darkness

Day 19

Today was hard.

I’m not really sure what to type today, but I set out to write and publish 30 days of thoughts to give people a glimpse into the world of a survivor.

“Suicide,” “murder,” “survivor” — these are all words I never thought would be so incredibly personal and defining in my life. I remember the first time I really learned in-depth about suicide the was in an eighth or ninth grade English class, studying Thirteen Reasons Why. I didn’t care much for the book then… I detest it even more now. I had no idea, back then, that suicide would claim as least a third of my family.

It’s so dark, so horrific. I observe that most shy away from the topic. Families have been shamed, judgement often cast at survivors. Survivors — what a heavy title. Institutions often choose not to address it corporately. I assume so few understand the depth of the concept, and people often flounder when they are unfamiliar with something so dark, so scary, and so sensitive.

The band Twenty One Pilots engages in the conversation. Their song “Neon Gravestones,” discusses how culture has glorified suicide, stating it’s “further engraving an earlier grave is an optional way.” Contrasting the idealized perspective, the band ends the song with the following lyrics:

Find your grandparents or someone of age
Pay some respects for the path that they paved
To life they were dedicated
Now, that should be celebrated!

The beginning of the song highlights a dangerous mindset:

“Keep your wits about you while you got ’em
‘Cause your wits are first to go while you’re problem-solving”

This is a dark post, but I do want to bring awareness to this epidemic.

For those who are struggling, ending your life does not solve the problem. Your pain and your hurt are real. It may feel absolutely impossible, but you can heal. Your life can be redeemed. This pain, it will be redeemed.

This is not the end of our story.

Day 14

Two weeks.

There’s a weight so heavy on my chest I feel like I can barely breathe. It feels like I am operating at 50% of my normal capacity, if that. It feels so heavy. What does that even mean? Why does it legitimately feel like there is a weight pressed against my lungs, collapsing them? How does that work? How does the body do that?

I thought we had something special, me and my mom. I thought we had a great relationship. Now I feel like I didn’t even know her. Who was this woman I spent so much time with? I thought she liked being with me, I thought she wanted to be in my life, I thought she wanted to be here. But in the end, she wanted to leave me. It wasn’t worth it for her to stay in my life. She didn’t want to see me grow up anymore. I thought we were going to be two old ladies together. I thought she wanted me. I thought she wanted me. Did she think I did not love her? Why weren’t we enough?

I hate my name. I’ve hated it for a long time. My mom gave me this name because she hoped so badly for me… what good did that do for her? It’s so cruel to be named Hope when it feels like so many people in my world are hopeless.

“Hopey, you’re my Hope. You make me believe that everything’s going to be okay and that we’re really going to make it.” That’s what my brother Patrick told me two days before he ended his life. Once he died, I really started to hate my name.

Before that, I was always a pessimist. It felt so ironic to be called “hope” when I so seldom experienced hope myself.

Now this? I hate my name. It feels so cruel tonight.

Why did I start writing these? I keep asking myself that. More precisely, why did I start publishing these? I’ve loved writing for my entire life. I used to write fantastical stories, dreaming worlds late into the night when I was just a young girl. Then in puberty I started writing to cope with my ever-changing world. Now, I almost exclusively write when my emotions cloud my head, spill out of my eyes, and pours from an ink pen onto a blank page.

So, why did I start publishing these?

After Patrick died, I seriously isolated myself. I did not answer my phone for over a month and I had no desire to make contact with the outside world.

In our American culture, grief is so private. Suicide is beyond taboo, and people in mourning may be given three days of bereavement leave. Three days… how pathetic. Our culture almost treats grief like something to be ashamed of or to be quickly gotten over. Because of this, death and grief are seldom discussed and very few — especially at my ripe old age of 27 — people have much of a framework/understanding of mourning and grief.

Grief shouldn’t isolate. It should be something that pulls us all together, something that makes us stop and hold one another closer, something that prompts us to change our lives for the better.

As my friend Olivia Chancellor always says “Alone is a lie.” Maybe if I share my thoughts, others will have the courage to share theirs too. Thoughts can be scary and painful and feel so isolating, but alone is a lie. “Everything that is exposed by the light becomes visible–and everything that is illuminated becomes light,” Ephesians 5:13. It’s only when we share our darkest thoughts that we are truly able to heal from them.

I want to live. I want to have a life full of beauty and joy and pain and wonder. I want to experience it all. I want to be fully present. I want to experience life to the full in every possible way, no matter how it hurts.

I don’t want to move on from this. I will be carrying this for the rest of my life, and I want to grow and learn to carry this with grace and love and even hope. I want to live, and I want to live well.

Day 13

I screamed a lot in my car today. Just… screamed. “Mom!! Why did you do this?” Through sobs, “Mom, please come back, please come back!”… “Mom!!” I cried out in anguish.

But it’s useless, she’s gone.

