By Najá Ghirardelli
Content Warning: This article discusses suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, self harm, substance abuse and death. If you, or someone you know is dealing with suicidal ideation or self harm you can call the Suicide Prevention Helpline (Samaritans), 24 hours a day, on 116 123.
As I laid in my bed, a light rain began to lay kisses upon my window. My sleeping pills hadn’t worked through the night, but the gentle hum of rain had began to rock me to sleep. That was until the buzz of my phone ripped me from my subconsciousness. It was my mum. “He’s gone, he’s left me”, was all she could muster, and “I’m so sorry” is all I could reply. I tried to hold it together but I felt my voice crack as I said, “he’s no longer in pain mama”. After almost five years, my dad had lost his battle to pancreatic cancer. I don’t really remember the rest of the phone call. I just remember the ache in my chest of regret. In my father’s final moments I hadn’t been by his side. While he lay in Ghana, I was stuck in London. My mind went blank. Before I knew it, I was on the phone with a new friend I had made a few days prior. It was easier being vulnerable with someone who didn’t know me as strong. He told me that it’s okay to break. I found solace and strength from the words of someone I barely knew. Human connection is a funny thing. I rather let a stranger see me fall apart, than have those closest to me see me as anything but strong.
I began to drown in the regret of not being with my dad in the last moments of his life. The first day after his death was spent reminiscing about the past. The last thing we spoke about was him walking me down the aisle. Like every woman in love, I had gushed to him about my past lover. He reminded me that love is gentle, and love is kind but to be patient because time heals all wounds. He chuckled as I spoke about my plans to rekindle with my past lover in the future. He told me that if I truly believed it to be love, I should wait for my lovers return but reminded me not to wait too long. We spoke about my wish to move to Thailand to focus on Muay Thai. My dad was a gentle man and confessed that he wouldn’t be able to watch me fight because every hit I would take would feel like he was being hit. We listened to music together and spoke about the next song I would release. Music was a huge part of our lives. My dad played a number of instruments and always pushed me to keep making music. When I quit because I felt like I lost my musical spark, he told me not to worry because I’d find a muse again. And that I did. I think music was what connected him and I. We would always send each other songs to listen to. The last song I sent my dad was Jesse Ayo’s track called “keep the faith”. I’m not sure they’ll ever be a day where I listen to the songs my dad and I listened to together without falling apart. In those last hours that I spent with my dad, we spoke about love, old cars, life and everything in between. Whenever I would visit my dad or have phone calls, I would record them so later I could re-listen to his advice. I spent hours after his death listening to all the recordings. I never got to show him the songs I made using his voice as a sample, and I think that’s one of my greatest regrets.
When I think about it there isn’t much in me that’s alive, but something in me died after my dad’s death. I couldn’t seem to soothe the little girl in me who was heartbroken that her papa was never coming back home. I keep trying to convince myself that I’m okay, but then a memory will trigger me and all of a sudden I’m on my kitchen floor trying to piece myself back together again. I’ve been on the edge of despair all my life, but nothing compares to this. I keep asking myself if he’s cold in the morgue. On a hospital visit he would complain about the cold. I slipped his little red socks over his feet trying to ignore the sting of tears that touched my eyes. How had he lost so much weight? Nobody tells you how vulnerable and lonely it is to grieve. While the world passes by I’m stuck at a standstill. No amount of preparation is enough. I grieved my father while he lived and I’m grieving him in his death. Not only did I have to grieve my dad but I would end up having to grieve the woman my mother was before she lost the love of her life. Her spark, her twinkle… It’s gone. And there’s nothing I can do to bring that back. So in a way, I lost both my parents that day. I lost my dad and I lost the pieces of my mum he took with him when he died. Nobody tells you how you’ll also end up grieving yourself. Grieving the change that loss has given you. Grieving who you were before you knew what it felt like to have someone you love die. A deep level of anger grew at the pits of my stomach. I’m the one that’s wanted to die since I was thirteen, so why couldn’t God take me? I wish I died instead of my dad.
