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I feel for you, LW, and the situation you and your whole family are in. I want to offer you my compassionate heartfelt wishes that you find some ways to create wellness and emotional and spiritual help for yourself.
What is true is true and can never change. This is life for those who choose to accept it. Sometimes there is grace, accept it when it comes and feel all the gratitude you can. Other times it may feel so bad that you can't believe you will keep breathing. Accept this too if you can, and feel all the gratitude you are able to muster that you are here and that life still flows in your veins, as long as this is true, you will find a way to cope and more.
My son committed suicide 8 1/2 years ago, and for almost all of the years of his young life before that our whole family world and every waking moment was about how to try to cope with his mental illness. You can imagine that the burden of being the mother of someone who feels that his only way clear was to be dead has been a very large one. I am learning how to put this burden down sometimes and sometimes I cannot and must bear it anyway.
Is he better off now? Having self selected out of the gene pool? Some would say yes, one did right here in these posts. Perhaps this is true, I will never know. I do not have to live in fear anymore that he will knock at my door someday and kill me or his sister or dad, or confront one too many authority figures during an episode and have them have to use deadly force against him. No more daily fears, no more hiding my wallet, locking my bedroom, wondering what street he's wandering, where he sleeps, what he thinks, feels, eats. If he's hot or cold or in despair somewhere in a dingy ugly facility.
I will never know if he could have found a way to live and love and feel peace.
Yes, I guess one could say that he weeded himself out, but I really wish it hadn't been said quite this way, with such a callous and offhand disregard for the effect words tossed off in such a way can have on those of us who carry very heavy loads through this life.
I agree with and urge you to follow the practical and useful advice offered here to help you cope and heal and bear your grief, disconnections and guilt.
I just wanted to let you know that time has a way of bringing healing and succor. I trust that you will have moments, maybe hours and days where you will feel joy and optimism and be free from the overwhelming feelings that keep you so sad and burdened.
