Since the day my youngest daughter took her life nearly 17 months ago, I have struggled with the "WHY" of it all. Clinically and intellectually, I know why: untreated mental illness - probably bipolar and/or borderline personality disorder - but never formally diagnosed or treated. Today I was reading Viktor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning," and he quoted Nietzsche: "He who has a WHY to live for can bear with almost any HOW." It struck me painfully to think that my baby girl had "no WHY to live for": Not me, not her father, not her siblings, not her partner, not her own goals...but most of all, not her then 3 and 4 year old children. How could that be??
I posted that tonite in a Facebook group for suicide survivors. It's an agonizing realization, that even her own children were not enough to keep her here.
I realize her mental illness resulted in cognitive distortions, but it still hurts to think that she preferred a permanent vacation to a lifetime with her children. It hurts to think that she must've thought they'd be better off without her - an excruciating thought for a mother to have. But most of all, I hurt on behalf of her children who will one day pose the same question: "Wasn't I enough to keep you here, Mom?"
There were times in my life when I felt so completely overwhelmed that ending my own life crossed my mind; but just as quickly, I thought of my kids...and thinking of them kept me here. I can't comprehend her level of detachment...except that perhaps the fourteen months she spent in CCDOC is to blame for that detachment. Still, when I think of the night she returned home, I felt convinced that she'd never leave those kids again; I felt convinced that all would be well...but a year later, she was gone. A year later, she CHOSE to be gone. And that hurts. It hurts knowing that she made that choice, whether it was planned or impulsive (and we'll never know for sure which it was), she left without giving a second thought to her kids.
Seventeen months later, and I still cry as if it just happened. I still cry because I empathically feel a portion of what she must have felt; and I cry empathically for the emotional pain her children will face as they continue to understand more and more of who their mother was and what she did.
Yes, it is my children and my grandchildren, and HER children that give me the "why" I need to continue with my life. They are not my only "why's" but they are the primary reason why I want to be here.
