The one who survived
ten years later...
I’m not going to lie - today is a hard day for me.
October 29 is always difficult.
A ten year anniversary of a suicide of a parent is a milestone to look back on.
The gray, rainy, cold, damp, dreariness of the day adds to the mood, to the tone of the occasion.
But, I was thinking about this, and how else I may recall this day. And here’s what I’ve got -
How am I today, and how I am different - so different- from what I was, is also a testament to my survival.
That I’m still here.
That’s more than any of the rest of my family.
Today, I can sit with the heaviness, the grief, the residual pain, the remaining embodied trauma - though I’ve gotten rid of a lot of it.
Today, my nervous system is calmer. Today I can understand what Dr. Aimee Apigian, author of the Biology of Trauma, calls the “calm-alive”state.
Today, I can sit with the sometimes very intense feelings of grief, sadness, and even (allow myself to) feel abandonment, isolation, separation, shame, and not let it consume me.
Today, I trust that as intense as the feelings are, that they will pass.
Today, I know that if I allow myself to feel them, even if/when I break down from them, that I will feel better after I release them.
Today, I understand the paradox of it all - When it all—those intense feelings break me, it also allows me to release, which means I can stay together/ put myself back together.
It is the holding on to it, the repression, allowing the feelings to get stuck, that really harms you.
Because you pay it back, with compound interest.
Today, I can withstand the hardness, and still remain sober.
Today, I am sad. My heart is heavy.
But I am grateful.
Ten years ago, my father, mother and brother were all still here.
Two active suicides and one passive one later, it’s only me left.
I guess that makes me —-
The one who survived.
