Unbelievably raw today. I wrote the following for my upcoming book: Choose Suicide by Amy Jones I thought that everything was okay. I had healed. I had gone through so many personal growth programs, read so many books, listened to the audios. I had this life thing all figured out – I had mastered how to be “happy” as a suicide survivor. I had read, listened to, and attended everything I could get my hands on. There wasn’t anyone who could teach me anything I didn’t already know. I was no longer broken – and now I can help others! That was until the workshop – the day I stood on stage in front of hundreds and cried at the level of snot. When my voice cracked and it took every part of my being just to utter the next few syllables I had written on my iPad. That was the moment I realized that I would never have anything figured out, that I would never “arrive,” that I, too, am human. There, on stage, I realized that all the processing I had done around my mother’s suicide was when I was not a mom. My heart ached from a whole new place of understanding. She must have experienced those moments – holding me as a brand new baby girl. She had to have that undying love and devotion. She lived from selflessness for her children. In that moment I could not understand how she could have left me. I found heartache, anger, rage, intensified! Now I know what it is to be a mother and I could not imagine choosing to leave her here – alone. I could not imagine creating that experience for her to sort through for the rest of her life. To fear abandonment while simultaneously causing it, to bring people close just to push them away, to create abnormal relationships for justification and to not have to be responsible for the other person. Why would I ever want that perfect little being to experience so many feelings of pain, anger, remorse, and guilt? It was MY job to protect her. IT WAS HER JOB TO PROTECT ME. She quit. Gave up. Nothing I could have done - unless you asked me then and I would have told you why I was to blame. I had plenty of evidence and reasons to prove that it was my fault that she killed herself. I did this to her. If only I was a better child, if only I didn’t leave that night, if only I had stayed, if only I had… so many if only’s and any one of them would have produced another outcome. How can anyone in a rational mind tell me that I was NOT to blame for this tragedy. I was her life and I left her that final night. Left her to deal with herself alone. Just like she left me. My punishment, my karma, my baggage. Years of growth made many of these feelings and thoughts subside. I was able to create the resemblance of a normal life. I hid that my mother had killed herself. I didn’t want people to know that she killed herself. If they knew that she killed herself then they would wonder what value I was. After all, my own mother didn’t stay to be with me. They would know that I wasn’t worth living for. I couldn’t let them see this. So instead I hide. I run from them and myself by being amazing and producing unspeakable results in all the areas that will have them know me as my accomplishments. I was #1, top in the nation, this award-that award, these are things to speak about! These wonderful things that allow me to hide who I really am and what I am responsible for. As long as they never look beneath the surface of my awards, they will never have to deal with the ugly truth. It was all okay until that day on the stage. I was resolved, set, secure, and already capable of speaking about my mother’s suicide as another thing I had accomplished. Yes, I overcame my mother’s suicide. Look at me, I’m amazing, and I can teach you how. Until – that day on stage. That day on stage I realized that my mother was just another human being and I, as amazing as I had made myself become, I am not immune. That someday in the future it could be my little girl wondering why her amazing mother chose to leave her alone. It could have just as easily been me. And in that moment I found my mother’s humanity, and in that moment, I found my own, and in that moment I saw my daughter for the first time because someday it could be her daughter on that stage. I finally got it. Maybe there is something to be said about those who have made it a couple of decades. I can show you how to hide really well and produce anyway. But ultimately the healing journey for you is going to be customized. I wish I had the answers to fix it all. The only answer I have is that we are all broken and there is no fixing solution. So until we can accept the humanity that we all are, be there for each other, the only choice we have is to choose. My suffering around my mother’s suicide came from choosing everything else. I chose her alive – no longer available. I chose her to die another way – that option had come and gone. Anything but what was really true – that option also unavailable. In the end I only get one choice, and that is to choose what is – so I choose Suicide.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 08:09:00 +0000
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