, if that statistic is true. Then where am I? What statistic does that put me at now in terms of my odds?” I laughed.

She listened, a good person and friend.

Then her face turned thoughtful and concerned.

She said that it makes her even more worried about me.

Sigh.

I appreciate her. It’s touching and she’s a genuinely good person who obviously is worried about my mental health, my staying on this Earth.

I get that. I would probably do the same.

But I felt the need to reassure her that I would not/will not end my life.

And I won’t. Even when/if I ever feel suicide ideation, or want to die, or feel in the throes of the despair of depression again.

I have seen/been part of and privy to the aftermath of destruction that it causes. I know how it feels, its agony, that deep, deep hurt and destruction it causes the survivors, those left behind.

I am intimately acquainted with that. And, so—

Like my mother, my promise is—

No matter how bad it gets, that is never an option.

But my new friend doesn’t know that. I don’t blame her and I sincerely appreciate her care.

She also doesn’t know the extreme work I’ve done on myself to improve my own mental health state—EMDR and craniosacral therapy and sound tuning and light therapy, all sorts of other body work and somatic healing, gut health balance, yoga and exercise, etc, etc. To ensure that my story is different from my family member’s. So I tell her that, to assuage her fears.

I have not been passive in my journey toward healing and mental wellness. I couldn’t be. It was too integral to my journeying through the losses, trauma and grief. It became my survival.

But we are new friends; she doesn’t know that.

And, as a mental health advocate and a family suicide survivor, I certainly understand and think it better to ask are you okay, are you thinking about suicide, etc.

But, at the same time, paradoxically, contradictorily, on the receiving end of that, as the family suicide survivor, it also feels like—

I am still always to be plagued by their choices.

There are so many people who experience depression and suicide ideation who will never act on it.

But, genetically, I am related in closest bloodline/kin/DNA to two family members who did decided to carry through, who exited this life at their own hands.

And I carry that. I am formed by it.

People worry more about my mental state because of it. It sometimes seems to haunts me.

I wonder—Is it the trauma? A grief that they can’t imagine? The notion that mental illness is so heavily influenced, primarily informed by genetics?

I’m not sure and yet…

Moments like these I am reminded, made acutely aware…even though I rarely forget, that—

[Many] Others will always see me and my story—at least in part—by the decisions of my family members. Of what they chose to do and not to do.

I am and I constantly strive to be different than them, with their dysfunction and the choices that they made, the actions that they did not take. It is my life’s story, my journey toward wellness and healing.

I own my story, as instructed by Brene Brown, so I feel a sense of ownership over it and what happened to me, especially since there is so much that I didn’t have a choice in forming. I have to feel a sense of “I got this,” the rest, that I author the rest of the story, now that they are all gone.

And yet, while I believe that wholeheartedly, still—

There are moments like my conversation with my dear friend last Friday, where I feel that frustration, again, that—

By proximity, I am so affected by their choices and paths and manner of life exit, and I didn’t choose them. I didn’t choose this.

I vacillate between feeling angry and devastated, to frustrated and irritated, to just… heavy. Defeated.

Burdened.

In short-I [always] carry it with me. It’s inescapable.

And still, I know that NOT owning my story and pretending, acting as if it didn’t happen, and that it hasn’t informed me, will not help me.

I would be denying such a large part of my life story and what I have had to endure and survive. Such a large part of who I am. Of who I had to be and become.

I own my story even when others may label me, judge me, use it against me as a statement about my mental state [my narcissist ex], still—

I heed the words of Dr. Brene Brown who says:

“You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.”

I know that. I feel that. Deep within me.

And so, I journey forward and I claim my story and walk within it…even while I struggle at points with the lingering emotions of grief and frustration that this is what my story is, what it became.

I also firmly believe and know within my bones and heart and mind, my very being and soul, that not to claim this is to deny myself, to not be genuine within myself. Which I refuse to do.

It’s such an inspiring and maddening paradox.

This is what [family] suicide survivorship looks like. This is how it presents.

Rest [finally] in peace, Dad.

10/29/15.