Dotted Trauma
Before I move forward, here are numbers for the year of Jon’s death by suicide. According to the WHO, there were approximately 817,000 deaths by suicide in 2016. I am a survivor of a loved one’s suicide, and I’m an expatriate who resides in the EU. This post is about how grief shuts us down, and then slowly turns the lights on in our lives—again. This is a post about dots.
In the 1990’s it was a pretty dress with blue and white dots that I loved to wear. The white top with blue dots sparkled, and the skirt, with its reversal of blue and white dots, delighted me.
In the late 2000’s it was a brown and white dress with a small sash that made me smile. I wore that one until it needed to see other uses.
This past weekend I ordered a new dress with dots. It came about because a friend of mine has such a dotted dress, and she said that I needed to order one myself. I think my joy over seeing her in the dress caused her to tell me to order such a dress myself. I had not thought of acquiring a new dress of joy. The fact is, suicide can shut a person down. It is a different flavor of death and grief. My brain lay dormant for ten years of grief. Gail wasn’t functioning as Gail once did, and the joy of the dots got wiped out. Think of it as a functional shutdown that allows the person to look as if it is all going well. The machine works but not as well as it could. It is why I shut down fully for several years and didn’t work as a therapist. You don’t work with people when your head isn’t all present. Sometimes it’s a day, and at other times it is longer.
My shutdown experience may be similar to others, or it may differ greatly.
First off, there are no rules in grief; there is only what you need to feel, and the rest can be set aside until you need to revisit the feelings. This kind of death and loss sends you to places that no one should have to go to, and yet, in order to get through it, you must go there. You must be willing to face a rawness in your life and come out on the other side of the tunnel that carries you underground. You will cross Styx and come out on a new shore, and just when you think you are safe from it all, you will wake up to a new realization: trauma. You didn’t see this coming because, unlike your typical death and grief, there aren’t liminal spaces in this type of death. Unlike the death bubble that hosts the liminal space, you can’t hop back on the conveyor belt of life and treat life as if there haven’t been radical changes. This time, someone in your life decided that they were going to exit, and they succeeded. In 2016 I became one of the people that entered into this place due to the loss of a loved one. And so, like with other forms of traumatic and unexpected death, those of us who encounter this hard place must settle in for a long and not-so-cozy journey. This is about navigating the river of life and being willing to explore new environs. The good thing about this is that each time you explore the new places in your soul, you get new skills and a sleeker boat that you can navigate with. It is true that no matter where the water is, there will be rapids, and learning to run them is rewarding. Yes, it is painful, and grief is not for wimps. But it is worth it!
It has been said that death rearranges the address book. In suicide, death alienates the address book. It is not just about people not knowing what to say: it is that the unthinkable happened, and now a hard reality besets the survivor(s). For me, I was well aware that my husband could end it all. What I was not aware of was how different this type of death experience is. The shocker was that I didn’t see it coming until after it had happened, and before I found the note on the dining table. By the time I found the note, I had a feeling he was going to do it—he ended it all before I could find him to stop him. He made sure of that.
The next hours and days were a blur, and it has taken some two years of therapy to reconstruct this trauma. It hasn’t been easy or pretty. It took me admitting that I was dealing with PTSD, and being able to let go and trust the competent therapist I found to do what he does so well. It has been worth the painful periods I’ve had to face.
And so, I shut down to pretty dresses and dots. The dots faded away in my mind, and I forgot about the happiness that wearing dots brings to my heart. A wall of the mind took its place as if the real Gail wasn’t ever there, and this person who was there wasn’t the fully complete Gail. For ten years she has slept. Now, I am awake, and I’ve arisen from a slumber that I didn’t know how to deal with. I have dealt with a death by suicide and will continue to be aware of how his death has affected me.
All things said, this type of grief journey is a cycle. Sometimes the thing needs to be said in ten million different ways, until the one time we really hear it, surprise! It is like we experience it as a fresh and new discovery. Whatever past grief collective there is, they are laughing at us for the millionth time as we “discover” again what hasn’t stuck. Maybe, they all say, she’ll get it this time. Grief is like spiral dynamics. We discover and loop through it on a new level.
Grief can shut the mind down. It can shut the soul down. What some experience doesn’t have words, and it is as if there is an unspoken code that says that yes, I’ve travelled the path, and yes, we’re in a strange group of people. Only we know this because you can’t always put words to the experience. Sometimes the words do make it out, and when they do, you say them.
Coming out of where I’ve been will be my story alone. I claim the trauma, and I claim the healing. Yes, I was one of 817,000. We haven’t all been down the same grief path.
