it runs in the family

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    My family is so secretive. Every dirty family secret I possess I've had to earn the hard way: eavesdropping from other rooms, reading old letters, putting some things together by reading between the lines of what's said, and what's unsaid. My mother's entire family has always spoken about each other as having "bad nerves". I assumed this meant anxiety, or mood swings even. I did not realize for many years that they were using it as a euphemism for something more akin to the symptoms of bipolar disorder.

    Once, when I was a teenager, I was shocked to overhear my father mocking my maternal grandmother for having attempted suicide. I was not surprised by his callousness and lack of empathy, but I was shocked to learn that my grandma, too, had struggled with mental health problems. Recently, I visited home, and my mother casually mentioned that my grandmother had been struggling with bouts of mental illness her entire life. She had left her home town for a toxic marriage that didn't work out, and she would often get lonely and depressed. It is so easy to understand as an adult, but as a child I didn't even notice anything was off with her. As an adult, once she had already died, the family secrets started to trickle out, and I learned that she had attempted suicide numerous times throughout her life.

  

  To me, my grandmother had never seemed sad. She was the kindest, sweetest woman. Not perfect, but friendly, funny, and very caring. She took care of me a lot growing up, while both of my parents worked into the evening. She fed me, watched me, played games with me, and basically raised me. I knew she must be lonely - at her age, two of her long term partners had died, her friends had all mostly died, and she was living alone. 

    

I don't have a lot of the details, because I was living away, but over the years between 2016-2022, my grandmother's mental health was once again struggling to hang on. She was lonely, her grand children had moved away, she was away from her sisters and her immediate family. She moved back to her hometown and lived with her siblings in order to recover. And she did seem to be recovering. Unfortunately for her, one of her sisters is a real cunt (who has mental health issues of her own in spades! But that's no excuse for being an awful person). She forcibly kicked my grandmother out of her family home, and sent her back to her own house. Unable to return to safety, my grandmother struggled on for a while before she finally took her own life in the spring of 2022. 

  

  Losing my grandmother to suicide has been one of the hardest and most complex things I've ever had to navigate. Parts of me feel so guilty - what could I have done to help her? How could I have fought harder for her? And then other parts of me feel a relief, because she was obviously suffering for so long, and now it was finally over. Still other parts of me felt so ashamed for feeling that way - What if her suffering could have been fixed, if only we had noticed earlier? If only we had worked harder to do something? If only we had done something. I guess I have been traumatized a bit by the experience, because when I myself start to think about suicide, I remember her. When I see churning water, I think of her. Was she scared? Did it hurt? Was she sure this was what she wanted, or did she have second thoughts before it was too late? I get scared thinking about it. I don't want my grandma to suffer. But if life was suffering - maybe death was peace? It's hard to know. It's painful to think about. It almost feels like permission to do the same. 

   

 I've actually been in a much better headspace lately. The late summer always gives me a reprieve. The sun, the warmth, the beauty of everything in bloom ... summer helps my mental health a lot. But even feeling better can't stop the memories of my grandmother from being triggered. I've been crying before bed a lot. I miss her every day. It almost doesn't feel real that I wont' ever be able to hug her or speak to her again. I can't even remember the last time I had hugged her, or visited her.

I wish she were here, to tuck me in.

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