#TeenageSuicide

[rottenworldsbitch]

so fall in love, and do a lot of drugs to help you justify your teenage suicide

[skelffricat]

Uppa (Mother)Hoods

I have never given birth, yet I have made three children. At the cosy NCT* group in the Ormeau Library, where I went with my first child (when I managed to get up early enough) I felt ashamed of this. The mothers there were Proper Mothers, with scars in their vaginas; tits out for milking; organic rice cakes for snacks; and great pride in their beautiful birth stories. They were horrific to me (the stories, not the mothers). I couldn’t talk about my birth experience without crying. I even made my GP cry, telling her about it. My eldest was whisked out of my unconscious middle in a now-derelict hospital in South Wales, while my legs were stirruped up (I once made the mistake of visiting the Erotic Museum in Amsterdam- the Sex Museum is better- whilst very stoned. One tends to be stoned, in Amsterdam, I suppose. The floors were confusingly slanted, giving me a sinking feeling, and the top floor’s “sexy” scene was a hospital one. Mannequins in stirrups do NOT turn me on. I had to immediately leave. I may have wept.) There was a student in the hospital room, with horror on his young face, gawping between my legs, and a nurse was urging the doctor to wait for me to go fully under the anaesthetic before he sliced my layers open with the scalpel. My eldest’s father had already been bade to leave. I think he signed something as he left. Signed our lives away?

I learnt later, whilst perusing my eldest’s little red book**, that her lung had collapsed. (I asked why they hadn’t told me. Oh, but it’s fairly common, they said. One in ten thousand. Not worth mentioning, really. Wtf?!) She had pooed in my womb (how rude!) and inhaled some of her own meconium. Meconium. Meconium. I had already learnt that word as a teen, from the band James, in their brilliant song, Gold Mother.

Then I had three friends- well, six, really- who had had stillborn children, at full term, and stopped feeling ashamed of how my child had made her clumsy entrance to the world, and merely relieved that she was alive and kicking, and proud of her. The biggest, reddest, loudest, baby in SCBU***. (“How will I know which one is mine?” I had croaked. Then, it was so obvious, I’d laughed.) I can also feel smug about not pissing myself on trampolines, or every time I sneeze, like most of the women I know who’ve had natural births. Perhaps I’ll start an Unnatural Childbirth Trust. Do your pelvic floor exercises. Now. 

TRIGGER WARNING: I am going to talk about teenage suicide.

Now my youngest child has died, by suicide, just short of her 15th birthday, and I try to feel relief that she is at peace, and that I got 15 glorious years with her. If I think about birthdays like the Chinese people do, I can call it 16****. Almost a woman.

I found her. She arranged that I would, I suppose because she thought I could cope with it better than her father could (she was right, of course. She was usually right. She was very wise. I miss her wisdom, and her unfailing ability to open any jar I couldn’t. She was strong.) I don’t know how to feel about that. People keep telling me that I’m strong, but it seems strangely shameful to be strong at this time (and I still can’t open jars). Perhaps the anti-depressants are working too well? I wonder. I worry that my blasé attitude to death made her decision easier (though I understand that it is pointless to worry about these things now. It won’t bring her back.) We tended to talk about death a lot. Some of my friends had died by suicide, and I would discuss with my mother, her granny, around the children, how suicide was no longer a shameful thing. How you shouldn’t say “committed” in front of it, because it hasn’t been a crime in the UK since 1961. It shouldn’t be a crime anywhere. We went to funerals in brightly coloured clothes. I celebrated dead people’s wonderful lives with them. 

She was hanging from the trapeze I’d had built for her, in our quiet back garden, from a hammock that I had bought for her. I had wondered about the hammock being out there in winter, and thought it was tied in a funny way, a few days before, but not done anything about that. I try not to regret that either. My logic comforts me thus: at least these things could be taken from the garden, and destroyed (the hammock) or used again (the trapeze) and I didn’t have to cut down any trees. I said to myself- she would have done it anyway, somewhere else, at some time. She did it with her things. She used to do amazing things on them. She could soar and swoop gracefully from that trapeze, and even the hammock got strung up high and spun from. 

