I find that I often write ‘to’ Liam, rather than about him. And that the focus is largely about me and how I feel. But actually, that’s all there is in me at the minute. Just me and my thoughts. I find I have little space for anything or anyone else. The thoughts are just so consuming. How are the kids holding up? Yeah, I don’t know. Okay, I guess. I’m probably the wrong person to ask. About anything. Ever. Especially my kids.
From the moment you died, I knew, deep down in my gut that I could not go on. It was like I was just hanging onto this life by a tattered thread until I worked out my own exit plan. I needed to make sure your brother and sister were okay, We’d talked about this and you’d agreed that you would be responsible for them if anything were to happen to me. I didn’t have a will, or life insurance. I would have to look in to all of this. And I did. I also looked into ‘quick and painless ways to die’, collected paracetamols from various shops and stashed them in the car ready. There was no other way that I could see.
I wrote suicide notes in what used to be my gratitude journal. All that time I spent thanking the universe for my blessings, what a joke. I remember our conversations about the law of attraction and quantum physics. The first entry in my gratitude journal was how grateful I was for my kids. 10 pages in I wrote how sorry I was for all of this in my suicide notes. I just had no choice.
Anyway, despite my best efforts, 5 days after your funeral, I was interrupted 2 hours into my quest to join you and I was taken to hospital. I couldn’t even do that right. I remember the paramedics words to me on the night you died, ‘you are going to be okay. This is the worst day of your life but no other day will be as bad as this one, there will be better days.’ He was so very wrong. They are all worse days; worse and worse still, some days maybe not quite the absolute worst. Those days in hospital after the overdose were definitely worse still.
I felt sick and ashamed and I felt so guilty. Guilt that this had happened to you and I couldn’t stop it. Guilt that I had put your brother and sister through this after all they were already going through. What the hell happened to us? I also felt so god damn annoyed that it hadn’t worked and I was still here, dragging around an empty shell of who I once was in this body that I no longer recognised. I did not want to carry on without you. I could not survive this pain and the weight of these intense feelings.
I felt annoyed at the staff in the hospital who didn’t care. Annoyed at the support from mental health services. But lets face it, what could anyone do? There was no ‘fix it’ button on this shit show.
And that’s the thing here, no one can do anything to fix this. There is nothing that anyone can say that can make this situation and better. And I think, for me, this is what dampened out the flickering light of any hope I had left in me. People say it will get easier with time, that people can and do go on to live their lives and feel joy again, to stop feeling guilty as it’s unhelpful, to get up and get motivated and eat. Like I don’t know what I need to be doing. I know full well what I should be doing and what isn’t helpful and if there was a helping of motivational boosting elixir that could also eradicate unwanted and intrusive thoughts then I’d be first in the queue for it.
I don’t want to relive every single moment of that night, every vision, every smell, very sound, every second of my waking day. I don’t want to see that last image of you over and over, viewing the horrific scene like a bystander in some out of body experience. I don’t want to taste that night in my food and in my drinks, hear the sirens ringing in my ears or experience thoughts that seem so real and loud that they physically and painfully manipulate and distort my brain, but it happens regardless. All the time.
Maybe this is just how grief manifests itself when someone is bereaved by suicide. I am just trying to process what the hell happened to my child, to my life, to our family’s life. I’ve lost our lives and our futures and all hope has been kicked right out of me. I can not navigate this intense grief storm.
I’m pretty sure no thought or behaviour could be considered unusual when you are dealing with this kind of trauma. After 10 weeks of fighting to stop the crazy, I think maybe I need to just let it come. To acknowledge that I what I am experiencing can never be anything but crazy. Of course this indescribable loss could have the ability to lead to feelings of completely insanity. I think you’d actually be crazy to think it wouldn’t.
The psychiatrist said I am depressed because I ‘still feel this way’. I’m no expert in mental illness or psychiatric disorders but I’d disagree. I wonder if he’s the crazy one. The whole world’s crazy. Maybe this isn’t even real.
Not This Ending. 