When there is nothing to say

It can be hard to see the world clearly after impossible losses. It’s as if a filter comes to rest on everything and alters how it all looks. Maybe that’s just me and how the losses affected me. Maybe it’s just my world that looks somehow blurred. I was slow to realize some of the changes but the reality is that everything has changed. Initially, it appeared to me that I just had trouble relating to people the way I had been able to relate. Trivial things mattered to me then. Now, my perspective won’t allow small things to feel big. Not anymore. Even when I try.

People can be so peopley.

After a loss, people struggle relating to the ones who feel the loss on a deep level. They don’t know what to say. They can tend to say the very wrongest (feels better to say it that way) things.

Add a suicide to mix or God forbid two back to back suicides and it seems to open the flood gates for all the wrong things to be said. Not only do people not know how to talk to you, but it would seem it’s almost as if suicide survival is communicable the way people seem to almost avoid suicide survivors.

I am a suicide survivor.

A suicide survivor is a loved one left behind when someone takes their own life. I read that the APA compares the trauma from the loss of a loved one to suicide is comparable to the trauma of surviving a concentration camp. I am inclined to believe that. Nothing is the same.

Survivor because there is a lot to work through and it feels like everything is focused on survival, the next breath, doing whatever it takes to keep going, keep moving forward. Survival, one breath in front of the other, one step in front of another, is really the means for surviving the suicide(s) of a loved one(s). Starting with dealing with the isolation resulting from people being peopley. People are so peopley. Navigating the lonely isolation of people just not getting it and their resultant avoidance. Not all. Some. I have had some champions who have stepped up to the plate in their beautiful ministry of presence. Thank you, friends. You have loved me to life.

You see, there are no words. There are absolutely no words.

1. There are no words.

So if you are saying words, they are the wrong ones.

2. You don’t know how I feel.

Even if your absent mother died of a drug overdose 200 miles away after a month of dying in the hospital without your knowledge and your (step)son died of a self inflicted gunshot wound, 50 days later on the very day of your mother’s memorial which you eulogized, you still don’t know how I feel. You only know how you feel. I don’t know how you feel. You shouldn’t say you know how I feel or the even more incorrect statement that you know exactly how I feel. You don’t. You can’t. Hell, I don’t even know how I feel.

3. I don’t care.

I don’t care about your thoughts on what happens to people who commit suicide or what you think God thinks of suicide or what you interpret the Bible says about suicide. I honestly don’t care and don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear how you will affirmatively stop suicide for your own child or loved one with your presence or stalking or whatever approach you plan to use, accidentally implying how I didn’t do enough to save mine (oops). Please do whatever it takes to stop it. I just don’t want to hear how you will do it because I am likely to tell you how that didn’t work for my loved ones and foil your plans. I pray your method works. I don’t want anyone to feel what I feel.

4. I don’t want to hear.

I don’t want to hear all the Scripture-based overly religious colloquialisms passively spoken to redirect me from your discomfort. I love God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are literally carrying me through this.

5. I just want you to sit quietly and be uncomfortable with me.

Just sit. Close your mouth and sit. Listen. Ask about my story. Let me share. Ask me how I do feel so you can perhaps understand better how I feel even if you can’t know how I feel.

Loss is hard. Just be present.

“When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” Job 2:11-13 NIV