Suicide Awareness

Suicide. The topic of suicide can be a hard one to talk about. Especially if your family has had to endure the pain of losing a loved one from taking their own life.

At sixteen my older brother took his own life. I was five at the time and did not even really understand what had happened to my brother. As I got older and began asking my mom questions about Justin, she explained that he was really sad and he could not handle it anymore. I could never understand how he could have been that sad. I couldn’t understand why he would leave me and why he didn’t love me enough to stay on this Earth to be my big brother. I didn’t understand, until I started facing my own anxiety and depression.

When I was a child my dad was a very abusive alcoholic. Not always physically abusive, but mentally abusive. I dreaded the nights he was not home right after work, because I knew he was a the beer joint getting  angry drunk.

He would keep my mom and I up all night fighting with us or questioning our love for him. There were nights we had to stay at a hotel, just to get some peace from him. I spent a lot of my childhood scared and exhausted from the fighting.

As I became a teenager, I became more angry with him and would fight back. That just added more stress to the situation. I became so tired of life. Being a teenager didn’t help either because I was raging with hormones on top of being depressed and angry. One night I was so fed up with the yelling and screaming and attempted suicide. I just could not stand the thought of another day on this Earth with him as my father and the problems I was facing in school.

In anger I took a handful of my mom’s blood pressure bills. My mom found me with the pills and immediately gave me ipecac (a syrup that makes you throw up your entire stomach). It was not pleasant at all. I was so mad that she couldn’t just let me go. My mom saved my life.

After that my mom got me the help I needed and depression medication. Things didn’t get better with my dad until I finally moved out at 18, but I learned to deal with my emotions a little better.

I felt so selfish to do that to my mom. She has always been my rock and tried to give me the best life she could. Now as a mother I could not even imagine the heart break of losing my son to suicide and then my daughter trying to go the same way.

Depression can make you feel like the whole world would be better off without you, but that is NOT true. You leave the people that love you behind to mourn you and blame their self for not doing enough to help.

I always wish I could have helped my brother but his depression was silent. He didn’t tell anybody the way he felt inside. Maybe if I had been older I could have seen the signs of his depression, but we will never know the maybes or what ifs. I just hope I can spread awareness for this disease and suicide prevention.

If you are suffering from depression, there are treatments for depression so don’t be ashamed to get help. There are more people than you know going through the same things as you. Reach out to your loved ones, believe me when I say they would rather you come to them for help than to have to go to your funeral.

If you are just going through a hard time right now and just cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, it WILL get better! Hard times come and go in life but it does get better.

I encourage to read the signs of depression and reach out to your loved ones that might be dealing with more than you know. 

In loving memory of my Big Brother Justin Hiller. He is missed everyday.