What It’s Like To Lose Someone To Suicide

I don't understand why people don't talk about it. I'm not ashamed that my daughter chose that way to not be here. I'm grief-stricken that she's not with me. I'd left my phone in my room and I had 45 missed calls and I felt powerless. It was so shocking and so unbelievable but also before I'd even taken the call my phone lit up and I knew what the call was about. I woke up the next morning to two policemen banging on my bedroom window. So I let them inside and they sat me down and they told me that my sister had been found. I wanted to double-check everything, that the right name came up. The police sergeant started talking to me and as soon as he started talking to me it was just like my heart had ripped in two. It wasn't until quite a bit of time afterwards that the dust began to settle and you kind of realise what's happened. Physical feeling of going, no, that's my daughter. My daughter is gone. I got to a point on Jared's birthday where I was worried about myself. I felt like going to join her. All the first, the first birthday, the first New Year's, the first Christmas it all just hits you when you least expect it. My heart's never felt the same. It was a physical feeling of having a part of me taken away. I developed agoraphobia, I developed severe anxiety and general anxiety disorder. I developed depression worse than I ever have in my entire life. It comes and goes in waves of feeling from sadness to, yeah, just of course missing her. If you can just imagine one night where you've stayed up crying, crying yourself to sleep over someone that's broken your heart. Every single time that's happened, all at once. And the feeling's never really gone away. It broke my heart. I think the biggest thing that I've taken from this experience is the sort of fragility of life, particularly when it comes to mental ill health and not having services around you. That mental health is not a weakness. People to this day are still sweeping this under the rug. People are still not talking about it. People are still pretending it's not happening. There's nothing wrong about it speaking out. There's nothing wrong with having a cry. There's nothing wrong with having a hug. And it's not weak to speak. So I think dialogue is the key. I think conversation is the key. I think asking your friends if they're okay and then listening is the key. It's really made me realise how important it is to reach out to any loved ones, to talk about things more, express feelings and just be there for each other. My entire baseline of who I am has changed. She was my only sibling so she was my best friend for 20 odd years. I feel like I'm not the same person as I was and I think a lot of people expect you to kind of bounce back to become the same person but I'm never going to be them again. My whole experience of life has changed. I don't think it's ever going to be normal for me. And if this reaches just one person who was just like me, I just want them to know that they're not alone. You're not thinking about what you leave behind but the aftermath just goes on forever. Look after yourselves, look after each other and life's really short. Just enjoy it.