After his death the self harm I’ve tried so hard to contain came back with a vengeance. I struggle to articulate the deep level of despair I feel and often turn to self harm to cope. The best way I can explain it is that if I’m in physical pain, then the emotional pain doesn’t hurt as much. I’ve dealt with my emotions this way since I was thirteen and I can’t seem to find my way out of the pile of trauma I’m buried under. I thought I had stopped but losing my dad set me off on a path of destruction. It started with little silly things, like holding my breath in my bath until my lungs began to scream. Then I would let go and suck in as much water into my lungs as I could. It would burn as I choked but it made me feel alive. I could physically feel the things inside me burning, and somehow that brought relief. Then the alcohol. It seemed to be the only way I could fall asleep. A sollumn mix of sleeping pills and a whole bottle of wine to wash them down. Just anything to knock me out. Anything to quiet my mind. I would go to sleep praying to not wake up in the morning. You see, I already had my suicide note and all the letters to my friends and family written and neatly tucked under my bed. All that was left now, was for me to die. Soon after that, came the wounds. The scars I would create along my body. I hate people seeing my body. I’m scared they’ll see all the scars I’ve given myself. I’m scared they’ll react like my mother did when she saw them when I was fourteen. Her reaction wasn’t her fault though. We often forget that our parent’s are navigating life for the first time too. Seeing your child with cuts along their body will trigger something in you, there’s no doubt about that, but I wish younger me wasn’t shouted at. I wish I was comforted right then and there. Not months down the line.
My path to destruction didn’t end with just self harm unfortunately. I began to spiral in a way that I’m all too familiar with. The never ending cycle I’ve endured a majority of my life began again. Almost a week after my father’s death, I found myself standing on top of a bridge. Wine bottle emptied. Body heavy. And heart racing. I climbed over the railing and thought to myself, all I have to do is jump. It takes courage to jump but it also takes courage to turn back around and continue to live. I just had to choose what type of courage I was willing to live or die for. Right then and there I had a choice. I had left all the letters neatly on my bed. I had done all my washing and cleaned every inch of my mum’s house. In death I didn’t want to be a nuisance or a burden. I had allocated who would get what out of my possessions. I had set out the plans for my funeral, right down to the invitations. I stared down at my feet while I sat on the ledge. I had never really been afraid of heights until that moment. In fact I love the thrill of being up somewhere high, but something in me made me scared that day. Maybe it was the thought that out of all the times I’ve attempted to die, this might be the one time I succeed. I wanted to listen to a few songs before I jumped, something to soothe the ache that’s always been in my chest but I couldn’t seem to pick a song. So I put my Spotify liked songs on shuffle and a song called “Sunshine on me” played. Out of the 18,697 songs in my liked playlist, that song decided to play. It was like God and my dad were trying to tell me something. It was one of the last songs my father and I had listened to together. To me, it’s a song that makes me feel like everything will be okay. It reminds me of my dad, my past lover, the sun and love. It makes me think about “dreaming where we set to be” and the future. I slowly climbed back over the ledge and cried as I walked back home. I began to question if that was my dad telling me that everything will be okay. I started to think about how ashamed my dad would probably be if he saw me like that. It was like that song and my dad saved me that day.
On my way home, I listened to all the songs my dad and I would listen to together. While he was in hospital we would listen to J Dilla, Mos Def and Bob Marley on repeat. He had the best taste in music. As I walked my mind was flooded with memories of my dad and I listening to music together. It felt like he was still with me on that walk. It was as if he was holding my hand and telling me that everything is going to be okay. I got home and stared at the letters I had left on my bed. I had spent hours writing and planning but it was as if my mind had gone blank and I couldn’t remember what I had written. I sat down and read through every single letter. As someone who’s a writer, I couldn’t help but laugh at how bad I was at writing suicide notes and goodbye letters. That’s not to say that there’s such a thing as a good suicide note but still, you get what I mean. While reading those letters, it made me think about every person I’ve ever loved. Every person I have truly loved, I’ve pushed away out of fear of being misunderstood. For my entire life, I’ve felt like my words or intentions have always been misconstrued. I’ve fought tooth and nail for someone to finally understand me and when I found people who could, I pushed them away. I made arguments out of nothing in fear of them delving deep into the vulnerability that lay within me. And when they left, I chuckled to myself, looked in the mirror and said “I told you so. You’re so fucking unloveable and stupid”. It’s not their fault for leaving me though, because it’s true, I made myself unloveable. Whether it’s lovers or it’s friends. I have a tendency to just push people away. If you’re one of my close friends reading this, you’re probably seeing a side of me you’ve never seen before. I can’t help but feel guilty for not being able to communicate what’s in my head, but I guess this is my explanation. I’m sorry. Navigating all of this is something I knew would be hard but I didn’t think it would be this hard. I’ve always locked all my heavy emotions away afraid I’ll be a burden to those around me. But I think it’s time I allow myself to be cared for and lean on those who love me for support.
