Suicide Survivors: the Guilt, the Relief, the Freedom

To move forward on your own path to wellness

It is a terrible thing to have to admit, but the truth is, sometimes it is a relief to be the only one left in my family.

I loved my family members, but when there is so much dysfunction and trauma and mental illness, it is complicated. And how you feel about them, is also extremely complicated.

On the one hand, yes, there is the survivors’ guilt. I have written about this before, the endless circling of questions, involving: Why did I survive?

There is the sadness, grief, mourning, and the loneliness of being the only one left in my immediate family. (I’m not a monster, their choices and premature deaths are tragic and heart-breaking. I wanted more and better for all of them.)

And yet, there is also—if I am utterly honest—a deep and solid sense of relief as well. Because I can finally only rely on myself…to heal, to make better decisions for my mental and physical health and well being and how I will live this life. Whereas with my family members, there was a continuous sinking feeling of what next? What do I need to brace for? What is coming? When/Where/How/In what way will the other shoe drop?

The path to wellness and self-autonomy has been easier without them.

Some may argue that you could have done that when your family members were alive— well, yes and no.

I have never been good at drawing personal boundaries, emotionally, and not letting the burden and trauma and hardships of others affect me. And that is with friends, students, colleagues. Whereas it is even heavier and more intense with family members, people who I love deeply, and feel so for, with our complicated relationship.

And, when people you love continue to make bad choices for themselves, ones that affect you, because they are not addressing their desperate need for mental health help. Or, they are making the same lifestyle choices again and again, refusing or unable to change, which essentially mean that they will yet again end up in the hospital, again and again and again, that affects you, it affects other family members, not just the ill one. It has to.

This was my story for years. I know I am not alone in this.

And truly, I mean, how can all of that not affect you? You would have to be a sociopath for it not to. And, even from a selfish standpoint, even if I don’t take on that burden, there are logistical factors that involves, that requires, your time, attention, visitations, etc.

And when someone—read: me—cares too deeply, comes from a dysfunctional family and has established co-dependent relationships with family members, the situation is even more grave. And harder to draw and set and keep to healthy boundaries.

But, perhaps the saving grace is that I know this about myself, that I would be a terrible therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist.

I have a hard time just hearing, listening, and not taking up and carrying another person’s pain and suffering. (Not that I can really do anything, or that that is constructive. Believe me, I know that it is not. But I am an empath, hypersensitive—for myself and others. I’m a Cancer and this is just part of my personality characteristics and who I am. I am working on it.)

Therefore, after February ‘21, when all of my immediate family members had passed—my parents in their 60’s, and my brother at the young age of 43, it was indescribably hard.

Yet, it also finally allowed me to feel free from how their bad choices affected my life. I had to focus on me.

This was not entirely easy by any means. In fact, quite the contrary.

Because it meant that I finally had no excuse. I had to own my shit.

Yes, I was traumatized from two family members’ suicides. Yes, I had scars in coming from a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and severely depressed mother who was a hoarder, both carrying their own undiagnosed conditions and trauma.

But, at that point, I was past 35. An adult. And now, everyone was dead. I knew I wanted my life to be healthier and more functional than theirs. And, quite frankly, I wanted a better life for me, one even better than my own had been up ‘til then.

So, you have to deal with the crap that you inherit and have been made to carry. To work through the trauma and dysfunction that has shaped you.

So, that—

It doesn’t affect your kids, your partnerships/relationships, friendships, your own mental and physical health, all of it.

That is not easy. But I have learned that it is oh-so-necessary.

Because, at what point are you going to break the cycle? The intergenerational trauma and circling patterns? And declare, enough is enough. I want more. I want a different story for my life. I have got to do something different.

Yes, I may have been deal a shitty hand in some regards. But it is up to me now. I can’t blame the dead forever. It’s not going to hurt them. Ultimately, it hurts me.

I think holding both of these things, these contradictory and simultaneous truths, is one of the hardest things.

