Almost 3 years later and I am still a mess. Suicide is stupid

[agreene24]

May 1st, 2013 I found my fiance dead. He had committed suicide in the garage of our home, a home I still live in with our children.  I am not sure how this works. What I do know is that I am not good with talking to other people in a confined space about personal matters( AKA therapy) What my goal is here, is to find other people who have experienced the sudden unexpected death of a significant other in the means of suicide. This Sunday will be 3 years later and I still don't have a grasp on how to handle things... I make it through every day, week, month and year but since his passing I feel like I am just floating through the motions of life and not actually living my life. I don't think it is fair to my children to have a mother who works full time to support them only to have her come home and be present but not actually there. I miss him and I want to figure out how to live my life again... This is the first time I have tried anything like this. Every book i have read has said that after the 2nd year it is supposed to get easier. Here I am 4 days away from the anniversary of his death and I find myself struggling. Pulling away from some of the people who mean the most to me. 

[Red]

I am so sorry for your loss and sad to hear how hard things have been for you the past three years. I have no personal experience with suicide, which I'm sure adds a whole layer to loss that I can't possibly comprehend. I am newly bereaved, however, and can empathize with how it feels to be absent from life following the loss of a partner. The love of my life died suddenly (and wholly unexpectedly) following a heart attack/cardiac arrest on March 23. I am only five weeks into this journey, and the pain is unbearable at times. I know the road ahead will be a marathon of pain, so I'm trying to pace myself for that and do everything I can to be patient and gentle with myself as I go through all the things I need to go through to come out the other side. I am seeing a counselor, which I think will be helpful. I have also found that writing (I choose to write in the form of letters to my beloved) is helpful in getting the swirling, overwhelming thoughts and feelings out of my head each day. Have you tried a journal? It's probably difficult to cope when your style is not to talk with others, and a journal at least gives you an outlet, albeit a private one. I think actually expressing everything we're feeling (in whatever way we can) is so important at times like these, when we desperately need to make some sense of the chaos inside us and to feel heard and understood. So perhaps coming to these boards will bring you some much needed recognition and support. I hope so. I am so sorry that you're still suffering; know at least that you're not alone in your loss. So many of us here have faced (or are still facing) feelings like yours -- of hopelessness, despair, yearning, "going through the motions". I know I am -- every day. Perhaps others here will be better able to understand the added pain of suicide and help you find ways to move through the pain of that as well. Healing thoughts to you today.

[KensLove]

My significant other of 25 years married me three weeks ago. Monday I came home to find him dead on the floor of gas inhalation.  I knew he was struggling, Believed I saw signs that he was getting better. I didn't realize those signs meant that he had made his decision and come to peace with it .   There are so many questions I will never have answers to.  There is an extra layer of pain and confusion when you lose someone to suicide.   I have no answers, but I can definitely offer my understanding  of some of what you must have gone through.  I wish you the best. 

[obakesan]

Hi

I read your post and I'm not sure if I should answer or not because I don't fit your stated requirement

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What my goal is here, is to find other people who have experienced the sudden unexpected death of a significant other in the means of suicide.
 

I lost my wife nearly 4 years ago (It will be 4 years in August). Her death was from a brain tumor which was undiagnosed. Her death was sudden, she died on her way back to visit her family and help her grandmother. It seems the flight triggered bleeding in her brain around the tumour and she had a seizure and died.

So in that respect I experienced going from being happy and building our lives together, renovating our house and preparing for having a family to dealing with her loss.

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Every book i have read has said that after the 2nd year it is supposed to get easier.

I feel that every book I've read has been somewhere on the spectrum of "enraged me" through to "exasperated me" : the authors are wither ignorant, happless fools or religious based. While I hope there is something more to life than death, if there is God then God is totally nothing like humans believe. 

I can say that with each passing year I have changed in how I am. I can't say words like "easier" and I can't say words like "better". Perhaps its just like "stronger" or "better at it"

Much of what is written about grief is fluff to me, but then I am a strongly intellectual person and highly rational not a strongly emotional thinker. That's not to say I don't feel emotions (that would be stupid) but that my thinking is oriented towards how to bring my thoughts and emotions together.

I think that its important to say that I do not think that there are answers to some questions. Although I've asked "why" so many times I know that there just can not be an answer to that question. I have gone through wondering about blaming myself through to asking why so many times. Now I don't wonder why I only wonder how I can take what is (the truth of the situation) and make that part of my life so that I can continue forwards and keep living a meaningful life. That's hard because so much of what I have spent my entire life thinking was meaning has died.

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I am not sure how this works. What I do know is that I am not good with talking to other people in a confined space about personal matters( AKA therapy) 

I agree ... with both parts. What I'm sure of is that many "therapists" are therapists because they were confused and distorted individuals who sought to figure themselves out. Stuff like Kubler Ross is central to many of these therapists views, yet Ross wrote about grief for herself, grief for the impending loss of her life. She was not dead when she wrote it, so she had not actually lost her life, nor lost her partner. Thus her reflections are more about that. Only the ignorant and the simple minded would feel that its all applicable to our situations.

So what I can offer is what I have done. That will only be helpful in the most obtuse way because we are both different people. The things we have in common I can't know except that we are both people and we both have similar feelings because we are both people.

I believe in truth, in knowing the truth I can find a way to live which allows me to sit with the truth and be comfortable. I do not seek to run away from the truth, even if I don't like it. I have some prior experience in this with being born with a bicuspid aortic valve in my heart and having to come to terms with that truth and what it means for my life since I was really aware. I've had 3 surgeries to "fix" that valve, probably I will not have another.

There is no answer to "why" on that either : why do I have that valve?

