Premature Exit
June 24th 2010, my 21st wedding anniversary, and also the day my mother committed suicide. For years I was angry. Why? Why that day? We had unfinished business, we had unspoken conversations, unanswered questions. My relationship with my mother had been strained for years. I had a much closer relationship with her mother who we lost February of this year. Since that day i have struggled to answer the why's, when someone close to you decides to make a premature exit at their own hand do they realize the carnage they leave behind. Over the years, I struggled with this, at first, I took it personal after all that was my day. I hated her, pure rage. I had no sympathy at all. My mother suffered from manic depression. It was tough to live with when I was growing up. None of her extreme moods made sense. I took care of a lot of things when I was young, I should have just been a kid. After a long while and many conversations with God and my siblings the rage thawed. It wasn't about me. She didn't do what she did to injure or hurt me. She did it to release her, her pain was to much to bear. She planned it. She knew at some point that she was going to exit life, a crime of opportunity she was alone, and there was a gun and nobody to interrupt the plan. She had finished with the business she wanted to finish. She completed a bucket list of sorts. I just wasn't on the list. Maybe she didn't know how to fix what was broken. There have been many suicides since then, famous people, infamous people, it seems that the the depression that leads to suicide has no limit. Rich, poor, young, old, it doesn't seems to matter. It hits out of the blue, people didn't realize how depressed they were. They were happy, always had a smile, would do anything for anybody.
Vets are at extreme risk. P.T.S.D seems to be a factor. I understand that too unfortunately but until recently it just didn't have a fancy name. My Dad died at 52 a fatal combination of eating to much, smoking to much. Men were not allowed to be emotional, it was seen as a weakness. We sent them off to war, and never really bothered to check up on them when they got home. That was the reality of Vietnam vets. Now we have vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Lots of vets struggle, they deploy far from home, and they do what their country demands of them They come home to the fanfare and the Hallmark worthy welcome home parties but reality has changed . During a deployment their life is regimented and the partner who has been home has run the show. It is very tough to figure out where to fit in again, and then when life seems to pick up a more natural rhythm, it is time for them to deploy again. It is a strain on marriages, on children and on the military member Even now, when we have fancy diagnoses and drugs these vets struggle and some of them don't make it. We don't know the horrors of what they have seen. It is hard to understand the stress they are under. I am a military daughter,wife, and mother. The military lifestyle is one I know well and from many different angles.
So what is the purpose of writing this, I guess just to let those that understand the pain know that they are not alone, that whatever they are feeling it is OK. I hope to bring awareness to mental illness, it is complicated, a disease of the mind. A person seems perfectly normal on the outside you can't see what is below, especially when it is camouflaged by a smile and a great personality.