My mind really does not want to believe it. I meet her in dreams, only to wake and feel her light snuffed out of the world. She was sitting on our living room couch in last night’s dream, and I was asking her why she wouldn’t join us at the table. I don’t remember what she answered, I just remember telling her that it did not make sense and that she should join the rest of us at the table because we love her and want to be with her.

Denial’s amazing protectiveness still shields me, for the most part, but everything feels so heavy. I feel the horror and the sadness deeply about once a day: I’ll cry, I’ll protest. I really wish this was not a part of my life. I wish this was not the end of hers. I wish it so badly that denial and numbness creep back in and calmness returns.

I feel like an outside observer to my own feelings and my own thought process. I feel them, objectively define them, and then move on.

Each day, the sadness grows and strengthens. I feel the denial slowly slipping away, and I fear when my mind allows me to fully grasp the situation. How much is this really going to hurt when my mind finally lets me feel it? It already hurts so much, but the pain will become vivid soon, and it will never, ever end.

I have so much life left to live. It feels like my life has only begun, and I will feel this sorrow for all of my days.

I’m not angry with God, though I would like to be. Anger is such an easy emotion to experience — anger is easy to fuel and easy to calm — it’s not as ambiguous as sorrow. It feels like it would be easy to be angry at God, but my every need has been met. People have been so generous and caring and kind — I can’t be angry when I perceive such marvels from God amidst all this pain.

I am confused: I will never understand why God allowed this nor why God did not intervene, but perhaps God had intervened several times. I will never know how many times my mother was close ending her life but chose not to because someone intervened. I just wish she would have told us, as I am sure we all do.

She had so many people who loved her deeply, and she could have reached out to any of us. That is a collective hurt those closest to her bear and must work through for the rest of our lives, and many of us have so much life yet to be lived.

Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

Presence is best 🤍. Be here, share here, create space here.

Love each other well.

We used to love sharing a Chili’s molten lava cake

Day 12

This is actually my second “Day 12” post: I deleted the first one because out of my wounds, I may have wounded another. As I heard John Mark Comer state, “our wickedness is fueled by our wounds.” I was childish in venting my frustrations with a person to the public, and I owe that individual and anyone who read my first post an apology. This is not the time, place, or space to address something of that nature. Especially because I know that person is hurting, too.

It’s heavy. It’s burdensome. Thoughts and sentences and simple human interaction, right now, is hard for me, it’s hard for my family, and it’s hard for our entire community. We all need grace, and grace in abundance.

Most of the time, I simply feel sick. I have no appetite [but don’t worry, I am eating], I feel nauseous and out-of-it and sad. I feel grateful, I feel sad, and I feel numb. Humans are so complex, how is it that we feel so much at the same time?

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We have been provided for in every way from the generous people from our church: “Give us this day our daily bread,” comes alive when each meal we have has been provided, with each meal perfectly supplying enough for my family each day. That has been beautiful and heartwarming and uplifting. People have been the hands and feet of Jesus each day, serving us, providing for us, ministering to us, and caring for us, and it has been astonishing and incredible to experience.

I cannot over-emphasize how grateful I am for our community and how in-awe I am for how we have been treated and loved.

I’ve never felt more provided for or taken care of than I do right now. “God is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit” Psalm 34:18. I believe that now more than ever, despite my inevitable deconstruction. I believe it’s far easier to dismiss God than to have faith and trust in him under circumstances like these — this is when faith and trust becomes real.

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Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning — Specifically Suicide Survivors

Saying “It doesn’t matter how they died,” is dismissive. When someone takes their own life, there is no natural cause, no illness, and no accident to blame.

Someone bereaved by suicide can only blame the person who committed the act, and his/her self. Suicide creates an arduous mental cycle. For me, it plays out something like this…

• I’m angry at my mom, she did this to me

• I’m confused. Why didn’t she reach out? Anyone would have helped her, I would have helped her

• I’m sad. She was in so much pain. What was she hopeless about? Why was she despairing?

• I’m confused and wounded. I don’t know what it’s like to have or to lose a child, but I cannot imagine she would give up life with her three living children because she was so desperate to be with her son. Her son, my brother, who also took his life.

• I’m sad, and I’m guilty. Did she know I loved her?

• I blame myself. Why didn’t I notice her? Why didn’t she want to confide in me? What did I miss?

And the cycle repeats. These are thoughts are examples of how suicide survivors think and process this type of death: grief from natural causes does not require this mental load. Thus, when one says that “it doesn’t matter how she died,” it points to their ignorance of the psychological impact and damage suicide survivors suffer.

Yes, all death is painful and comparing types of deaths certainly does not help anyone, but please try to understand the differences between a natural death and someone taking their own life.

Acknowledge the suicide survivor’s pain, and acknowledge your own pain. Vulnerability leads to life, bypassing of any type (spiritual bypassing, avoidance, denial, etc) leads to death. Take care of yourself — bypassing is not worth it.