I had been drinking the night before with my lovely Scottish lover. We watched Wild at Heart, and drank red wine. I thoroughly christened the new bright yellow carpet with a full glass of it, oops. Tried to clean it with a sock. My youngest child was baking in the kitchen. She made a vegan chocolate cake. At one point I went in to her and she was sat on the floor, looking at the cake in the oven. Her head was practically in there. When I was a child, we had electric, not gas, and I thought that people who killed themselves by putting their heads in the oven were cooking themselves to death. How did all the heat not escape, I wondered? How long would that take?! Those thoughts went through my head as I looked at her. She had attempted suicide before, around a month ago. We had been to the hospital. She convinced them (and me) that she wasn’t suicidal, and was sent home. I am not angry at this. What is the point in being angry? She is gone. She was a good actress. A cry for help? She had been to CAMHS that very day. I felt hopeful. She was making cake! She was going to try school tomorrow, in her own comfortable clothes. She hadn’t been for ages. She was too anxious, about uniform, about what to learn, about the future. I asked her what she was doing and we laughed about her proximity to the oven.

He and I ate the cake, later, with natural yoghurt. It was delicious. We called her to join us and she wouldn’t. The last time I saw my youngest daughter alive I was thinking about her killing herself, in a jocular way. Then she did. In a jugular way. Fuck, sorry. I find myself saying the most inappropriate things. 

Sometimes I imagine her last breath. Or dream of disembodied heads. I wonder did she change her mind at the last minute, or feel resolute, and pleased with herself, her escape? Did she make a noise? Did she call out to me, to anyone? I guess you probably can’t call out...? At first, the shock was so severe, I couldn’t think about it without feeling a massive surge of pure panic. I saw my face in the mirror that morning, and it was ashen grey. Later, my eldest described the sensation as a perpetual feeling of dread. Impending doom. Yes, I said, like we’re waiting for something horrific to happen! Then we would realise it already had. My heart thumped so viciously hard inside of me, it felt like it was going to jump right out of my chest. Proving its aliveness. Until I calmed it with (mostly) legal drugs. In the next few weeks, I liked to listen to hearts beating, breath flowing. People being alive, alive- oh. 

My lover had left that night, as he was to go on a walk early the next day. I am so relieved that he had. He has his own demons. He never went on that walk, of course, but at least he didn’t have to find her. He left at around 3am. Her bedroom door was closed. 

I awoke just before 6am. I’m not sure why. I expect I needed water, because I’d been drinking wine. Her door was open. The light was on, and I could see her bed was empty. I got water, and went to her room and saw there was a note on the bed. It was written in green biro, on an A4 file page, folded twice. There was a little cheeky red smiley face with its tongue out on the outside. It was a suicide note. Full of love. Was it a suicide note? So much love. It can’t be a suicide note. I started to look for her, around the house. It was still very dark. I was switching on the light in a room and looking around it and switching the light off and looking in another room. I couldn’t find her. I looked in some rooms twice. I even opened the compartment under her bed. I looked in the cupboard under the stairs, like Harry Potter’s room, that she and her friend had once shut themselves into, to see each other’s glow-in-the-dark bicycle helmets. Where is she? I thought. This is the worst game of Hide-and-Go-Seek ever! Perhaps it’s not a suicide note. Perhaps she has run away? I got dressed. 

Then I found her, in our dark and silent back garden. As she was on the far side of the trapeze to me, her feet were level with the safety mat under the trapeze. I thought for a second that she was just standing there, very still. I was still hoping it was all a joke. A mistake. One of our white garden chairs was beside her. When I realised she was hanging, I swung her slightly. This movement haunts me. Her face... her face was distorted. Her tongue lolling out. I hope you never have to see that on anyone. Especially not your child. My friend hanged herself years ago and my daughter’s face reminded me of her dead one. So, I was thinking, she is dead, in one layer of my mind, and in another, I was thinking, I shall save her. I was calling her, and caressing her freezing face. She was so cold. Dead cold. I ran into the kitchen, got a serrated knife. I am unsure of the order of things. Had I already phoned 999? Was I trying to talk on the phone whilst doing all of this? I cut rapidly through the hammock- it was easy. She flopped into the muck. It was so mucky. I was trying to pull her by the arms onto the trapeze mat, away from the cloying mud, but she was a dead weight. Dead dead dead. No help there. I couldn’t move her. She was so ungainly. I felt inept and weak. I tried to put her in the recovery position. Then I thought, oh wait, no, I need to do chest compressions- I can’t do that on a soft mat anyway. I kept dropping the phone in the mud, and the man on the end of the line was almost shouting at me. 

