"My father's story is my story"
A while ago I read a sentence that really made a difference to me. It said that in reality, humans are not made of atoms, we are made of stories . I allowed myself the freedom to interpret that everything we experience and feel throughout our lives is what we end up taking with us when we leave. What's the point of knowing and being part of the environment, if you don't take a little piece of each one with you when you stop existing? My name is Júlia, I'm 28 years old and I'm a nurse. No one, when we're little, tells us that life, which is full of magnificent stories, also brings us some not so beautiful ones. Small arguments that come together to end up forming a story that only we have the power to decide what ending it will have.
My father, Papa, committed suicide when I was eighteen . I had just started university and I remember that “when everything happened” I just wished that everything would stop. When I woke up, I didn’t understand how the world could keep turning: the shops opened their shutters, the newspapers published news and the classes at the university continued as normal. A friend told me that if the world didn’t keep turning around us, we would never find another way out . We would never see light come in through any windows again and we wouldn’t try to open any more doors. This helped me to such an extent that I went with the flow of everything around me. I decided to try to catch the rhythm that life imposed on me so as not to collapse, because I felt that, if I fell at that moment, I would hardly be able to get up again. I was living outside the house, outside the nest as they say, and this made it easier for me not to deny it, but to avoid it. I convinced myself that it was an accident, an involuntary act in a moment of maximum weakness. With time and some wonderful therapy, I realized how wrong I was.
If I am writing this, it is because one day my father taught me that I should always pay attention to the small details . It would be very unfair to him to talk about his disorder without you knowing a brief history of his history. He was a very brave, joking, intelligent and cultured person. He achieved everything that life proposed to him and, as we all do by mistake, he told himself that he could do everything. We cannot do everything and, if only it were missing, nothing would happen. He was a person who left his mark and that everyone wanted to have by his side, because he added. He added lessons to you so that, without wanting to, you could enjoy the great moments . I had suffered from some other depression during my childhood, but due to ignorance I never got around to worrying. A one-time thing, we said, and not even the psychiatrists saw it coming.
I remember not daring to talk to anyone outside the house about what was happening to my father and, although with my mother and sister it had always been an open and even easy subject, few other people knew what was happening. No one at school had told me that depression could be so aggressive and so lethal . I remember his last days as the ultimate exponent of sadness, collapse and, above all, fatigue. Tired of suffering.
He was my father and I have never met anyone like him. He was faithful to his principles until the very end, even when he saw no point in continuing or an end to the suffering, and he decided to stop. Perhaps he saw that he no longer had a place here or that his pain was so great that we could neither measure it, nor solve it, nor encompass it. And he decided to take the pain with him to the other side, with the possible mistake that that pain dragged him along.
Stigma adds to the pain of loss
At first people wondered: "How could he do it, if he had everything?" And that's the big mistake of the story. I felt that apart from dealing with the loss of my father, the grief and the shock, I had to manage the "shame" or "anger" about what others would think of him. I knew that most people would wonder what kind of person he leaves behind two teenage daughters, and all I could think about was how wrong they were. It's hard, and above all tiring, to have to manage so many bad emotions and, above all, emotions that you were never taught existed. I found it very unfair that he left with this very wrong image that we all have when someone commits suicide. Maybe that's why I'm writing this, who knows. What I do know is that if we don't start talking about it, the people who suffer from it, the protagonists and their families, will always be marginalized.
I felt that apart from dealing with the loss of my father, the grief and shock, I had to manage the "shame" or "anger" about what others would think of him.
Luckily, at home, in a small committee, we felt free to talk about it normally. With my mother and Gemma, my little sister, we made an indestructible pineapple . At certain moments, we even said out loud: "Wow, dad would be happy here." And we smiled. Because he had already cried enough. I think there is no more beautiful tribute than having him present. We also never felt guilty about anything, and at least we avoided the question: "What didn't I see?" This gave more room to the pain and anger of the initial shock, but what do you want me to tell you, the guilt must be exhausting.