I’ve come to realise that maybe all these years I haven’t truly wanted to die, I’ve just wanted all the pain I’ve been feeling to stop. It takes a lot of vulnerability to sit here and type out all the grief that lays in my heart, but this has somehow slightly soothed me. Or maybe it’s just the “yapper” in me needing to vent. Either way, I think this is the first step to healing. Exposing all my wounds to the world so I can heal them. The past few days have merged into a blur mostly. I still struggle to eat even when I try to force myself to. It takes two bites of something and then all of a sudden I’m full and that’s all I’ll eat for the day. All I do is lay in bed and stare at my ceiling. I’ll ignore texts and calls from friends because no matter what they say, I’ll tell them “I’m fine” when we all know I’m two seconds away from another overdose. I feel like I’m a ticking time bomb. Somewhere out there, someone will think of me as selfish and ungrateful and I wouldn’t even disagree. I mean, I have so much more than a lot of other people out there. I have a lot of privileges that others don’thave, but people only see the good side of me. What isn’t seen is the blood, the gore, the depression and the hatred I hold for the woman who stares back at me when I look in the mirror. Not everything is as it seems. I’m nothing but a broken woman, stumbling through life like a baby yet to learn that it has feet. Everyday I fight with myself to stay alive. I’ve always been the type of person to overthink. My mother tells me that overthinking will rot my brain, but I never really knew how to explain that it feels like everything within me is rotting. I think I’ll always feel this way. Like there’s something in me that just can’t be fixed, but maybe that’s just the battle I’ll have to go through for the rest of my life.
Since that day on the bridge, I’ve taken everyday as it comes. I try to find one good thing about the day, even if it’s something little. I keeping promising myself that even if today is hard, tomorrow could be better. I haven’t lived my best days yet. I can’t leave my mother who’s lost the love of her life. I can’t let her lose a daughter too. Sometimes it feels like I take one step forward and two steps back but, at the very least, I’m trying to move forward. My dad loved me for who I am, so as I sit here typing this, I’ve come to the realisation that all the love he poured into me still exists. I just have to keep pouring it into myself now. I look forward to the woman I’m going to become when I fill myself with only love. I’m beginning to push myself to love my faults because those were the things that he loved about me. He wouldn’t change me so why should I break myself apart? I have to love myself the same way my dad loved me – unconditionally. This is all a journey of healing. I’m not okay, and I won’t be for a while, but that’s okay. I’m navigating this like I’m a deer on ice. I’ll laugh but I’ll also cry. This definitely isn’t a situation where I can just say “fuck it, we ball” but even if I can’t live for myself, I’m going to live for my dad. I’m going to live for my mum. I’m going to live for all the people I love and who love me. I was so worried about not feeling better in the future that I forgot about the present. I forgot to enjoy the moments that are right in front of me. I mean if I succeeded in my suicide attempt I would’ve missed Kendrick annihilating Drake. Do you know how mad I would’ve been if I missed that? Or maybe I wouldn’t even know? I don’t know but the point still stands. Oh, and it’s definitely 4-0 to K Dot before anyone asks me.
Anyway, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. So dear reader, go call your parents and tell them you love them. Call your first love from when you were twelve and didn’t think you knew what love was and confess your feelings. The person who got away? Tell them that you need them back. The friend you lost contact with? Find them again. The person you miss? Tell them you miss them. Even if you’re blocked! Text them on another number or something (I’m also delusional, so take this advice with a grain of salt). Regardless, tell everyone around you that you love them. You don’t know when you’ll lose each other. Life is too short to care. We’re all humans made up of all the love of those around us. Remember you are never alone. Just as I’m not alone. Spread love in everything you do. Scream from the rooftops that you are love and you are light. Be a light for someone who’s stuck in the dark. Sing! Bask in the sun! LOVE, LOVE AND LOVE! In fact live, laugh, love. I’ve unironically began to use that phrase. I get why white suburban mums obsess over it now, it’s kind of a banger.
But in the end, as I sit here typing this out, the grief of losing my dad will always lay within my heart but I’m putting my grief into writing poems, making songs and art. I’ve started to do things that would make my dad proud. Instead of merely existing, I’ve began to try and live. It’s ironic isn’t it? That in my father’s death, I learnt how to live. Thank you for teaching me how to live papa. I love you.
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