So I'm sharing this on here because of the circumstances of my dad's death, I don't really feel comfortable discussing this with most people I know in my real life. Most of the people I know don't really understand mental health problems and I feel like I'm going to get judgment from them for my dad's actions, or I'm going to get the label of "girl who comes from a crazy family" (even though I do). If your thoughts are in either of those lines regarding suicide, please stop reading right now... and if you are in any way going to quote religious babbling bullshit about suicide being a sin, take your comments elsewhere, I have enough of that from my Catholic half of the family.
I found out a week ago that my dad committed suicide-- he has struggled with mental health issues for a long time and had a very troubled childhood, and since I've moved to London I've really distanced myself from him as he was such a constant source of stress for me, and he basically told me if he ever found out I was still working in the sex-industry he would disown me. Especially in the last six months I think I've avoided him even more as I've really struggled to get my life together after leaving escorting/stripping. He was an alcoholic with horrible ADHD (which I inherited) that made it very difficult for him to get by day to day. He also struggled with either some kind of depression or was on the spectrum of bipolar disorder, as he went through periods of severe high and lows. He had a very bad temper and you were always walking around on egg shells with him, he could go off at the smallest, most insignificant detail. I lived with him for two years when I was at university and he drove me nuts, but he was so isolated and struggled so much to maintain relationships that I felt like he really needed me around.
When I got the call that he had killed himself, I don't think I've ever been so heart broken. As much as he stressed me out, I did love him, and he could be such fun sometimes. He had traveled a lot and was incredibly intelligent (his IQ was measured around 175) that I always enjoyed talking to him. I never felt like we could really have a discussion about our emotions, but we talked about other things and I definitely felt that we had a close relationship.
Now that he is gone I feel like I'm filled with so many questions. My dad planned this out very carefully-- he packed up his whole house, he had to wait ten days to get the gun permit, he drove 5 hours to kill himself in a remote area so that he wouldn't be in the news, he wrote extensive letters to everyone is his family detailing what would happen to his affairs and trying to explain his decision to us. If it was a last minute, impulsive decision that he made I feel I could be more accepting of it. But the fact that he had so many days to think it over, I just don't understand how he couldn't have had any second thoughts.
I hadn't spoken to him over the phone in over two months-- the last time we spoke he was giving me advice for a job interview I had the next day. About the day he must have applied for the permit, he send me a message asking if we could speak. But I was busy that weekend cooking for friends on Saturday and then cooking for my boyfriend's family on Sunday, and then the day that we decided to speak, I was running around town and didn't get home until late and was tired. My father has basically been using me as his therapist since I was eight, overloading me with every negative and stressful detail in his life whether it was friendships, girlfriends, or work, and since he didn't have anything specific to talk to me about, I felt like it was just going to be that, so when he never sent me a message asking me when we could speak, I think I was relieved, as I had about a thousand things on my mind at the moment and was just physically and mentally exhausted. And in the week and a half that followed it, I had another million things on my mind and we never spoke. I keep going over and over that in my head, wishing that I had called him and reached out to set up a time to speak, thinking that maybe that would have changed his mind. Wondering why he never tried to speak to me again before he called me, why he didn't send me a message that day asking for a time or trying to set something up later. Did he think that I was so busy with my new life that I didn't have time for him anymore? Was he angry with me? Was I not important enough for him to say good bye to, since he said good bye to so many other people? Even if I hadn't been able to change his mind, at least I would have spoken to him again, and I feel like such a shitty daughter.
The first four days or so after he died I was really, really sad, thinking over and over that I will never see or speak to my father again, but as time has gone on I feel like a lot of my sadness has been replaced by anger. When I read over his note he obsessed completely over his finances and his success, and I feel like the father that I had always placed his family, his friends, his life experiences, his learning, over what he could put down on his CV-- but in the end it seemed like all he cared about was money and what he had accomplished in his personal life, and a part of me feels like maybe he wasn't the dad that I thought I had for most of my life. He gave up seeing his children getting married, himself getting married again, his grandchildren, all the friends he had, because he felt like he hadn't been successful enough in his life. His financial circumstances were dire, but he had lots of people that would have helped him, and he had been through serious financial struggles before, much worse than things were right now.
If anyone has lost a parent or a loved one to suicide, I would love to hear your thoughts... since I've gotten back to LA (staying for the week) it's just been focusing on the details of his memorial and a part of me is feeling like he doesn't even deserve a memorial. When I got back I knew that there wasn't going to be any money that he had left for me or my brother, but he had a lot of artifacts from his travels and I wanted to take some of them back to me with London so that I would have something to remember him by, but he basically threw everything away, and in his letters he states that he is going to do so because we will all be so angry that we won't want anything. Like, thanks dad... for killing yourself and then destroying everything that we could remember you by, it's so awesome that you gave us the choice to deal with your death in our own way.




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But it really makes me sad & angry to think that a person suffering so much that suicide feels like the only path to relief should be damned, regardless of how inherently good they were in life. To me, that's a steaming load of crap -- no truly merciful, loving God would let that final act of desperation be the deciding factor of judgment. So feel free to tell your judgy relatives to get bent.
I hope that your father will find peace, & that you do as well.



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