Two weeks, wow! Two weeks till the end of another school year. Well at least it is for our house. For others it will mark the start of exams. For us it will mark the hardest part of the last year. The anniversary of our daughter’s suicide on June 27th will mark one year.
The last year has had a lot of ups and downs, trials and errors, smiles and tears and a lot of other emotions. We have also been lead on a path of self discovery and not necessarily by choice. We have found out a lot about ourselves and even more about others.
We are very fortunate to live in a community that has been amazingly supportive and agrees change is needed. The last year we have discovered that when you lose a member of your family to suicide people look at you differently. Those who you thought would always be there disappear and those you never expected to be friends become close to you. Some family drifts apart while once strained relationships find themselves mending.
Suicide is a topic so many choose to shy away from for many reasons. Either they have been effected by it themselves, are scared, or honestly just don't know how to start the conversation. This has always been an easy topic for me having been affected by suicide long before Morgan. In high school I lost two friends to suicide, I have worked with people who have lost a loved one to suicide, a few years ago I lost a childhood friend to suicide and the year we moved across the country my oldest lost a friend to suicide. For me the biggest point I needed to make to family and friends when telling them about Morgan's death was that nobody was to get mad at her, nobody was to blame her and nobody was to lie about how she died. It was a suicide, plain and simple.
Spending a year reflecting has been hard. I have been hard on myself with choices I have made and make. The last few weeks have been really hard as I have been piecing together the last year and 9 months. I have watched a young girl turn into a young woman over night, a father becomes a pillar of strength when needed, and I have watched me lose a piece of myself that I am unable to get back.
Suicide changes you. It changes the survivors. There is no going back, there is no normal anymore and there are always unanswered questions. Those are the hardest for me. I am someone who has to have or be able to find the answer for everything. To me there is no answer as to why and for me that's hard to accept.
Suicide does not just take your loved one from you it takes much more then that. For me it has brought on anxiety that was once under control, it has damaged relationships, and pushed people away. I have watched Bailey lose friends because she isn't the same, I have watched her struggle to cope with the empty feeling she has with her twin sister not being here. And I have watched a father who never doubted leaving his wife and daughter home now become a ball of wild anxiety when he has to leave for a few days/weeks for work or school.
Suicide robs you of your life in so many ways, if you let it.
The last year has been a wild wind of emotions, without a doubt. BUT, we are still here and we are still surviving. Now we have to spend the next year learning to live again. Not just survive but live.
Living is so much more then surviving. The last year has for the most part been a fog. Yes a lot has happened but it has been a fog. Now as we are reaching the one year mark that fog is lifting and telling us its time to live again. We will always be a suicide survivor family but we have to be a family who lives too. Morgan wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
So no matter how much reflecting I sit and do it comes down to this. I lost my baby girl to a preventable illness brought on by individuals who pushed her past her breaking point (which in my opinion totally preventable as well). I now have a daughter who will suffer PTSD for the rest of her life as there is no cure, we as adults are just a little better able to deal with ours then she is hers. She will also always struggle with anxiety, why because she has gone from having that one person who was always suppose to be by her side to not having her and losing a bond that not too many can understand.
Reality is this is my life! I have spent a year reflecting so now I get to spend that next year learning to live again. My only hope is that through my journey I am able to help another who is stuck and not sure how to go on living and not just surviving.
I am ok, I will be ok. I am surviving, we are surviving but now we need to be living.