T.W. Suicide
I felt the room go quiet as I got up to speak at his funeral, crumpled tear soaked paper in my hand. Most of the people in the room knew who I was. Some, I’d known since elementary school, and others knew me simply as his girlfriend. The one who had been his girlfriend when he chose to take his life. I felt their compassion, but also their curiosity. What role, if any, did I have contributing to his downward spiral?
The truth is, addiction had taken a firm hold of his life, and I was studying abroad. I wasn’t there to know to what extent he had been suffering, and he had become an expert in cover-ups (which became significantly easier in a long-distance relationship).
As I stood up at the podium delivering my speech, all I could think about in that moment was how badly I wanted to disappear and leave this reality behind. All the sad faces. All the obligatory hugs from half-strangers. I wanted to get on a plane and go back to the town I had been studying abroad in. A place where few knew my name, and none had ever met him. A place where I could be more or less invisible, with no sad “we’re sorry”, “how terrible”, glances from across the room.
A few weeks later I found myself sitting in a brown sofa across from a counsellor in that very town. I told her I never wanted to love again. Love asked for too much, and I never wanted to feel like I had any control over how someone felt. It was better to remain detached, I decided.
She responded, “grief is kind of like dumping the puzzle pieces that make up who you are on to the floor. Grief becomes the only puzzle piece you have left. Everything you think and everything you do feels defined by that one piece. You’ll slowly start to pick up your puzzle pieces,” she continued, “but they might look and feel different. After all, they have to fit together with your grief piece. You will even find the piece that allows you to love again. You might even find pieces that weren’t there before.”
In the months following his death, It was true that grief was my only “puzzle piece”. I remember looking at the groceries that I had in my cupboards and thinking, this is from before, or, this is from after. I couldn’t care about anything but the shock wave that his death had sent. If anyone tried to tell me about their stressors; “not enough time to study for all these exams!” or, “our new roommate won’t clean anything!” I simply couldn’t care. I couldn’t find anything in me to care about things outside of the fact that he wasn’t here anymore. It was as if nothing else mattered.
The first additional puzzle piece that I found was my ability to feel genuine joy. I still remember how it felt to experience my first belly laugh after his death. It shocked me. It was almost like an out of body experience. Was that really me? Was I really laughing like that? I didn’t laugh like that again for a long time, but just knowing that I could pick up that puzzle piece meant that I could pick it up again. That was enough to keep me going.
The second piece that came back was my identity as a student. I remember where I was sitting when I was distracted by school for the first time. Sure, I was only distracted for a few minutes, but the point was that I knew it was possible. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for the next month, but I knew it was going to happen again. Even just that possibility kept me going through all those days I couldn’t seem to think about anything else.
The third puzzle piece that came back was my identity as a friend. And actually, when I picked this piece up and held it in my hands, I could tell it was a similar piece to the one I had before, but it was not the same piece. I remember the first time someone came to me with a problem and I felt genuine concern. And not just concern, but an ability to go deeper, understand better. Again, that piece didn’t find a permanent spot just yet. But, I knew it was there, and I liked how that piece looked and felt even better than before.
Of course, no one can ever know exactly what it feels like to lose your person, just as no one knew exactly what it felt like to lose mine. But, I do know what it feels like to look at your puzzle, with only the disaster piece and think to yourself, this is it. This is who I am now.
But, one day, you will start to realize that your disaster puzzle piece has slots where other pieces can fit. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day you will find pieces that can fit into your disaster puzzle piece. You will never be the same, but one day your puzzle will start looking like a full picture. Of course, your tragedy is a big part of your puzzle, and it affects the way many of your other pieces look and feel, but there will be other pieces too. Pieces you may not have ever seen before. Some pieces might even be more beautiful, more empathetic, more alive.