I put her on her back and was doing chest compressions and he was asking, “is she breathing?” 

She seemed to breathe when I pressed her. I thought, oh! She’s alive? I kept pressing, and dropping the phone in the mud, and I was all mucky too, and she wasn’t breathing- I was just pushing air through her- but I had a glimmer of hope, and the 999 man was counting with me through my mucky mobile phone, and I heard the ambulance coming, and I said to him, I have to let them in! and he said, NO! Keep pressing! I said, I have to, my garden is inaccessible, and I let them in. Two ambulances, filling my dark quiet street with noise and lights and hope. 

They took over. They asked for towels to kneel on in the muck. I’d never thought of that- I got them, as quick as I could. I paced, and watched, and walked away then watched again, and the cat jumped and wheedled around everything. Did he see her die? I wondered? Why didn’t you come get me, cat, like Lassie, or Skippy, or fucking Flipper!? She must have shut the kitchen door and kept him away. They tried and tried, and I paced. They did the defibrillators. Then her breasts became visible and I baulked at the indignity of it, whilst knowing it was entirely necessary, and just... human. They did the adrenaline shots. Four of them, taking turns. Is there any hope? I asked one. Not really, he said. We’re trying because she is young. She’s been there a while. At least I could feel less guilty about getting dressed. I kept thinking, why did I get dressed? I got dressed to go find my dead daughter. 

Was it starting to get light? It was going to be a beautiful morning, I thought, what a pity she can’t see it. I changed out of my mucky clothes. Layered up. It was so cold. There was time, while they tried to save her.

They tried for 20 minutes before they pronounced her dead. There was mud everywhere. They put the mucky towels in a shopping basket I had outside to light fires in. The ambulance people all told me they were very sorry for my loss.

I don’t like euphemisms for death. 

Saying I’ve lost her implies I could find her again. I suppose I find her in my dreams. Though I dreamt of different, unknown, children last night. Two little mixed race boys that I was minding in the (huge dream version) of the Carnival Centre. They kept running away and messing about. At one point we were all on top of a huge concrete topped lift (elevator), that lurched away from beneath us so that we flew into the air. It was falling faster than us. How is that possible? We couldn’t catch up with gravity. Griefity? We weren’t falling fast enough. I keep dreaming of losing children. Not children dying. I dreamt I lost my son the other night too. He was led into a room I wasn’t allowed in. I could see him through the window of the door I couldn’t go through. Then he went out of my sight and I woke up, shaking, horrified.

I recently found my daughter alive again, in a dream. She was very wee- three or four. Before her first haircut. She was being really bold and naughty. She kept running away from me, and she had pooed herself a little, and was rubbing the poo on things, half on purpose. I was trying to catch her and clean her and her hands. We were on holiday? Maybe on a big ferry? I think we had to catch a flight. She had run into a swimming pool room and climbed into a pile of boxes and upset the boxes, and pulled another little girl on top of her and hurt her too. I was trying to pull them out, without hurting them, without losing my temper. I was really trying hard to keep my temper. I was thinking as I woke, if this keeps up, she'll be taken off me. It was so vivid that as I came to, I thought, I must text the Woodcarver; I must text my youngest daughter, to see if she's ok. It was quite a while before I awoke properly and thought, of course she's not ok, she's dead. She's already away. Then I got upset, and cried, but I was glad I got upset because I've been taking anti-depressants and not feeling anything much, so it was a relief to feel sad. I accidentally hadn't taken any for a couple of days at that point.  

