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[–] cogsly ago 

I didn't. Still devastated several years later.

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[–] lutherObed 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

The mother of my child took her own life just over 3 months ago. We met nearly a decade ago when we were both struggling with substance abuse/addiction and mental health issues. After we had a child, we both sought help for our problems. My life stabilized and became healthy in the following years while she unfortunately continued to struggle. Ultimately, her mental health and addiction issues were not unlike a long case of terminal cancer. She so desperately wanted to get better for our child and it was so heartbreaking to watch her try to recover, only to relapse again and again. Ultimately, she became a shell of her former self. Finally, she decided the struggle was too much. Even though I knew on some level it would end like this for her, it was still like being shot in the gut when I got the call. I fell to my knees and wept. Then I drank heavily for the next 3 days until the funeral, allowing my emotions to run free. Once she was buried, I have done my best to move on. And really it's just a process of putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. The best analogy for the grief I experienced was a posting I read somewhere on reddit comparing grief to waves. They start off tsunami like, and you wade through them, and as you keep going, the waves become smaller and smaller and less and less frequent. Eventually you've learned to move forward with your life. The best thing I read about processing my thoughts and understandings is this passage from David Foster Wallace; “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” Some people endure immense physical or mental/emotional pain in their lives, and while I am heartbroken that she is gone, I know she is no longer suffering and my faith allows me to find comfort that she is at peace. I'm sorry for your loss. Loss is never easy. It is an unfortunate and sometimes tragic part of our life, but we the living must move forward and celebrate the immense beauty that the world offers us every day.

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[–] l-l-l 0 points 4 points (+4|-0) ago 

It'll be 25 years in December that my father committed suicide and I'm still not over it. Having suffered with severe depression myself, I understand the thinking that leads one to suicide. But being a suicide survivor, I also understand the lasting impact it has on loved ones. If you're considering suicide, please get help. If someone you love has committed suicide, please get help.