Hi, new member. I don't know if sharing my story will make a difference, or if anyone here can make a difference, but this is something I can't share anywhere else in full, about my ideation. It's something that runs in my family, on both sides, but heavily on my father's side that's my concern. I've already held out longer than I statistically should have. But I'm hoping that here, at least, I can get some understanding of the tug-of-war feeling of futility I'm currently experiencing that's mixed in with the urge to carry on, because part of me thinks that the events of the past are what may get me through the trials of now, like it was meant to prepare me for what's to come. But that's mixed with the feeling that I don't want to get through it, that I'm tired of never-ending trials and tribulations.
Long story short: My father killed himself when I was four, around 1978. I was always told that no one knew why, no note, just that he was very sad, and loved us. At that time, my mother was introduced to someone else, an abusive alcoholic who would beat her to near death, if it weren't for my interventions as a child. That went on til about 1986. She also turned to drugs and was abusive to me and my sister, and my half-brother from the alcoholic. She wound up abandoning us when I was 17, and the younger two still in school. I always thought it was the suicide that led her to that, and forgave her, though I was still somewhat distant. I always vowed that if I ever found out why he did it, I'd avenge them both. But in 2016, she fell ill, nearly died. I intervened to help in the meantime, as she also has a severely. handicapped child from after she abandoned us. He got sick as well, during a near-year's worth of this. And everything around her was a heaping mess, just like when I was a child. But the more I helped, the more she worked to sabotage my help.
During this time, on my birthday, no less, I was talking to my uncle, who was drunk and sharing stories of the past. He said something about my father, that my uncle's twin brother was there the day he shot himself. MY JAW DROPPED TO THE FLOOR. The twin came over and told me the whole story. I had known about some details of that day, but it turns out there was a LOT omitted to make my mother look good. While at work at nights, my mother would have friends over to "party", including a man she had a "fling" with. Not only that, my parents had an incident where they slept with each other's friends, at her request, apparently. He was not happy about it, wanted to make their marriage work. The man she slept with was there at the party, as was my uncle. My dad came home, kicked them out, and they fought about it. Said he didn't want them over while he was working, and he would talk to them. The next day, she takes him to work, and runs into "the other guy", and tells him. That guy worked with my father, and someone saw my mom talking to him. When the guy got to work, my father confronted him, and suddenly walked out and walked home. The guy called my mom to warn her, and she took me and my sister to the laundrymat while he cooled down. My uncle showed up, in the meantime, after my dad told him to come over the next day after the party, and saw my dad in the kitchen, with the gun, on the phone shouting "i'll Kill him!" and he left. But it turns out my dad shot himself, instead.
My mom and grandmother called my uncle a liar, but I obtained the police report, which confirmed everything he said, even down to details like the green car, which I had remembered as yellow. When confronted, my mom when from ignorance/denial to blaming him, no remorse. And it turned out my grandmother, who called her own son a liar, actually admitted that my father called her days before, threatening to kill himself. And the report says that HIS father had called him a day or so before, threatening suicide as well. And it revealed an uncle of my father's had killed himself.
That's the short version of a very long story. But to bring it to the present: this suicide had shaped so much of my life, my ideals, my beliefs. I always liked superheroes as a kid, and thought I had to take the world on my shoulders because if I didn't, no one else would. LITERALLY. I found my father first, dead on the floor. That was my first loss. If I didn't stop the alchoholic beating my mom, she and her kids would be dead. Her negligence made me have adult resposiblities since then, and it's carried over into my adult life. That came with a lot of frustration, because I didn't have anyone looking out for me, and I was often suicidal. I never owned a gun because I didn't want to follow "in his footsteps" so easily. I remember trying to kill myself as a kid by holding my breath, already, and often had thoughts of suicide from childhood to adulthood. I'm 46 now, and I've already outlived him by 20 plus years. But after the revelation of the truth of it all, combined with my mother's betrayal of my father and ME, along with other people in her life...well, turns out the suicide was not the cause of her drugs and bad behavior, but she was already like that, and likely drove him to suicide. I feel this because she's often driven ME to suicidal thoughts while growing up, and a bad anxiety attack in 2017 that sent me to the hospital (which didn't stop the calls from her doctors and others for me to come and take care of HER while I was in the hospital...) Everything was being taken care of for her, through no effort of her own, while she spit on the people helping her. Meanwhile, my life was teetering trying to take care of her life, my brothers, her house after the flood that happened before, finding a home for her dog, maintaining her car even as mine DIED going back and forth from PA to NJ. constantly, all while working a full-time job.