Saying she has passed annoys me more. Passed what? Her exams? Wind? (That’s always funny.) She has passed tense? She is past tense.

It wasn’t until she was pronounced officially dead that I phoned her father, the Woodcarver. I thought, there is no point in giving him false hope like mine. He made a loud guttural noise, like a wounded animal, on the other end of the line. It woke my son, who was staying with him. He thought his father was dying. Wrong relative.

It was a brightening cold morning by now. The police came. Her father came. He kicked the white chair she had used, and broke it. This satisfied and disturbed me in equal measure. He hit his head off the sink. I was frightened by him, despite the police presence. I was frightened for him.

The police were very kind. A man and a woman. The man was comfortingly camp. They had masks on. There’s a pandemic, it is said. They took their hats off, but left the masks on. No-one else really bothered with masks, for the next while. I was fascinated by the police officers’ dark green peaked hats- one for boys, and one for girls- on my kitchen table. I made myself tea and put sugar in it. I never take sugar in tea. I’d heard it was good for shock.

My dead daughter’s father’s brother came. He told me to phone my mum. I said I would wait until she normally got up. What is the sense of breaking your last peaceful night’s sleep early, to find out something that won’t be any less dreadful half an hour later? He had brought my son; my daughter’s father’s mother; my daughter’s father’s girlfriend. This is starting to read like Anna Burns’ The Milkman. My daughter’s grandma was also fascinated by the police officers’ hats. She said that one wanted mending, and she wished she had a needle and thread. I didn’t think to fetch her one. I asked if it is true that pregnant women are allowed to pee in police officers’ hats, but they hadn’t heard that before. I kept checking the time on my phone, every few minutes, and drinking sweet tea. I was waiting for the real morning to begin. Nothing has felt real ever since, though.

When I did ring my mother at 8am, she didn’t wake. My little brother did, though. He went and told her in person, and when she arrived, she was bawling, and had forgotten her glasses. She looked tiny. She was due to see everyone the next day. She had been quarantining as she was not long back from Spain. I deeply regret not bringing the children to wave at her in the garden. She hadn’t seen them for months. 

We were flitting between my house and our friends’ house round the corner. My garden was now a crime scene. My daughter’s father didn’t like this. He wanted to hold her lifeless body’s hand. At that point, I thought I never wanted to see her lifeless body again, but I changed my mind a few days later, and that was alright. I saw her in her casket and her face looked... Dead, but not distorted any more. She looked peaceful, I suppose, and very beautiful, in a sad way. She was surrounded by toys, trinkets, food she loved. Dried mango. Finn and Jake. Her elder sister tucked her pride flag around her. She hadn’t seen her for ten months. 

There were many people now, milling inside, and out in the sunshine, between the two houses. The neighbours were out and about, too. I had made horrendous phone calls to a workmate and a couple of friends and the word was spreading. I had phoned my eldest daughter in Wales. To spread the word. The bad word. The worst words. I have had Joshua Burnside’s song, The Good Word, in my head a lot, this last while.

“Last night I dreamed

We were running for our lives

From robots in the jungle

Helicopters in the sky

But the ground opened up and I

Couldn't save her

Couldn't save her

Couldn't save her again

Oh no

No sir

Not this time

Glory hallelujah.”

My lover came down and was of the utmost comfort to me. When the coroner had been and they were to take her away, the Woodcarver’s biggest brother- he that had been there first- came to me in the other house and asked did I want to say goodbye to her body? I said, no, I do not, that is not my daughter any more.

I sought comfort in words. We read poems on her bed. 

Various people told us of a humanist celebrant. She offered to help us for free, and she did, and I am so grateful. 

A friend gave me valium. At some point, someone went to the offy. More and more people came. The lovely camp police officer returned, with my daughter’s bank card, and people panicked, because of Covid, but he didn’t say anything. He only wanted to help.

The next while was a blur...

*National Childbirth Trust- it was the only secular one. I also enjoyed the ones in churches, with their cream teas, and knitted religious folks, trying not to try to convert you and yours. It perhaps could’ve been called the Natural Childbirth Trust, because they kept banging on about it...

