Losing somebody close to your heart is something incomparable. There are no words that can make up for the gaping hole in your chest.
Losing someone to mental illness has even still a different degree of hurt. You never get over that feeling of not being there for them quite enough. Everybody will shove it down your throat that “it wasn’t your fault,” and that “there’s nothing you could have done.” Yet still, that's the thing that tears you apart.
Why can’t I just realize that if I had lost this person to cancer, the thought “I could've done more” would never have crossed my mind? It’s a confusing feeling where I understand that, but I can’t help to beat myself up over it. I think that’s how everybody feels in this situation.
With a physical, terminal illness, you can usually brace yourself for the passing. This is not by any means saying that it makes it any less of a tragedy, however, you have time to say goodbye. When you get the call, or get home from school or work or running errands to find out what has happened in this case scenario, you aren't prepared. No matter for how long you thought it might happen, you're never prepared when it actually does.
People never take into account that people can pass from things other than a physical illness.
“My mom actually passed away.”
“Oh did she have cancer?”
“No.”
“Then what was it?”
… as if that's the only way you can pass. You want to tell the truth on how they passed but you know the judgmental minds of people who have never experienced such a thing. You want to pound it into every single person’s head that you meet that we need to be doing more and that we need to be reaching out more, but people genuinely just do not get it.
Losing someone who was depressed, you feel like you should’ve tried to make each day brighter for them. You think about every fight and every single action that made it seem like you may not have loved them as much as you actually did. You think about how badly they were suffering in their own minds, and it turns your stomach to knots.
Losing someone to an addiction, whether it be drugs, alcohol, or being addicted to depriving themselves of food, you think about what you could’ve done differently. How you could’ve encouraged them differently to be successful in overcoming their addiction. You think “why couldn’t I have done a better job convincing them that life was worth getting better for?”
It’s sickening truly, to feel like this. You beat yourself up over and over, then you finally convince yourself that you did the best you could, and then you think “well no, I should have done better still.”
I truly believe that when you lose someone to mental illness, you’ll never completely be okay with the way that they passed, because these thoughts will always come back when you start thinking about that person. Life doesn’t always make sense, and no matter how badly you want it to, you can’t make it. Sometimes the only thing left to do is just accept what has happened, and often that’s the hardest part.
“Heaven couldn’t wait for you.”
