I am writing to write today. I don’t have a specific topic on my mind but a lot has happened this week that I’d like to reflect on. I have been feeling very down recently for no specific reason but I guess depression can take a toll. You wouldn’t think that staying at home isolating myself from the entire world would be exhausting, but it totally is. I have been managing to get myself to work when I’m scheduled but I am not all that productive while there. I feel like I was at least managing up until Sunday.
Sunday morning my 21 year old cousin committed suicide. I think I was in absolute shock at first because of how much I did not expect this. All I could think of was how he always looked so happy, how much potential he had and all of the great things I knew he would have accomplished in life. I have lost people to suicide in the past and I work in the mental health field so I have been through this but I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.
It wasn’t until I was listening to a podcast about feeling lonely while also being surrounded by people that it started to make more sense. From the outside when people look at me and my life they would not know that I suffer the way I do. I can only imagine my cousin was suffering silently. This almost makes my heart hurt even more because I know how he felt. I know what it’s like to feel helpless, hopeless, like nothing can or will get better and that ending it is the only option. I still feel this way often. To know that someone so close to me could have been having similar thoughts and I didn’t know and couldn’t reach out to help breaks me.
I never realized the extent of mental illness in my family until recently. I know I need to take care of myself and try to have some sort of optimistic look on life but it can be so difficult. I feel like I am drowning and the rain just won’t stop.