**The NHS issue these red books as personal child health records. 

***SCBU- the Special Care Baby Unit. They pronounced it Skiboo, in their lovely Welsh lilts. My doctor looked like a child. She had been working for 24 hours straight, and was still charming and kind.

****Age reckoning originated in China, where it's believed that a baby's age starts from its time in the mother's womb. The practice is also common in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

[paraphraze615]

Parents, this is why your children vent their frustrations on social media... because y'all don't listen to them. #Suicide #SuicidalThoughts #Depressed #DepressedQuotes #Depression #TeenageSuicide #SuicideAwareness #Parents #ParentsBeLike #ListenToYourKids #ListenToYourChildren #NobodyListensToMe #SomebodyListenToMe #WillSomebodyPleaseListenToMe #Stressed #StressedOut

[avinkusprince]

@teenagesuicide || starter call

“You are not like her. You don’t feel like her. It doesn’t FEEL the same.”

[withflourmoved]

@teenagesuicide !  |  CALL !

      ❝   oh  !   oh  god,  i’m  so  sorry  about  her  !  ❞

      stuttering,  the  still  learning  mother  rushes  after  her  toddler,  swiping  lulu  off  the  ground   BEFORE   she can  reach  the  teenage  girl .   as  she  stands,  jenna   BLURTS   apologies,   trying  her  best  to  get  a  grip  on  her  squirming  child.   

     ❝    -   shit.    ❞

[blownoffsa]

teenagesuicide replied to your post: another revolutionary idea

( ok i literally made this for grease w my kazoo (danny kazooko) don’t make me do this bc i Will get my kazoo out

         o R YOU COULD ANYWAY BECAUSE I WOULD PAY TO HEAR A KAZOO SCREAM VERONICA

[heartreveals]

❝ When I’m dead, just throw me in the trash. ❞

who is pepe silvia!!!!! / accepting.

          ❛ um, you’re never dying. sorry. it’s actually illegal. ❜

[skidrowflorist]

@teenagesuicide || starter call lsoh song: “ya never know”

“...That’s what you had in mind all along, isn’t it?”

[jockhunta-blog]

i cannot BELIEVE you all are encouraging my Sweet Innocent Daughter to MURDER PEOPLE. well, I can believe ONE of you doing it. squints. you know who you are.

[coolshceshine-blog]

✂

                      MEME!! / @teenagesuicide

✂ a fandom that you feel isn’t open and accepting?

        i’m aware that this icon is neither ki.ernan shipka who i’ve been using as ooc, or noodle, but i thought of it immediately when i realized what this question was. emily, you sly fox. as i mentioned already, the m/usical thea/tre rpc is very elite and hard to get into. i’m gonna chance my arm dropping names but, sp/ring awa/kening fandom circa 2015. i loved it there and then a petty fight happened and it just … soured. i still miss it tbh, but it was p rough for a while, which is why i left.

[teenkilled]

never tell me 2 send more bc i won't stop it's my fave meme but ♧

acts   of   intimacy  !♧ :     your   muse   playing   with   their   hair

❛   did   you   fall   asleep   when   it   was   still   wet   or   something ?    god ,   what   a   mess .   ❜          fingers   card   carefully   through   golden   locks ,    a   few   gentle   tugs   to   get   rid   of   any   tangles   missed   by   the   now   discarded   brush .    a   neatly   combed   handful   of   soft   waves ,    the   crimson   clad   girl   tosses   a   grin   at   the  other’s   reflection .          ❛   do   you   want   it   half - up ,    half - down ?    or   we   could   do   a   braid ?    no ,    never   mind ,    i   think   the   half   &   half   is   what’ll   look   best   with   your   earrings .    we’ll   do   a   braid   tomorrow .   ❜

[almostdisaster]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! You win a teddy bear! (idk wht she's doing)

hhhow dARe you Detective Diaz i am yOur supeIOR OFFICER | accepting

         “y’know, you can keep it.” you look upset, she’d said. she wasn’t expecting to be right. “you wanna talk about it?”

