Pain.
“Where there is pain there will always be strength”.
This was tattooed on my daughter’s arm from when she was 18 years old in 2017. Her very first tattoo and it was on her forearm where she could always see. She was so proud of it.
This was a phrase from a song she loved written by a mental health advocate, Robb Nash. She associated so much with these words. She believed this and she lived by this.
She leaned into the strength she had to be able to deal with and fight the pain daily. Every day she did. Until she couldn’t. Until the pain grew stronger than her will to fight it and until the darkness of the pain started to cloud everything over.
She lost her way in the pain, and the light of the strength that she had been walking towards became dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. Yet, no one saw this. On the outside, the light was all around her; it’s what she showed others. But the darkness of the pain she felt was strong and it completely screwed up her views of herself and her life.
This is what we don’t realize when someone is in a suicidal mind. The pain becomes so incredibly great, something that the majority of us cannot even fathom. The pain is not something we can take a break from, turn it off and or walk away from and find peace. It follows you everywhere you go, even into your sleep.
It’s isolating.
It’s lonely.
And it’s so incredibly exhausting.
It tells you, you are not enough, you are a screw up; again. You are a burden and everyone would be better off without you. That’s what it does, the inner, turmoil of pain. It chips away and it chips away and it chips away…
Unless there is a way to stop it, but you cannot do it alone. The Goliath you are fighting cannot be taken down by only you alone. But there ARE people who will jump into that ring with you and fight that Goliath, and the people that jump in without hesitation—they wont leave.
If I had the chance or had known about Ruby’s final struggles, I would never leave. I would have fought to my bitter end with her, taking all the punches, throw downs, become a broken body, never giving up. I wouldn’t leave her.
The question is, how do WE, as a society, help our loved ones who are fighting this internal battle? Because we keep saying “Reach out” and “I’m here for you” but in that time of inner pain, chaos and emotional dysregulation, how can a person who is burdened so badly by the pain and the fog ever muster the energy to reach out? By then, aren’t they past the point of being able to seek help, due to the inner turmoil, exhaustion and emotional isolation?
So how do we change that?
I don’t have the answers. I don’t know if I ever will but I am living the pain of losing a child to suicide and I see so many parents every damned day joining this road I’m on, wondering what the hell happened, trying to make sense of it all.
“Where there is Pain there will always be Strength”.
I am trying. Really freaking hard. I am trying to hang onto that strength.
I just wish I could back it all up to 2022, start over, try again. I know the changes I would make. I would do so many things differently, but would it change the outcome or would I still be here writing my feelings out and trying to make sense of it all?
“Where there is pain there will always be strength”.
Okay, here I go for another day, mustering up the strength, honouring my baby who left this world by her own hand, because the pain outweighed the strength.