Since 2017, I haven't spoken to her or anyone in my family, because I can't trust them, they lie and manipulate, and there are OTHER disgusting things I learned in the process of all this. I have no family now, and my few friends have abandoned me when I was near suicide again after this. I did see a therapist, and decided to readjust my life's goals and views, refocusing on work and creative endeavors. But then I was struck with a bad case of kidney stones that nearly killed me , in 2019. That lasted almost six months, with a swollen kidney and looking like walking death. It finally resolved, and after a few more months, I got my strength back, and even started working out. I was even going to arrange to perform my own music live, a bucket list item.
All for nothing? Because then the pandemic hit, and the lockdowns, and everything else crashed again, shutting down the whole world, just as I was getting healthy mentally and physically. I was doing everything I was supposed to, as far as taking care of myself, getting back in shape and fighting off suicide, trying not to succumb, blame others, etc. And then this happened. It was a big ironic move going from when I was sick and still dragging myself to work to being healthy when the whole world started treating everyone as sick. It feels like one big cosmic joke. But I'm not laughing.
When I had the kidney stones, I would go to bed at night when a wave of pain hit, and hoping for it to just take me. The only thing I fought through it for was to finish the music I was working on at the time, which I had done. There was no reason for me to continue living any more. But I survived it, and figured that I had no choice but to get on with living, try to create a new purpose to live. At the same time, I often felt like I was just "killing time". Even as a kid, I had a notion that I would die at 50, anyway. Now, with the world upside down...it seems like every year, the crisis gets worse, from family, to work (where a lot of things don't get done if I didn't do them), to world-shaking, and there's nothing I can do about it. I know I shouldn't try to solve it all, and can't, but it's hard to shake because the need for it was so ingrained in childhood. But that's the ultimate irony, because in my therapy, I was told that I can't solve my mother's problems if she doesn't help herself, and that I had to put aside the anxiety and the urge to "Fix everything", to give responsibility to others to fix themselves. But just as I was trying to let go of that responsibility, this happens, and it's either a big test to see if I'll act on that messiah complex, or accept my limitations. It's a big mind game, either way. And I'm tired of it. Tired of warning people to take care of their own lives, tired of fixing things with no gratitude or resentment, and now, tired of being helpless to watch things fall apart around me.
It just seems it's all going downhill, no matter what I do, and I don't want to watch anymore. I feel like everything that pushed me through to survive this long had been for nothing, as it's been a joke, a lie, and an illusion. Or I feel that it was all in preparation for now. But I'm tired of preparing and trials and tribulations of this kind.
Long story short: My father killed himself when I was four, around 1978. I was always told that no one knew why, no note, just that he was very sad, and loved us. At that time, my mother was introduced to someone else, an abusive alcoholic who would beat her to near death, if it weren't for my interventions as a child. That went on til about 1986. She also turned to drugs and was abusive to me and my sister, and my half-brother from the alcoholic. She wound up abandoning us when I was 17, and the younger two still in school. I always thought it was the suicide that led her to that, and forgave her, though I was still somewhat distant. I always vowed that if I ever found out why he did it, I'd avenge them both. But in 2016, she fell ill, nearly died. I intervened to help in the meantime, as she also has a severely. handicapped child from after she abandoned us. He got sick as well, during a near-year's worth of this. And everything around her was a heaping mess, just like when I was a child. But the more I helped, the more she worked to sabotage my help.
During this time, on my birthday, no less, I was talking to my uncle, who was drunk and sharing stories of the past. He said something about my father, that my uncle's twin brother was there the day he shot himself. MY JAW DROPPED TO THE FLOOR. The twin came over and told me the whole story. I had known about some details of that day, but it turns out there was a LOT omitted to make my mother look good. While at work at nights, my mother would have friends over to "party", including a man she had a "fling" with. Not only that, my parents had an incident where they slept with each other's friends, at her request, apparently. He was not happy about it, wanted to make their marriage work. The man she slept with was there at the party, as was my uncle. My dad came home, kicked them out, and they fought about it. Said he didn't want them over while he was working, and he would talk to them. The next day, she takes him to work, and runs into "the other guy", and tells him. That guy worked with my father, and someone saw my mom talking to him. When the guy got to work, my father confronted him, and suddenly walked out and walked home. The guy called my mom to warn her, and she took me and my sister to the laundrymat while he cooled down. My uncle showed up, in the meantime, after my dad told him to come over the next day after the party, and saw my dad in the kitchen, with the gun, on the phone shouting "i'll Kill him!" and he left. But it turns out my dad shot himself, instead.