[skelffricat]

Good grief, Charlie Brown.

I’ve never owned an electric toothbrush. I’ve never had a dishwasher. I am the dishwasher. I like washing dishes. I never bought an iron. I don’t have a hairdryer. I find it strange that I get advertised these reusable alternatives for things that I never use anyway. Alternatives to cling film. I put another plate over the dish. Alternatives to cotton buds. I use my finger. (Ew, you may say, but surely a finger’s that size to fit in ears and nostrils? Or whatever orifice you please. Wash your hawnds.) Alternatives to cotton wool circles. What? I dont know why these thoughts have come into my head, when I want to write about my youngest child. Really, I’m meant to be working, but an annoying email from my dead daughter’s school sent me down a suicide rabbithole. Perhaps those other thoughts come about as my classic brain avoidance schemes. Like when you hoover instead of doing an essay. Positive procrastination, I used to call it. I wanted to visit some friends last night- a fun thing! but I was feeling all solitary and awkward. I cleaned the bathroom ceiling at first, instead! I had to really talk myself into going to see them. I was looking at my bed and it was saying, “Get into me! and read your book!”

Then I went, and I had a lovely time, of course. I still finished the book I was reading, when I got home at midnight, until three am, making myself ever so tired. I’ve stopped taking the tablets- beta blockers and mirtazapine (more by accident rather than design. They’re still up in the chemist waiting for me. I’m rather disorganised) and so sleep doesn’t come as readily. I have to take deep breaths for ages sometimes, to get over. And I awake in the night hearing things that aren’t there. I heard The Woodcarver calling me, one night, plain and loud as day. Another time, I heard my son knocking my door three times, sharply (or was it a burglar? I said that to someone and they laughed. Burglars don’t knock! Oh, hello there, wake up, I’m robbing you blind!) Bounced out of bed. Heart hammering. Called him. He was fast asleep. Was it her ghost? I don’t believe in ghosts, really. Kind of wish I did. She’d be a mischievous one, no doubt. Is it always 5:57am, when I awake? The same time. Time to find your dead child. 

I’m often in the house alone, now. They didn’t want to leave me alone, and there were so many people in the house, for ages. Then all of a sudden, it stopped. And I changed lovers... I changed to the one I’d been in love with for over a year, the one who seemed too young, the one who wasn’t interested. Suddenly he was interested. Well. It wasn’t sudden. It took a few weeks. Seven weeks? The seven week itch? It coincided with when the Scottish lover asked me to stop letting other people come to the house. He wanted me to himself. Which is kind of fair enough, though I knew it wouldn’t last anyway. (People coming to my house, I mean, not the relationship. I really enjoyed having a relationship with him. He is very sweet, funny, intelligent, and kind. The sex was great. He can cook wonderful food and play guitar well. I liked to sing with him. I am ashamed to say I was bothered by his being smaller than me, though. His face tended to itch me, too- he never quite grew a beard long enough to stop that. As he kept shaving it off, not because he couldn’t. That was the first time he kind of annoyed me, though.)

Lockdown doesn’t help, of course. We were all breaking rules in our grief. Covid is cancelled, my mother said. Masks off. Hugs all round. A friend told me you need extra oxytocin when you’re grieving. I was getting plenty of it. Good grief... 

Now I am frequently alone, and as my new lover is very busy studying (or perhaps less interested in me again now that he has my attention back? Though his reticence in getting with me stemmed from his concerns about the uneven nature of our interest in each other...) I haven’t seen him all week. I feel myself becoming depressed, and withdrawn, and paranoid, yet I still don't feel particularly sad about my daughter’s death. Which is strange. Isn’t it? Here is the email I received from her school this morning (it had her name and class at the top of the email): 

“Good morning

I hope this email finds you all well.

A number of years ago I signed the college up to the campaign against period poverty. I receive and distribute sanitary products to girls, primarily on free school meals, but any who are in need of the products and either can’t afford them or it is difficult to get them. The products are normally distributed by myself, during P.E and games, unfortunately this can’t happen at present.

