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Jessi L - Another Missive Shared


Posts: 77
Joined: July 1, 2011


Posted: April 17, 2013, 12:13 PM
for JL aka H
in response to a dear Mum whom lost her son, tragically... but may be words in their for you?? I can only hope xx

Posted: March 24, 2013, 9:16 PM


Posts: 46
Joined: July 1, 2011



Dear Mad72,

I am terribly sorry to hear about the death of your son by suicide. Words are, frankly, not adequate, and although a long passage of time does have some ability to heal the deep/multiply-faceted emotions and turmoil: it can only happen it you know to allow the natural emotions to overwhelm you, every time they rear their ugly heads. The pain - albeit excruciating – is NATURALLY experienced, lived through and because of that, one learns a new lesson/skill (and builds a strength, one believed you could not possibly have within yourself). Just one of the answers to all these crazy addictions, I have found, is that (for me, personally), it is EVERYTHING to do with not being taught at a young age about how to deal with loss, grief, failure, tragedy, relationships, successes, jobs, communication, but, essentially, life-coping skills in a perfectly natural, normal and healthy way.

We are taught Maths, English, French, Science etc. but, astonishingly, not HOW to actually learn in the first instance!! And exceptionally more critical-a-failure of education, I am certain, is that we get buried under a mountain of coursework and subjects yet, alarmingly, have not been taught a single lesson about what we will have to face in real, everyday life; how to cope with life's wonders and all its hideous destruction/injustices etc, and get thrown into a very confusing and terrifying reality.

It is all very well, enjoying the poems of T. S. Eliot, studying complex Algebra and perhaps learning verbs/acute accents for a foreign language, but I believe we all desperately need specific types of lessons, to aid and help us cope with each and every day as human beings : prepared with what we face from pleasurable and complex mixtures of giddy highs to suicidal lows because of all these emotions that we are not only unaware of and often experience without warning... but are then left in a distressing state of mind, clueless, scared, overwhelmed (and myriad other brutal emotions, especially in grief), and decide to numb our physical bodies in an attempt to expect to “cope”, and “get over/move on” with our lives!!

I have been up for 72 hours now, having slipped off the drugs wagon, hence my long-winded reply. However, I am not angry with myself like before and your post reminded me why.

We have to, unfortunately, learn for ourselves how to deal with emotions in a way that doesn't destroy us too. I have a very large family, but, I've now counted approximately fifty deaths in my life (starting with my father on the day before my first birthday in a tragic plane crash: he was flying his Cessna back from business in Scotland to celebrate my special day, but never made it home), as well as numerous uncles, aunts, grandparents, best friends, colleagues, beloved pets, admired teachers and peers and sudden deaths of close neighbours that seemingly never end, and, quite obviously to me now, have never allowed me to grieve properly or even reach stage two in many cases.

Consequently, I have obliterated my youth with every drug under the sun known to man and am now hurtling towards middle age and realizing, not only do I not want to die (even if I do say so repeatedly when in the depressive stage of my seventeen-year battle with bipolar), but I haven't even learnt how to live!! Not exist. Not just put up with pain every day. Not just go through the motions every bloody morning, noon and night. Not dread every birthday or what should be happy events in my life and, FINALLY, stop destroying every living cell in the only body I've been given to make good on this earth (and actually use the numerous talents I have been blessed with, yet thus far, have systematically hidden or wasted, from all those around me, out of pure fear of failure and even success!).... Again, why? Because if I fail, I know that I'll be facing more heartache/self-abuse... but, then again, if I succeed.... well, we all know what dreaded creature is lurking under our very skin... EMOTIONS and now accompanied with yet more foreign and unsettling baggage!!

Dear Mad72, I must sign off. My back is battered in a chronic, hunched pain; my eyes are sore, itchy and mad. And when I blew my nose whilst finally getting into some bedclothes a half hour ago, a strip of what looked like a kitten-sized length of charred, streaky bacon shot clear out of my rotting snout across the bathroom floor, as if from the burly hands of a disgusted trucker, incensed with his unsightly, burnt, early-diner breakfast. I wasn't even shocked.

Yours with sincerity, empathy and great hope,

Hidden Light xx


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Hidden Light
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