My mom and grandmother called my uncle a liar, but I obtained the police report, which confirmed everything he said, even down to details like the green car, which I had remembered as yellow. When confronted, my mom when from ignorance/denial to blaming him, no remorse. And it turned out my grandmother, who called her own son a liar, actually admitted that my father called her days before, threatening to kill himself. And the report says that HIS father had called him a day or so before, threatening suicide as well. And it revealed an uncle of my father's had killed himself.
That's the short version of a very long story. But to bring it to the present: this suicide had shaped so much of my life, my ideals, my beliefs. I always liked superheroes as a kid, and thought I had to take the world on my shoulders because if I didn't, no one else would. LITERALLY. I found my father first, dead on the floor. That was my first loss. If I didn't stop the alchoholic beating my mom, she and her kids would be dead. Her negligence made me have adult resposiblities since then, and it's carried over into my adult life. That came with a lot of frustration, because I didn't have anyone looking out for me, and I was often suicidal. I never owned a gun because I didn't want to follow "in his footsteps" so easily. I remember trying to kill myself as a kid by holding my breath, already, and often had thoughts of suicide from childhood to adulthood. I'm 46 now, and I've already outlived him by 20 plus years. But after the revelation of the truth of it all, combined with my mother's betrayal of my father and ME, along with other people in her life...well, turns out the suicide was not the cause of her drugs and bad behavior, but she was already like that, and likely drove him to suicide. I feel this because she's often driven ME to suicidal thoughts while growing up, and a bad anxiety attack in 2017 that sent me to the hospital (which didn't stop the calls from her doctors and others for me to come and take care of HER while I was in the hospital...) Everything was being taken care of for her, through no effort of her own, while she spit on the people helping her. Meanwhile, my life was teetering trying to take care of her life, my brothers, her house after the flood that happened before, finding a home for her dog, maintaining her car even as mine DIED going back and forth from PA to NJ. constantly, all while working a full-time job.
Since 2017, I haven't spoken to her or anyone in my family, because I can't trust them, they lie and manipulate, and there are OTHER disgusting things I learned in the process of all this. I have no family now, and my few friends have abandoned me when I was near suicide again after this. I did see a therapist, and decided to readjust my life's goals and views, refocusing on work and creative endeavors. But then I was struck with a bad case of kidney stones that nearly killed me , in 2019. That lasted almost six months, with a swollen kidney and looking like walking death. It finally resolved, and after a few more months, I got my strength back, and even started working out. I was even going to arrange to perform my own music live, a bucket list item.
All for nothing? Because then the pandemic hit, and the lockdowns, and everything else crashed again, shutting down the whole world, just as I was getting healthy mentally and physically. I was doing everything I was supposed to, as far as taking care of myself, getting back in shape and fighting off suicide, trying not to succumb, blame others, etc. And then this happened. It was a big ironic move going from when I was sick and still dragging myself to work to being healthy when the whole world started treating everyone as sick. It feels like one big cosmic joke. But I'm not laughing.
When I had the kidney stones, I would go to bed at night when a wave of pain hit, and hoping for it to just take me. The only thing I fought through it for was to finish the music I was working on at the time, which I had done. There was no reason for me to continue living any more. But I survived it, and figured that I had no choice but to get on with living, try to create a new purpose to live. At the same time, I often felt like I was just "killing time". Even as a kid, I had a notion that I would die at 50, anyway. Now, with the world upside down...it seems like every year, the crisis gets worse, from family, to work (where a lot of things don't get done if I didn't do them), to world-shaking, and there's nothing I can do about it. I know I shouldn't try to solve it all, and can't, but it's hard to shake because the need for it was so ingrained in childhood. But that's the ultimate irony, because in my therapy, I was told that I can't solve my mother's problems if she doesn't help herself, and that I had to put aside the anxiety and the urge to "Fix everything", to give responsibility to others to fix themselves. But just as I was trying to let go of that responsibility, this happens, and it's either a big test to see if I'll act on that messiah complex, or accept my limitations. It's a big mind game, either way. And I'm tired of it. Tired of warning people to take care of their own lives, tired of fixing things with no gratitude or resentment, and now, tired of being helpless to watch things fall apart around me.
It just seems it's all going downhill, no matter what I do, and I don't want to watch anymore. I feel like everything that pushed me through to survive this long had been for nothing, as it's been a joke, a lie, and an illusion. Or I feel that it was all in preparation for now. But I'm tired of preparing and trials and tribulations of this kind.
