BROKEN FROM SUICIDE

Nearly two years ago one of my closest friends killed herself in a horrible way. I still love her and am so glad she was in my life for over 25 years. I also know she struggled immensely with hormone imbalance, anxiety and depression. However, one of the the things her family and I, and other friends, feel is that she never would have done it if she had known the horrendous impact it would have on all of us. I am only writing this from my perspective, but I know her husband and children have been/ are going through far more than I am emotionally and physically and I know that the way she died has also had a negative financial impact on her family.

 

When I first found out she was having resuscitation and was asked to pray for her I went into 'everything will be okay mode' and prayed and believed all would be well. However the message from her husband with the simple words 'she is dead (and then my name)' shocked me to the core and my physical and mental reaction was just to start screaming. After at least 10 minutes of screaming I went into numbness and found it hard to process anything, but tears constantly ran down my eyes. When I my brain did work all I could think of was how and why. I spoke to her husband within 10 minutes of receiving the news and I openly received all the information about how he found her, what she looked like when he found her and how he moved her to enable the resuscitation.

 

Within the next two weeks my brain and body was all over the place - sometimes crying, sometimes frozen and many, many times having the image of the way she died taking over my thoughts and what I could see. I made it through and helped with the funeral- helping make sure there were pictures of her from our Uni days with a variety of different friends, writing a prayer, speaking to her family and supporting them.

 

The funeral was sad, but beautiful- she was an amazing, caring and loving lady and this was made clear in all that was said and done. However, the severe depression started when I got home. I lost my appetite entirely, I felt extremely flat, exhausted and like the colour had gone out of everything. I tried my hardest to get up and drove to a staff conference but my body started shaking and my chest hurt so much. I still had no appetite and those horrendous images still took over everything when ever they came into my thought process. I had absolutely no control of what my body was doing and what was happening in my brain.

 

I knew that I wasn't right and rang the doctors who put me on anti-depressants, which helped with the depression and sadness but didn't stop the constant triggers, shock reactions and images of how she died. To start with everything reminded me of the way she died and made me ill. I am not saying exactly how she died, but here are some examples of what may trigger people after suicide. Someone has shot themself- the term 'let's have a shot' linking to alcohol, the use of the term shot whilst playing ball. Someone has hung themself- the game of hang man, the term hang on, clothes hanging on a line. Someone has died from an overdose of pills- any medication that can be seen and the term 'it is a bitter pill to swallow'.

 

I also still felt horrendously sad and out of control of my emotions whenever I came up to my period and it was at this time when my own brain started to say things such as 'I want to die'. This really shocked me as I had never had this before, but when I looked it up unfortunately it is common occurrence after you lose someone close to you- especially if it is via suicide. One quote from www.getselfhelp.co.uk that I found helpful for my understanding of this was “Suicidal thoughts can happen when we experience too much pain, without having enough resources to cope”. It is nearly two years later and I am still on anti- depressants. I have had two different types of therapy including Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing and am continuing to have EMDR to calm my mind when triggers come up. If you are thinking your suicide may be the best thing for other people, or that you want to die and it won't have an long lasting effect on people who know you and love you please know that you are mistaken. It really hurts- far more than grief from natural death. The charity Survivors of Bereavement by suicide' write that "Bereavement by suicide shares characteristics with other bereavements and it is also different – it can bring an intensity and range of emotions and physical reactions which may be unfamiliar, frightening and uncontrollable".

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My beautiful friend should have been honest with her family about how she was feeling, she should have talked to the doctor about HRT, she should have been honest at the hospital when she went in- even if this did mean she would need to be sectioned for a short while. She should have realised that her making the choice to kill herself would mean that lots of people she loved would be scarred for life emotionally.