What suicide does to your psyche

My father killed himself.  Actually, he shot himself in the head with his father's gun.  Right through the palate.

Right when I am coming into a time in my life that I can say what I need to say, to the people I need to say it to, I am having to be silent on this issue.  I really don't like it.  I am not sure what it is about the above statements that scares people so much.

Yes, it is an ingracious way to die.  I really don't think that is the problem though.  I think it is our society's fear of mental illness and what they believe the ramifications are if you have a family member who kills himself.

Does that make my family crazy?  Well, yes, and no.  When someone you love commits suicide, you go over and over in your head what you could have done.  You rehash over and over again the events that lead up to the death.  And then you beat yourself up for what you didn't do.  And the kicker is, unless you have people who understand to talk to about it, you are not going to discuss your process with anyone.

When our father committed suicide, my sister and I were unknowingly initiated into a club.  In case you didn't know, there is a club out there of people who have had a family member die by suicide.  Our first person to talk to us about it was the woman at the funeral home who set up the internment and lettering on the grave.  She had been through a loved one's suicide, and she said that people will come forward once they know.

That is the other thing about not being able to talk about the manner in which your parent dies.  If others don't know, your support doesn't show up.  I have been surprised by the number of people who have approached or talked to me about their own losses from suicide.  One of my friends has become one of my very good friends, now that we have unfortunately suffered the same loss.

You also lose a lot in the process.  Suddenly you are part of a group that understands, and everyone outside of that group does not.  Your closest friend in the world really doesn't understand because they haven't been through what you are going through.  Suicide affects you for the rest of your life, because family members are left wondering what they could have done for a long time, sometimes until their own death.

Like another parent's death, you start to live more.  You start to want to do things that you were afraid to do because you know life is finite.  You start to appreciate others and life more.  If your parent was mentally ill, you really look at yourself and your mental quirks and try to figure out if there is a solution to any problems you inherited.

If your parent died by suicide there is a darker side to the equation.  When someone complains about bouncing a check, or their husband coming home late, or missing an appointment, there is a side of you that says, "I'm sorry, my father shot himself in the head and I am still dealing with that.  What exactly is your problem??"  It may look callous, but it is reality.  The consequences of grieving a suicide are much deeper than what appears on the surface.

From what I know my father's road into mental illness started with a mental break when I was three.  He was hallucinating and paranoid and thought people were coming to kill him.  He tried to commit suicide three times when I was a tween.  From what I understand the first attempt put him in the hospital and out of our home because he was supposed to be watching me and my sister.

There were nuances to his mental illness that were clues he was considering attempting suicide, that I didn't know about.  There were signs and paths he had been down before, but because they were part of a mental illness, they were taboo subjects.