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thepatronsaintoffarewells · 1 year

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I lost ten people to suicides and overdoses before I turned 28, some I was closer with, others to a lesser degree, all that I wished that I had more time with. My sister had attempted. My mom had attempted. I had attempted. I had friends that were still using and lovers that made threats. It was very hard for me, at the time, to see a way through it all. I clung to my friends that remained. I wanted to erase all our collective grief and sadness. It felt like no one else wanted that, or no one else saw it like I did. It can be very hard, to love an unwell person so fiercely. It can be harder when that person is yourself.

There's a scene in a Robin Williams movie, What Dreams May Come, where his character journeys through the depths of hell to save his wife who had committed suicide. When he realizes that she won't leave on her own, he makes to stay there with her. I used to think that it was really beautiful to love someone like that. I think in my own life that I always wanted to be the kind of person who could stay and bear it. I didn't want to leave anyone alone. What I found in practice though, was that the more obstacles I cleared for a person, the more room they had to cause harm. They call it enabling, right? It went even further than that though. I wanted to experience it with them. I wanted to be able to let go and really feel things and maybe even wallow a bit. I wanted to get splitting drunk and numbingly high. I fantasized, sometimes, about being so awful that no one would miss me, like it would lessen the blow if I killed myself. But I'd feel so terrible and I could never really do it because I also wanted, so badly, to be loved.

I had a friend that I told everything to. We would go up to the bar and he would drink and I would spill my guts. We talked about really painful things like how when my ex had attempted after we broke up I was struck by the realization that I had never felt so loved. I told him I was suicidal. They say you're less likely to go through with it if you tell someone and I didn't really want to kill myself I just wanted everything else to quit. He cried into my hair after I drove him home that night saying over and over "I love you, please don't die." It's fucked, but it's one of my fondest memories from that point in my life.

I got my shit together, to a certain degree, by learning how to walk away and when to leave. There are a lot of people that I love or had loved that aren't in my life anymore. I had to learn how to let them go, how to say goodbye and be at peace with it. In the beginning, I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. You make peace at the funeral or you don't. I got mixed up wanting to save people I had already lost by sacrificing my own happiness to the people that were still there. The thought of losing anyone else was unbearable, but I learned that leaving is more than just self preservation, it's a gift to both parties.

People will make their own decisions and possibly find their own happiness with or without you. It's not that you aren't responsible for them (you also aren't) it's that you don't have enough control in the outcome. Picture it like being a passenger in a car. Someone else has control of the wheel, the gas, and the breaks. You can direct them as much as you like, but it is their hands and their feet that are making the decisions. You can beg them to not crash the car, or you can get out of the car and hope they have enough sense on their own not to crash. If you, like me, have been in many metaphorical car crashes it's more than grief at that point. It's an injury. You wont find an end to your grief until you figure out how to tend to your wounds.

Because sometimes you are the driver and it's your own decisions that may cause you to crash. Somewhere in me is still the 21 year old that wanted to kill herself. Sometimes, if I'm not careful, she'll surface. I can't be mad at her for it, I remember the things she went through and the things she did to feel like she had any control. I didn't always love her, but I think I'm learning to now. More importantly, I've learned that it's okay to leave her alone. It's okay to grow beyond her instead of joining her. She did fine, she made it just enough to make room for the person I am today, and I think if she was really here, she would thank me. Her friend had told her that she needed to learn how to hold her own hand, how to be her own solace first. That advice got her through a lot, but I think I would tell her now that it's also okay to let go.

I know you might be in different place and that there may not be as much time and distance between the parts of yourself you haven't yet learned how to love. Maybe you're in danger of crashing your metaphorical car, or a part of you wishes for it. It doesn't make you a bad person. We are all made up of complex experiences and thoughts. The people that love you will give you the space to air the worst parts of yourself and they will be there when you are done. I know because I've done those things and I am still very much loved. I have been destitute. I have been a drunk and abused drugs. I have wanted my own death. I have loved people that did not deserve it and been treated badly for it. I have treated those that loved me badly. When I was going through it, I was unable to see a future in which it would ever end. I thought I would always be grieving, that I would always be lonely. But at the end of all of that there was always something more. My sisters had their babies. It was the perfect day outside. My nieces and nephews were growing like weeds. An old friend had reached out. I had people that loved me, that supported me whether or not I needed them to.

The thing that has taken me the longest time to learn is how to be supported and how to be loved. I had a friend who was once very good at saying the things I needed to hear. He called me out on all my bullshit and, more than that, his love was the scaffolding that helped me repair myself. He told me once that the only thing holding me back was me. I grappled with that for a long time and even as I began to understand it, I was still angry. I hated myself for it, and then finally I looked back at the root of who I was before the loss and the anger and the shame. I found the pieces of myself that I had buried in an attempt to protect them. I found a person in me I could love and I watered her like a seed. Somewhere in you is that same seed. We can water it ourselves, and sometimes if you let the right person in, they can water it too.

#open letter #depression #substance abuse tw #suicide tw #loss #self love #growth #self help #advice

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