This is a rough draft I have done for a newspaper article. Its about being a Survivor of the suicide of a loved one. It was damn hard to write, felt sad in a good way. Anyway this my story so feel free to comment or ask questions. To be a victim of a victim, To be a witness to a loved one’s fall, To try to help, but be ignored, To be left holding nothing, Bearing the heavy burden of guilt and grief That cuts and rends to the core. For those that choose to end their life; they leave behind people that love them, people who care, people who till the day they die will be left asking why? No why did the person do that, but why was what I did not enough? Why could I have not helped more? Why did I not notice, do more or magically save the day? Why was my love not enough? For survivors of suicide we walk a strange and twisted path filled with guilt, anger, self-doubt and stigma. A survivor of suicide is a person who has had loved ones or close family members complete a suicide. Survivors of suicide live with the scars and burden created by the suicide of their loved ones. I use the word we intentionally, as I myself am a survivor of my younger brother’s choice to end his life. So this article I am sharing is my story and it is my hope that in sharing my story I can give voice to others who have experienced similar tragedy. I will not go into too many details about his death, suffice to say after a year of suffering from a deteriorating mental state, for which he had been hospitalized a number of times, my baby brother took the decision to end his life rather than live with a declining mental state. As far as reasons go, this was a good reason. Many who choose to end their lives face helplessness and hopelessness; they have at least in their heads good reasons for their ultimate decision. I am not going to expound on the reasons for suicide that is for another forum, here I am focusing on being the ones left to pick up the pieces after his suicide. I remember that I was in the library in University for a meeting when I got the call, they didn’t want to tell me but I guessed. And time just seemed to stop and I went numb inside. Suicide in my family, my brother is dead, I knew it but I could not believe it. I iced over, locked my feelings away, went into automatic pilot and somehow got home without crashing the car. He had jumped, and the whole way back, hell for months after that it played in my head, his pain, the demons inside his head that had driven him to end his life. There were legitimate psychiatric names for those demons, but it did not matter, his reasons did not matter, he was my little brother; that was all that mattered. Didn’t we love him enough? Didn’t he love us enough? What else could we have done? Whether it made sense or not these questions borrowed their way into my heart and mind. I am a pretty string person, so I think I hid it well, but at work I was self-sabotaging, I could not relax even when I was out with friends, and I think I strained the muscles on my face smiling and pretending that I was alright. “He took his life, he was not in a sound mental state. Perhaps this was better than losing even more of his mental ability, we had done everything we could. We, no I had done my best. There was nothing I could have done to stop him.” This is what I told myself, and all of these things were accurate and true. You know what? Just because your head knows something does not mean that the heart does not hurt and ache and feel guilty. All the logic in the world fails when someone you love, ends their own life. So for almost six months I pretended nothing was wrong, when everything was wrong on the inside. There is a stigma related to suicide that silences, people don’t know what to say, they don’t visit as much. When they do visit they tip-toe around the subject and do not meet your eye. I did my best to make them think it was alright, to minimize the impact of the event. But when I came out of this period there were people I knew where my friends and those whom I distance myself from. Possessing some level of self-awareness, I knew that I could not continue as I was. I applied and thankfully got an offer for higher studies overseas. So I quit my job and well in reality I ran away to Australia to further my studies and more importantly to reconnect with me. When my younger brother died, I lost a part of me and with all the anger and guilt that came with that loss, I literally had not grieved. When I was finally by myself in Australia I began working with reconnecting with myself, to finally let thaw the huge ice block I had put emotions in the day I learned of his death. It was hard and it was painful and it was long, but the emotions thawed out and I allowed myself to grieve and heal. Many people assume that to heal I had to forgive my brother, they could not be further from the truth. Given his situation, forgiving him was not that hard. What was hard was what I had to do before I could forgive him. To forgive him I first had to forgive myself. Why? Why would I need to forgive myself we had done all the right things, we had got him help, there was a mental condition. Yes to all of this, but we was and still is my beloved baby brother. I could not save him. That hurts and still hurts to this day. I had to forgive myself for being human and limited in my ability to influence and do things for him. I had to let go of the guilt that life goes on without him. I work in the mental health line and that I could not help him burned like acid. I had to forgive myself for being human, for being overwhelmed and for all the mixed emotions and thoughts that flitted through my head when he was at his worst in the hospital. And no, with the sigma that comes with suicide I could not even begin to deal with it here in Malaysia. The people I had talked to at that time didn’t know how to help and even the few counsellors I met here were unable to help, truth be told some made it worse by bringing in a heavy dogmatic rhetoric. Anyway in Australia I worked on myself, I got involved in counselling groups and I got therapy. I never took any kind of medication, just a lot of good therapeutic support. The journey was meandering and perhaps longer than I would have liked but I did heal and personally I’d like to believe I have come out stronger from the experience. Anyway for those like me, who are survivors of suicide, what can I say? Firstly you are not alone, the experience leaves a person feeling cut off and silenced by the stigma, but increasingly there are people and therapists who understand and are skilled in supporting others in their journeys. Secondly we are human, there was nothing, absolutely nothing more that you could have done to stop the person for completing their action, they did not want to be helped. We had no power to stop people, we can only support people who seek to be helped. Forgive yourself, care for yourself and for all your limitations love yourself, because you deserve to be cared for and loved as much as anyone else. So forgive yourself is the third thing. Finally seek help. Now in Malaysia there are those who know how to support survivors of suicide. The forced silence of the stigma is toxic, get help and let the dark shadows slowly fade in the light of a new day. I was traumatized by my brother’s death, I am no longer, I choose to allow myself to recover and I have. I moved from thinking about his death, to remembering his life and the joys, laughter and tears that we shared for 22 years. Till the day I die I will carry a scar shaped like my little brother in my heart. It’s a scar I now carry with a lot of love and a little bit of sadness. He was my baby brother, I love him and I will miss him always.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 09:11:07 +0000
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