1-To not deny your pain and suffering, your wounded inner child. Validating that that happened and was not ok, is important, so you do not repress it or run from it, or try to cover it up with emotional neglect, or—in my family—booze.

2—And yet, I think one of the hardest fucking parts is to acknowledge that you are also an adult now. That requires responsibility and accountability of owning what you need to work through and to work on. For yourself and for the benefit of others in your life.

And that is hard. It takes work.

But we must, because the truth that I have come to believe is that—

We aren’t all victims, we are not *only* victims. And if we plant our seeds and take root in that place of identity, refusing to budge, then we don’t grow. And we likely perpetuate the same hurt onto others that was done unto us.

Sadly, many of us who have trauma and dysfunctional families and mental illnesses, have to unlearn and learn new practices as adults, and ones that are hard and painful. Growth and development is not all warm and fuzzy. Sometimes it is very, very hard.

I believe these two truths play out and often in therapy, especially when it is done well.

In other words, there must be a balance of validation, but also of accountability for your own role/part, and that is oh-so-very-very humbling.

Because you’ve got to confront some pretty hard truths about how your background has affected you and the coping mechanisms that you have adopted to survive, to protect yourself. And sometimes we have to work hard to unlearn those things.

But I believe that there really is no other productive path. Especially because the best love stories involve ourselves; they start with and center ourselves.

Other love stories exist as chapters in our storybooks of our life (even those who spend 50-75 years with one spouse or partner), but the story of us/with our self is the only one that is constant and for a life time.

Therefore, our feelings and identity of self love, self worth, self value is the most important thing, it is the most important love story of our lives.

Our most important love story is the one that we have with ourselves.

I have been reflecting on this lately because I heard it said on a podcast (“We Can Do Hard Things”) last week, and I couldn’t agree more:

“The very best thing that we can do for our partnerships/romantic relationships is to work on ourselves.”

Then—We can then invite our partners to join us in the journey, to help and support us along the way. (And hopefully, they can do the same with us. That it will be reciprocal, a give and take.)

But, this takes responsibility for our own growth and puts our development into our own hands. And it centers that as the most important thing. And acknowledges it as the deciding factor on whether we’re going to have functional, healthy relationships with others too—romantic and otherwise.

It reminds me of that common belief that—how can you possibly hope to have a healthy relationship with another when you don’t have one already with yourself?

Which isn’t to say that we have to have it all figured out or together. We are all, after all, works in progress and are all heavily flawed. And how we feel about ourselves fluctuates, and probably that is a good thing, for it to do so. (Otherwise, we’d probably all be & be accused of being narcissists.)

But, perhaps a good place to start is—do we even like ourselves? Do we know our affordances and limitations? Do we know our value and worth and what we bring to the table?

Or, are we looking for a relationship to fill a void within us? To give us validation and fill the silences, trying to find our sense of self worth and validation outside of ourselves?

I say this without judgment: I know that I have tried to do that with relationships in the past. Especially as the hero role, the adult child of an alcoholic. I learned—and did very well at—-trying to please and earn love and approval and affection from family members, from those closest to me. Therefore, since I learned that so much, so well, and for so many years, it—of course— requires unlearning. It also requires a hard and truthful look at myself and the ways in which that affects my adult sense of self and my adult relationships.

Whew. Hard truths.

And yet, it is a journey where I finally am free to explore and confront those hard truths. I can finally make progress because there isn’t more pressing continuous crap to address.

A former high school teacher told me once—

“I knew your family. And they were good people. Exist now in the world for them.”

This teacher has since also passed on. Though I remember his wise, caring words.

I know that that that is important. And I know that my parents—who were flawed and broken people but who loved me deeply—would want this for me.

To care for and to invest in my self. To live better and make better choices and have a better life than they did.

May we all do it. And because we’re worth it and because we do have the power to change and to mold our lives. And we can be better and healthier than where we came from.

As they used to say in Indonesian—Amin!

Amen, which means, literally—let it be so.

Yes, indeed:

A-fucking-men.