These products are still available during the school closure. If you wish to avail of them, please contact our school info account (which is only read by one member of office staff) your request will be directed to me and I will contact you directly regarding collection.

These are difficult times for many at present and to quote my favourite supermarket, ‘every little helps’.

Kind regards...”

I was really with her until she quoted Tesco. And said they were her favourite!! Ugh! I mean, it really is a great idea. Though they really should check if the people they are writing about are still capable of bleeding. My heart bleeds....

I replied thus:

“Hello there.

Great idea, but as (my youngest daughter) has died, she won't be needing them any more. I hate Tesco- they ruin many little businesses.

Maybe take me off this mailing list?”

Then I attached one of her seven suicide notes: the one for school. Which I had previously not shown them. I only found it on Christmas Eve. Can I attach it, here? It has no names... 

There we are. Is it wrong of me to find her notes amusing? She is so angry, people say. I wonder how much of it is literal, and how much of it is using the school as a big nameless scapegoat. She was funny in the rest of them, too, and very loving. I found them comforting, like a fucked up Christmas present.

Then I started reading articles about suicide, and they were about how we shouldn’t call the people who do it selfish, about how depressed they are, how they need pity, not anger. I’m tired of the pity (though I’m not the suicidal one). I’m not producing enough sadness from myself when people pity me, either. Where is my sadness? Am I too acceptant of it all? We are all going to die. Is suicide like a C-section? Is it cheating death, like I thought my Caesareans cheated birth? Is suicide self euthanasia? Why do I not miss my daughter more? Is it because she had already left? Was she released, happy, free as a bird, swooping away on an Awfully Big Adventure? Trapezing her way into the æther? I googled to see if I could find any positive reactions to suicide. Is this my nature, to try and find the good in everything? To try and make light of the horrific? Is everything a joke to me? 

I found this blog post, from Andreas Moser.

I love it. Am I trying to take the blame away from myself? The NHS? The school? Should I be reeling and railing against the systems that let my daughter get into that state? Why am I instead trying to find ways to applaud her behaviour, accept it, even enjoy it?! When I read his words, “I admire their courage (because logical as it may be, it’s not easy) and the determination to make the ultimate decision in life oneself.” I felt a strange sensation of relief, that someone else could think those things. I had been thinking them, but trying not to, because it seemed like such an awful thing to think. But then I think, why does anyone else have to be to blame? It was her decision. 

The book I was rereading is called Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson. It’s my favourite book, I have decided, for now. Do favourites stay favourites? I was looking at my old Couchsurfing Profile today (because of Andreas’ blog- he, as a hippy hermit, is, of course, on Couchsurfing). One needs to update these every so often. Explain that you have watched another film in the last twenty years, that there is one less sofa in your living room, one less child on your earth. Even though no-one is allowed to move around, really. No visiting. No exploring. Perhaps she killed herself to escape the boredom. 

In Life After Life, the main character, Ursula, lives again and again. (I forgot that to live again and again, she had to die again and again. It's a very sad and graphic book, spanning two wars- read it. It is, ultimately, uplifting.) I wanted to read it again to make my daughter live again, and again. We need to write her alive. Show her drawings and paintings. Listen to her songs (they're hilarious). Read her poems. Admire her photographs. Tell the stories of her antics.

I know that really she was actually depressed and withdrawn. I know it isn’t a glorious escape. That her wee head was broken, and that sometimes it’s just easier to say, it was unfixable, she was determined, this is what she wanted, than to contemplate it as my (or anyone else’s) failure to help her. I know that she used to be confident and gregarious. She would have danced in front of people, inspiring others. She was always upside-down, tumbling, twirling, cartwheeling. She had a dry, cheeky wit, and rather an amusing obsession with poo and wee. She was kind, and wise. She liked to bake vegan treats. She could draw, and paint, and sing so beautifully. She played the ukelele, but by then she was hiding away. She had started to write poems- songs? She wouldn’t show us them. We had to beg her to perform on the trapeze for her Granny’s eightieth, in July. She did so, beautifully, but you could tell she hated the attention. Four months later, she hanged herself on it. 

