My Dad

My dad hung himself on March 18th, 2013. Actually it could have been the 19th no one is exactly sure. It was my spring break and I was at the beach with a few of my friends and my girlfriend. I didn’t find out til that Thursday which I think was the 21st. My phone had been dead for a day or two and I didn’t bother to charge it, I guess I didn’t think anything important was going to happen. I finally charged and turned off my phone and saw that I had received a text from my rabbi and a woman in my community. They both said that their very sorry for my loss and will have my father in their thoughts. I was obviously confused. I didn’t know what they were talking about but I started to panic. Sorry for my loss? What loss? What’s wrong with my dad? When I saw these texts I was sitting in the living room with my friends and I start to tear up. They ask me what’s wrong and I go I think my dad died. They say no he’s not dead, he can’t be. I needed to know what happened.  I needed to talk to someone in my family. First I try to call my mom, she doesn’t pick up. Then my older brother and sister, and they don’t pick up. Finally my little sister Katya picked up the phone. I’m in tears because I think I know what’s going on. My brother had told me last week that my father checked himself into the hospital for depression. It worried me but I didn’t reach out to him because of some complications with our relationship. So finally I get a hold of someone. I ask if dad was dead. She says yes. I hear the words but for some reason it doesn’t make sense to me. I ask how did he kill himself, she again replies yes. I go how did he do it, how did he do it? She says she doesn’t want to know. I don’t really remember the rest of the conversation but I hang up the phone.  I come back into the living room in tears, my entire body is shuddering. I say: You guys, my dad is dead, he killed himself. At this point it hadn’t really hit me but my body is still responding. Tears are streaming down my face and i’m having a hard time standing up.  I go downstairs and I sit in the tub. I called my friend Skylar and told her what happened. I don’t know why I called her in particular. I guess we were kind of close but I think I mostly called for her sympathy. When I tell her what happened at first she thinks it is a joke. Convincing her it was not a joke was an extremely disturbing experience, because you think when you tell someone something like that they’ll just automatically believe you, but trust me some won’t. After the call I spent maybe twenty minutes in that empty tub just crying and holding myself. I don’t know if it was pain that I was feeling or just pure shock. It was all very confusing.

Anyway, after about twenty minutes, I head back upstairs to face my friends. None of them really know how to deal with it even though John, the owner of the house we were staying at and one of my best friends, had just lost his mother a few years back. No one really said anything and we kind of jsut sat there in silence. I don’t directly remember being angry at them for this, but now that I’m recalling the situation I feel like I must have. I expected to be surrounded by comforting words and hugs but these idiots are just sitting there while we all stew in this air of discomfort.  We left the beach soon after and I get home. I ask my mom why the hell she didn’t tell me earlier. She said she wanted me to have a good tie at the beach, that she didn’t want to ruin my spring break. After that I couldn’t really stay in the house much longer, I had to go. I have five siblings so the house was pretty full. Everyone was home.  There was so much pain and sadness everywhere you  turned. I just avoided eye contact with everyone because when you looked into their eyes there was jsut kind of this hollow sadness. It was like a part of them had been taken and just smashed to pieces. And it was like you couldn’t ever really repair it you just have to gather what’s left and keep on going. So yeah, I had to get out of there. I basically just lived on a couch in john’s basement for two days. I didn’t tell his family what happened because I just wanted to be treated regularly. So i kind of just moped around john’s house/ basement for the days before the funeral. I think I stayed in the basement because that’s where my dad hung himself, I guess I felt kind of close to him. Also during those to days I didn’t really sleep and I thought I saw my dad walking around the basement one or two times. It was weird my brain was doing weird things to make sure I would be okay I guess. Anyways the funeral came and I had to go. It was the last day of spring break and I had to go back to school after the funeral. I remember thinking damn, thank goodness this happened during spring break so i didn’t have to miss class. hahaha isn’t that screwed up? But yeah the funeral was awful. You know that time when you get to go up to the casket and ask for forgiveness. Well I only stayed for a minute or so but the rest of my family was there sobbing on the coffin, my brother even yelled out that he was sorry he was such a bad son. It was really awfully depressing. After the service we sat around with my Dad’s family at our house then we went back to school. It all happened so fast and I think that we really just wanted to be done with it.

Anyway this part isn’t really important but I just wanted you guys to know where I was when I first heard and how I was feeling in the days to come, just to give you a bit of background.

After my father’s death i convinced myself that if I could just stop one person from killing themselves, or just make one person feel like their life was worthwhile then I would know why my dad died and he wouldn’t have died in vain. I worked, and still do work, at a peer counseling and crisis intervention hotline at UMD called Help Center, but I still felt like it wasn’t enough so I kept trying to reach out to people who I thought were in need of a compassionate listener in person and over Facebook. I made it my job to seek out people who were depressed or who might be at risk for suicide and made myself always available to them. By the end of the semester I was playing the role of counselor to far too many people and it became overwhelming. I started to realize that I was helping these people deal with their problems so I wouldn’t have to face my own. So basically what I’m trying to tell you guys is that if someone you loved committed suicide there’s no way to fix what happened. You can’t make the pain go away by trying to help someone with their depression. First ad foremost you need to deal with your own grief. Of course it is important to reach out to those who can’t or won’t reach out for help for themselves, but it’s more important to take care of yourself first. While helping others may help you heal, you have to make sure that you’re mentally hand physically healthy before you can start to help someone else. And most importantly, if you’re depressed and/or having suicidal thoughts pelase reach out to someone. The pain of suicide is indescribable and unending. It will affect everyone whoever knew you and will permanently damage and change those who love you. As  I mentioned earlier I work for the Help Center at UMD. We get calls from issues like anxiety over school work to suicidal thoughts. So please, if you’re struggling with anything at all and want to talk to a peer call us at the Help Center. Our number is 301-314-HELP

You’re not alone. And if you think no one loves you you are rong, becaue I lvoe you. I know that’s very general and corny but it’s ture. I love you simply for the fact that you are alive and that you are struggling. And despite this struggle that may feel like it will never end and only get worse, you continue to fight for your life because you are filled with bravery and courage even if you don’t know it. I really do love you, I do. You are not alone because I am standing by your side, facing your struggle with you. Though it may seem impossible to go through this alone, you can always get through it with a friend at your side.