Keys to preventing suicidal behavior
Learning to forgive
During these more than ten years I have had stages of everything. For a while I was living it a bit as a third person, I felt it close, but the pain was so uncontrollable, so deep, so furious, that I avoided it. Until I exploded. I started individual therapy nine years after his death, and this individual therapy led me to know and do something I never thought I would do: group therapy .
For a year, this has not only helped me understand the why but also the what of things. I have taken the frying pan by the handle and been able to flip the omelet well. And you never know what was on the other side! In the end, we have so many perspectives, it's just a matter of choosing the right eyes. A look that allows you to see things in a way that helps you live peacefully.
Knowing and understanding that he will never have to apologize to me because I know he tried until the last moment and finding a place for him without that place destroying me inside has been a victory for me.
One of the things that scared me the most was never being able to forgive him , especially not knowing how to forgive him. How could I allow someone to abandon us like that? How selfish, right? But over time and with help I have managed to legitimize his death within myself and, in doing so, I feel that he has become someone more worthy who deserves to be respected. Knowing and understanding that he will never have to ask me for forgiveness because I know that he tried until the last moment, and finding a place for him without that place destroying me inside has been one of the most beautiful victories I will ever achieve. I have understood that it is a decision that is often meditated, voluntary on the part of the disorder, and above all, avoidable.
The necessary attention for people who have lost someone to suicide
I don't know where or how the key is that allows you to open the right door, the one that, while the world is spinning, you realize they had put it for you. I don't think we have to try hard to find it either, since we build this key ourselves as we go along. The passing of the years has helped me understand that while time can't heal everything, it does manage to make things a little easier. The months of therapy have helped me trust myself more , I've dared to externalize the anxiety and anger I felt in a flatter and, even, sweet way for those around me, and I've learned not to feel jealous of the people who love me, but who have everything. In a way, I had it too, and I continue to have it, although in a very different way than we are used to.
The importance of asking for help
What my father did helped me understand that if at any point in my life I notice that something is not working, I have to ask for help . Because, although we are faithful to our thoughts, sometimes these thoughts can betray us. So we cannot allow ourselves to overlook anything, to say something like: "it will happen to me, it's just a bad streak". Because in order to be bold, and perhaps cowardly at the same time, the balance we have is not constant and sometimes it needs a little push from someone outside to help us look at everything from a different perspective. Wow, let's turn the tables.
Seeing it more calmly, and especially in the first person, I realized that if I wanted to understand my father's death, I had to talk about suicide normally , and it helped me a lot to research and learn about depression. Coming to the conclusion that my goal is not to understand why he did it, but to understand that suffering can become unbearable. And suffering, in different exponents, can be treated.
What my father did helped me understand that if at any point in my life I notice that something is not working, I need to ask for help.
Now, I try to keep the memories alive for him, I want to fight for him, and I know that I will live for him. Because the battle can be lost, but the war is worth winning, for me and my family. I am happy because I no longer have to connect with the pain in order to connect with him , and it was when I opened my mind a little more, when I managed to make visible the small details that assure me that he is still, in a way, present, taking care of me and alerting me that everything in this life happens, except love.
What to do if someone close to you has suicidal thoughts?
Doing this whole process is not easy at all, but it is liberating. As my psychologist said, I have been emptying my backpack, little by little, so as not to lose my balance. Now I feel rested, I understand some of the behaviors I had more, and I will not deceive you, the sadness, in a way, has stayed with me. I hope and wish that, just like the anger, it will change form, so that the day comes when all I have left is to miss him.
At first I said that I think we are made of little stories. He had a very big and important one, and he has left an indelible legacy . He was a brave person, very brave in fact, who left us everything he knew for a fight that they don't teach us how to win. But, in a way, I feel lucky, because my first eighteen years have two different stories, one as an experience and the other as a memory. And for me, that, for now, is enough.
This testimony is possible thanks to After Suicide - Survivors Association (DSAS).
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