The worst thing happened to me...
and I am still standing
I was listening to an older podcast today, “Big Magic with Elizabeth Gilbert, and I heard this line. And while I hesitate to put those words out into the universe to test this theory, for fear it see it as a sort of challenge, (“Really? Are you so sure about that? Hold my beer…”) The truth is, I also take solace in this: The worst thing HAS happened to me, and I am still standing.
I never thought I would be forty years old, single and childless, with all of my nuclear family dead. I never thought I could imagine living through and surviving two active suicides of immediate family members, and the death of my dearly beloved mother all within under give years. And doing all of that while still finishing my doctorate.
As we embark on a new year, like many others are doing, I reflect back at my growth and all that has changed in my life and within me this past year and over several.
I do have a comfort in what I have withstood, with how I have persevered. It’s not been easy, deeply painful and traumatizing, but also—
The golden nugget, the turth, is that I am still here. And I am choosing to grow and heal from these experiences. This is more than any of my family members were able to do.
When the worst has happened to you, and you look back at what you lived through, even if the ride through the eye of the storm and the aftershocks were pure hell, there is a resilience and confidence that comes from being on the other side of the storm, looking back at what you came from…at what you emerged from.
There is a confidence in that—if I withstood that, I can whether whatever else comes my way.
I think about this as well now…as I grow more comfortable in my own skin and body, as well as in my own solitude. As someone heavily extroverted, a devoted and loving partner, seeing co-dependency modeled, I have greatly struggled at points in middle age being single and without hardly any family. Undoubtedly, also why I ended up in a relationship with a narcissist for four years.
I have learned important lessons at the end of 2022 and throughout 2023:
Most importantly—
I am better off alone than with men who are emotionally stunted, don’t communicate, and aren’t interested in personal growth, self actualization, and mature development. I love and care and give for others, like my friends, very deeply, but I can do that for myself as well. I am worthy of that. So, I am doing it.
I am caring for myself with the loving tender care that my mother would have…that she would want me to do for myself, even if she wasn’t able to do it for herself.
Today my good friends and I were talking about suicides and the pain that they leave on those who remain, the family survivors. I mentioned how students seem to open up to me, share with me, or ‘find me’ who have undergone similar loss, with parents, siblings, etc.
My heart shatters into a million pieces for them, when this happens. But it also opens up a space for potential healing, of “I get you….I feel you,” in a way that, quite frankly, you can’t understand until you fully experience and embody this type of loss. Self-inflicted death of someone very close to you, a blood relative, cuts very deep. Third degree burns deep.
If I can help though to understand that you can survive and live through this type of grave, severe and jarring loss, then at least—the tragic losses of my family members will serve some good in this world.
So, if you are reading this, and have lost someone to suicide, then you too have survived the worst thing.
And you are still standing. I am proud of you.
I feel you. I see you.
And I so very sorry.
But, I deeply, deeply get it.