Surviving Suicide. My Journey

And Once Again..

My sister was an amazing, bright young lady whose smile could light up an entire room. Not that she smiled very often anymore.. she was in her own hell and couldn't seem to get out of it. I imagine that, like me she blamed herself for my mother's suicide. She was a 22 year old ray of sunshine and the absolute apple of my son's eye. This girl took four hours everyday to get ready to go anyway but would gladly go waist deep in pluff mud to catch blue crabs with my son. He adored her, after all they were raised like brother and sister.

She had been sober for about six months after meeting an amazing young man that didn't party or do drugs. She was doing really well. In fact, she had even gotten a job at a super fancy hotel on the way to the beach. Everyone loved her and only wanted the best for her. And we all thought that she was well on her way to healing.

That morning started like any normal morning, except that my sister had called me around 3 in the morning, really drunk. I got mad at her and told her that I would talk to her when she was sober. All I knew was that she had gotten into an argument with her boyfriend and went out to get drunk. I wasn't at all in the mood. After all I had to work in the morning and get three children off to school. I got up as soon as the clock went off and woke up the kids for school. Everything was actually going really well that morning, almost too good. I finally got the kids all rounded up for school and we headed out at about 6:30 that morning.

It was a normal typical day at work except that all day, I was haunted by this horrible, unsettling feeling. It was as if a rock the size of a car was sitting in my stomach. I got off work around 4 that afternoon and picked up the kids from the sitter. Then we headed home. As soon as I got home, I saw that my sister had called at 6:35 that morning, five minutes after I left the house. And in that moment, I knew. I called her numerous times that night and she never answered. I didn't even need the phone call that I knew was coming. I already knew that she had taken her own life too. The ironic thing is that at almost the exact same time as the phone rang ten years earlier, it rang again. This time there was a male voice on the phone saying "she's gone.. she's gone". Then I heard the same agonizing scream that Ihad heard ten years earlier and I knew that this time might actually kill me.