What you flee will follow thee, what you face will be erased

My daughter Julie was 28 years old. She was studying for her doctorate. Since her death, I have been going through a complicated grieving process. 

For the last eight years, I have been seeing a psychologist every two weeks. Not because of weakness, but because I want to keep going. It takes courage to face death by suicide. I avoided alcohol, drugs, or other forms of escape. What I know now is that for many people going through grief, just like myself, suicide leaves a cruel mark, tainted with regrets and sometimes heavy guilt. 

I still ask myself what I could have done differently, what I should have done, what I didn’t see, understand, what I missed. But I can’t change the past. I have to find some kind of balance, recognize my pain and face my suffering to be able to keep going after what Julie did. And move forward, one step at a time. 

Every year, the 22nd of November marks International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day. A day for acknowledging a very real, but often misunderstood and invisible pain. It’s a day that says to those bereaved by suicide, “You are not alone.” A day to remind us that behind every suicide, there are loved ones who stay behind, devastated. 

I am one of them.  

When we lose someone important to us by suicide, we’re not just losing a person. We lose our points of reference, a part of ourselves, and sometimes even the desire to keep going, or the feeling that life has any meaning.  

We can lose other relationships too. We find ourselves carrying an invisible, yet terribly heavy backpack. Mine has suffering and nightmares inside, but also tools like psychological help, which I decided to receive. 

This grief has transformed me. I completely unraveled. Back aches, headaches, stomach aches. Profound malaise. Our body and brain can send messages that can be dangerous to ignore. This forced me to get help and rebuild myself. It’s a bumpy, winding, spiralling path where we can take three steps forward and two steps back. Sometimes to the side, too.  

I decided to battle my demons and woes, to keep going, to not get discouraged or give up. I work out four or five times a week. I often go to my local Tim’s (coffee shop), I craft, I read, and I write. I chose to speak out, to talk about my story and share on the deuilparsuicide.ca forum. Because I understood what Dr. Gilles Lapointe said, “What’s not expressed becomes impressed.” 

Resources exist. Helplines, by phone or through chat and text (yes, we can use them as suicide loss survivors too!), healthcare professionals, support groups, forums. The deuilparsuicide.ca forum helped me realize I am not alone. That others have experienced this pain, this wound, this incomprehension, this quest for meaning. Se donner le droit d’être malheureux, a book written by Marc-André Dufour, a psychologist, helped me a lot, too.  

What I want to say to those who have experienced loss by suicide is this: you are not alone. If you are in distress, if you think the only way out is by stopping everything, remember that what you are looking for more than anything is to stop suffering, not to stop living.  

And to do that, you have to talk about it. You have to ask for help. You have to accept that the journey may be long, may take a lot of time, but that it can be taken.  

Today, I am better than I was. I am not perfectly happy, but I am on my way. I don’t have nightmares anymore. I hold onto good memories. I found ways to keep going. And I think everyone can find their own ways.  

I couldn’t prevent Julie’s suicide. Even now, I tell myself that I should have understood, I should have done something differently. What I do know is that fleeing our pain won’t make it disappear. To survive, we need to accept our sadness, recognize our suffering and, even if the backpack is heavy, keep moving forward, one step at a time. 

What you flee follows thee, what you face will be erased. 

This story also appeared in La Presse.