Had we all withdrawn into ourselves, this 2020? Was there really nothing else to do? Yet I remember the start of Lockdown seeming idyllic. All that free time, all that sunshine. Was I just trying to convince myself, as usual? The only people we saw were the Woodcarver and the neighbours. She taught the wee boy next door to ride his unicycle. When she died, he brought in a picture he had drawn, of them on their unicycles, she as an angel above herself, a rainbow arcing over the three figures. His sadness affected me. I felt like I could only be sad through other people. Where is my sadness? Where is my grief? Good grief, bad grief, no grief? Alternatives to grief.

[avinkusprince]

❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥❥ ❥ ❥

send ❥ ❥ ❥ if you’re enjoying the portrayal of my muse

ooc;; !!!! em u are too sweet i am GONE

[blownoffsa]

[ text; ] QUICK WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL SONG

                           go text it              ( dear diary. )

            [ msg ; mac. ]  BREAKING FREE            [ msg ; mac. ]  NO WAIT FROM WHICH ONE            [ msg ; mac. ]  ...I’m ashamed about how quick this response is.

[amberscottblessed-blog]

Appearance vs. Reality

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  James 1:23

I never noticed this scripture before now. If you hear the word of God, but your heart is unchanged, then you are too distracted by the superficial things in life. God wants us to look deeper into ourselves, and look deeper into each other.

I love introspection. Being aware of what I am feeling, and why I am feeling a certain way has helped me to grow in understanding of myself. When I understand myself better, I understand everyone else better. With understanding comes mercy, which then quells judgement.     

I remember watching PBS as a kid on Saturday mornings. In between children’s programming, was a public service ad. A boy was sitting at his desk looking attentively at the teacher. Then a child narrator speaks over his image to let the viewer know what the child is thinking. He thought, "I want to ask a question, but I don't want to look dumb in front of my classmates."  Then an adult narrator speaks over the image of the child's internal dilemma and asks the viewer, "Do you want to look smart? Or be smart?" Then the child raises his hand to ask a question. The adult narrator continues, "We have to ask questions to learn, that is how we become smarter. So, don't be afraid to raise your hand."  I remember that ad 30 years later because the idea that appearances may not match reality was astonishing to me.

I think suicide is the biggest shock to our system when we compare appearances vs reality. 

My daughter Vanessa’s boyfriend Matt confessed to her that a few days ago he had been sitting in his car in a parking lot with a handgun pointed into his mouth. Thankfully he did not pull the trigger. I called his mother to share this with her. She was floored. Matt’s parents thought he was just being lazy. He is 20 years old, living at home, with no job. However, he was going to a community college full time and maintained a 2.0 GPA. He complained that he didn’t like school and he didn’t really want to go. The spring term had just ended and Matt wasn’t doing much of anything except play Fortnite. In an effort to light a fire of motivation in their son, they told him he needed to get a full time job or sign up for the military by the end of the month or he was out of the house. Matt had always wanted to join the military, but he thought he would lose Vanessa. My daughter had always told her boyfriend that she doesn’t do long distance relationships. Matt felt like he had to chose between a career that he wanted, or the love of his life. He couldn’t have both. Deeply depressed over this awful choice, he contemplated ending his life. But his parents didn’t know he felt this way. On the surface, Matt just seemed lazy or simply indecisive. 

Vanessa and I had been arguing a great deal. I noticed she was also arguing with her best friend Nicky and her boyfriend Matt. From my perspective, she appeared to be selfish and unforgiving. She goes to a psychologist for medication management, and at her last appointment the doctor suggested she go on anti-depressants. When Vanessa told me this, it was my turn to be floored. I didn’t think she was depressed. But when Vanessa rehashed for me what the doctor had noticed: she had gained weight, she was irritable and argumentative, and although she was nearing her senior graduation, she wasn’t excited or happy about it. HOW DID I MISS THE SIGNS??? 

It is a daily challenge to see beyond the surface. Jesus always looked at our hearts. I pray the Lord helps me to see the heart beneath the behavior.   

In Christ, 

Amber Scott