This past January I lost a friend to suicide. I don’t know how to express to you all what I’ve been feeling and thinking about it these past eight months, so I’m not going to talk about that here with the all of you, but I would like to share a post from the Alliance of Hope, an online community for those who have lost someone to suicide. This post pulled at my heart the first time I read it, and though it’s not the exact same situation as my own, I felt a deep sense of connection and understanding.
I’m sharing this with you all as a reminder that mental health is a huge concern and it’s hard to assess in college students. Take care of yourself, visit the counseling center at least once even if you feel fine, and ask your friends what they need from you every once in awhile-- not to say that you can “save” or heal them, but it helps to know that people are there.
“In January of 2015, I was going through what I thought was a lot. I had taken time off from school to work, I was moving into a new apartment, and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and how to do it; the typical college rap sheet of stress and uncertainty. When I got the phone call that one of my best friends had taken her own life, all of this was thrown into a chaos that I did not previously think was possible for someone my age. To make matters worse, it seemed that no one really knew how to comfort me.
There is no instruction manual that tells you how to get through the sudden loss of a loved one, especially when that loss is a suicide. It launches at you every negative emotion you can imagine at an intensity that no other tragedy has. The guilt, anger, and sadness that I felt was overwhelming and it shut me down. I felt like I hadn’t been supportive enough to save her, and I was inexplicably angry at her for not reaching out to me. More guilt came from the anger that I felt, and then came more anger at myself. This made me sensitive and irritable, and eventually led to me isolating myself. The people around me who knew MC because I was their mutual friend didn’t feel this loss at the magnitude that I did, and therefore got through it much more thoroughly than I ever will. They tried to use the manual for any other death, apologizing for my loss and telling me that it was okay. That I would be okay. At the time, I was not okay. And those words hurt. To be told that I would ever get through this pain was insulting and insensitive to me. Now, a year later, when people say the same things, I am able to recognize the place of care and concern that they are coming from instead of just feeling the sting of their words. But for those first few months, it isolated me. I grew apart from my boyfriend and some of the friends who weren’t experiencing the same feelings as me. I worked as a nanny for infants, so it was easy to go through a day of work without saying anything more than a summary of the day when the parents got home. I was seeing a therapist for an hour once a week, and that was really the most I talked about my loss to anyone outside of the friend group who had known MC for as long as I did. Although I craved the physical presence of my friends, I isolated myself mentally and emotionally.
In college, it is hard to recognize the stereotypical signs of depression and suicidal thoughts. When we go off to school and are on our own, it becomes much easier to make people believe that we’re okay. Attendance isn’t necessary in all of your classes, so no one makes a fuss if you miss a few in a row. Classwork is hard and time-consuming, so there is always an excuse to stay in your room all day. And partying is a part of the culture, so self-medicating with drugs and alcohol is almost expected, with common expressions of stress being statements like “wow, I need a drink” or “that class makes me want a Xanax.” And on top of that, getting help is HARD. It is scary to think about going to the school counselor, especially in a big school. When I thought about attending counseling at a big state school, I felt like I was going to be a burden. I was embarrassed that I was overwhelmed when there had to be people who needed the help more than me. I fell victim to the stigma that asking for help is weak, and that depression and anxiety are illnesses with a scale that measures how relevant my symptoms are compared to others with the same disease. I was lucky to have found a therapist before experiencing my loss, so I was not faced with the fear of opening up to a stranger. My biggest piece of advice to survivors of suicide my age, though, is to face that fear. Finding a therapist, a support group, or a school counselor who tells you that your feelings of guilt, anger, and sadness are valid is crucial to your recovery.
In the beginning, you need validation. You need to know that it is perfectly normal and okay to be angry, or feel guilty, or be so overwhelmed with sadness that you need time off from the rest of your life. This validation will make it easier to cope with your feelings and realize that this was the decision of someone who was in a lot of pain for a long time, and that they did not mean to hurt you or make you feel responsible. Their illness made them only able to see the immense pain of their own, and they could no longer choose to fight it. The pain of losing a loved one to suicide never goes away, and you are a different person after it happens. But time, routine, and the knowledge that you are now living for them can and will help you get used to your new normal. It will always hurt to think about what could have been, but you will get to a place where you can look back and laugh at the memories you have of a beautiful life with your loved one.”
-Lila M (http://forum.allianceofhope.org/threads/losing-som...)