I have come to see that it has shaped my life and been the cause of much which brought me to here. Because of that I am who I am and met my lovely wife and had a good life for many years. It will also likely be the cause of my own death.

I'm also a researcher, of many things, and so I naturally turn my eye into myself to see, and to try to understand. When I did my Masters I learned a lot about the benefits to me of writing, writing with structure, writing to be clear. I have to think before I write and I often change it as I go. Yet somehow applying myself to writing helps me to process what I've seen. Years before Anita passed I began to write a blog ... mainly to publish ideas and also to have a ready answer to problems which I found myself writing about frequently. So I write on my blog about my grief and my journey.

I'm not sure if any of my posts will hold anything for you, but there is no harm in putting them here for you to read. As you said above, you don't do well talking to people (especially people you don't know), and your point about confined spaces may mean you are not actually being fully honest with yourself.

You wrote:

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I feel like I am just floating through the motions of life and not actually living my life. I don't think it is fair to my children to have a mother who works full time to support them only to have her come home and be present but not actually there. 

and I agree, I'm glad that in some ways we had not had the kids we planned because I wonder how that would have effected my ability to give time to myself to heal. That time is essential, for without it I am of the view that I'd have "trowled concrete over the wounds" and pretended to soldier on.

I know well that such approaches don't work. I know this because on my last heart surgery (replaced the valve with a mechanical one and fixed an aneurysm of tha aortic artery) I had a small bacteria dropped into my chest and stitched over to attempt to heal on my last surgery. That took a year to burst out and after two surgeries to heal and I I'm not sure its over yet.

All this has given me time and forced me to think. I took off from my job and closed the doors of my house and went back to Finland (where Anita was from) and retreated into her apartment (now my apartment) and thought. I think that you need time to think and face your issues and attempt to find peace with them.

Again, because I don't know you I can't be sure what's that "right" thing to say. So instead I'll point you at a few of my writings where I dealt with these things myself in my own ways. For instance my friends said to me "you're depressed" ... well yes, but not the same way that psychologists think. So I wrote this post to express myself and to send to my friends.

http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2013/11/depression-grief-denial.html

Part of going back to Finland was to explore what we had done together. I don't know why I needed to do that, but like elephants who can't leave the body of their herd member I needed to walk around there and think. That process led me to a few posts:

http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2014/01/guided-contemplation-and-tv.html

http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2013/10/real-life-vs-romantic-fiction.html

Again, I don't know if anything I've written strikes any chords with you or helps you on your own way.

Don't expect the answer will present itself and that you'll have a sudden healing, for that's the stuff of fiction. What I think is reasonable to expect is that you gradually face the horror of it all, gradually come to be stronger, and gradually see you are becoming stronger. To me its like ski training: you keep doing it and you keep training and you get better. What would have been a killer treck with enough training becomes a journey of a lifetime that is filled with good memories and hardships.

Lastly I would caution you against "hardening up" .. to be honest like my bacteria no matter what your armour is made of it may not protect you from what is within, and may just prevent anyone from helping you.

http://cjeastwd.blogspot.com/2013/05/hardening-up-mistake-of-it.html

A point I made to one comment on my blog who wished me well on my process of healing: perhaps it helps you to see things differently:

Healing is progressing, but like many things you never get "better" you just learn to live with the injury.

I wish you peace

[Kimberly2006]

I am new to group. I too have lost my husband unexpectedly to suicide on March 17, 2016. Yesterday was 2 months. I completely understand what you are going through. I am trying to wrap my brain around what the hell happened. In February we celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary. We were so happy. We have a beautiful 10 year old daughter. March 17 I woke up to him there, I went to work that evening and he called me to tell me he left his work to go home and kill himself. He talked to me on phone for 6 minutes and then hung up. I tried to stop him. I don't think I'll ever understand what happened. Now I just have to find a way to live. I'm 35, widowed, single mom whose life completely flipped upside down. I am here to find other people going through what I'm going through to hopefully help me In some way. 

[Anavette]

On Wednesday, April 27, 2016 at 11:07 AM, agreene24 said:

May 1st, 2013 I found my fiance dead. He had committed suicide in the garage of our home, a home I still live in with our children.  I am not sure how this works. What I do know is that I am not good with talking to other people in a confined space about personal matters( AKA therapy) What my goal is here, is to find other people who have experienced the sudden unexpected death of a significant other in the means of suicide. This Sunday will be 3 years later and I still don't have a grasp on how to handle things... I make it through every day, week, month and year but since his passing I feel like I am just floating through the motions of life and not actually living my life. I don't think it is fair to my children to have a mother who works full time to support them only to have her come home and be present but not actually there. I miss him and I want to figure out how to live my life again... This is the first time I have tried anything like this. Every book i have read has said that after the 2nd year it is supposed to get easier. Here I am 4 days away from the anniversary of his death and I find myself struggling. Pulling away from some of the people who mean the most to me. 

How are you doing 3 years after? Just wondering if it ever gets better at all? It's been 6 months since I lost my boyfriend and still cant seem to have a day where I dont cry and miss him every second, minute, and hour. There isnt a day I dont think about him. I miss him so much feels like my life ended the day he passed away. He took part of my heart with him. Just feel like life just came to a stop and Im leaving life but not enjoying it and it' s not fair for my kids but I miss him so much. I wish I could turn back time and have him here still and not take for granted our time together. I dream of him often and some dreams feel so real but then it's back to reality of having to live with this pain in my heart of not having him anymore

[KayC]

I'm not sure if agreene24 will see this since it's been so long since this thread was started, but I wanted to tell you I'm sorry for your loss.  I hope you're getting grief counseling, it can be pretty hard to get through on your own.

I think all of us take our time together for granted to some extent or another...that's one thing about loss, it does have a tendency to make us learn to appreciate and live in the present more fully.