That was the subject line of the lengthy text message I got this morning from a friend. He was informed this morning that his partner's nephew had committed suicide...he was in the disbelief stage and I could tell by what he wrote that the hamster wheel had started spinning.
He said he reached out to me cause he was feeling slightly lost...He knew about Ian and knew I'd understand...and I have to tell you, as shitty as this is, I'm really glad he has me to come to...cause I know what it was like to have no one understand...it was lonely and isolating and I felt an overwhelming sense of abandonment...from everyone.
So today has been... hazy...
It's bad enough that it's happened to you.. one of those things most never fathom would happen to them...but then to find out that it's happened to a friend of yours not long after you have just experienced it yourself is a total mindfuck.
My poorly constructed sutures were weakened by this news...mourning Ian and feeling helpless for my friend...who so very unfortunately, like me, won't quite be the same now.
February 19, 2011
February 16, 2011
Finally - Validation.
"I just remember feeling...like everybody else in the world was functioning going through their life...and I... I had a landmine that went off in mine..and I just felt like everybody else was different than me... I was different from everybody else... I was not connected.. I was...nobody understood how I felt.. no one. I didn't feel like no one cared..but I just felt like...just sort of a foggy..you just..and then when you're alone...when you're alone you're so apart.. when you're alone you're not part of the group...you know, the world was meant to go in twos and you're a one..."
- Kim Bermel
An Isolation Unchosen from Andew Maclean on Vimeo.
I stumbled onto this video one night when I was searching the keyword suicide... I had sat in on a Survivors of Suicide webinar - which was only days after I was informed of Ian's passing. Perhaps I was too much in shock or confused to find any relation to what was shared there...and no offense to them, or their story, or what they feel/felt...but it felt to me, at the time..too staged.
Listening to what Kim describes in this video her thoughts/feelings following her husbands suicide, I completely broke down.....for the first time...someone explained exactly how I felt....they knew...finally. My therapist says it's validation. It's weird to me because it feels good to be 'validated' - but I feel so horrible at the same time that anyone else.. anyone...would have to know what this is like.
A lot of people don't know, but Ian had attempted suicide twice in front of me while we were together living in Seattle...I took them seriously at the time, but he was also struggling with a serious drug habit - I guess I dismissed that it would ever happen again after he had been clean so long...and certainly not the way it happened.
I remember watching a documentary about Kurt Cobain some months after me and Ian had split...and I remember thinking... wow... it sounds like they are telling Ian's story...it's honestly really eerie..but at the end...I remember thinking.. Ian would never do that. Never. I was wrong.
I only got his death certificate a couple weeks ago...that was hard - to read 'self inflicted gunshot to the head' as cause of death. I get the feeling that people think I should be over it since we were no longer together - but he consumed 7 years of my life..we were only split 1 yr before this happened and I still cared about him as a person...that never goes away. I would have done anything for him if he would have just reached out to me.
I did a lot of the hamster wheel thinking that Kim talks about - including trying to find meaning in coincidences...i.e. the last time he txt me was exactly 5 months before his took his life..to the day... The night he did it, Freshy got stung by a scorpion...trying to find any and all connections...blaming myself for what happened...like if I hadn't come into his life he'd be happy and this wouldn't have happened...if I had just let him stay with me... ugh. it's disgusting how much you'll beat yourself up.
I can say I'm doing a lot better - trying to refocus my thoughts/energies on other things - as Kim said... "...everything's hard...but not impossible.... I'm so hopeful..."
- Kim Bermel
An Isolation Unchosen from Andew Maclean on Vimeo.
I stumbled onto this video one night when I was searching the keyword suicide... I had sat in on a Survivors of Suicide webinar - which was only days after I was informed of Ian's passing. Perhaps I was too much in shock or confused to find any relation to what was shared there...and no offense to them, or their story, or what they feel/felt...but it felt to me, at the time..too staged.
Listening to what Kim describes in this video her thoughts/feelings following her husbands suicide, I completely broke down.....for the first time...someone explained exactly how I felt....they knew...finally. My therapist says it's validation. It's weird to me because it feels good to be 'validated' - but I feel so horrible at the same time that anyone else.. anyone...would have to know what this is like.
A lot of people don't know, but Ian had attempted suicide twice in front of me while we were together living in Seattle...I took them seriously at the time, but he was also struggling with a serious drug habit - I guess I dismissed that it would ever happen again after he had been clean so long...and certainly not the way it happened.
I remember watching a documentary about Kurt Cobain some months after me and Ian had split...and I remember thinking... wow... it sounds like they are telling Ian's story...it's honestly really eerie..but at the end...I remember thinking.. Ian would never do that. Never. I was wrong.
I only got his death certificate a couple weeks ago...that was hard - to read 'self inflicted gunshot to the head' as cause of death. I get the feeling that people think I should be over it since we were no longer together - but he consumed 7 years of my life..we were only split 1 yr before this happened and I still cared about him as a person...that never goes away. I would have done anything for him if he would have just reached out to me.
I did a lot of the hamster wheel thinking that Kim talks about - including trying to find meaning in coincidences...i.e. the last time he txt me was exactly 5 months before his took his life..to the day... The night he did it, Freshy got stung by a scorpion...trying to find any and all connections...blaming myself for what happened...like if I hadn't come into his life he'd be happy and this wouldn't have happened...if I had just let him stay with me... ugh. it's disgusting how much you'll beat yourself up.
I can say I'm doing a lot better - trying to refocus my thoughts/energies on other things - as Kim said... "...everything's hard...but not impossible.... I'm so hopeful..."
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