“I spent four years building the life I wanted, and it all got pulled from under me after I graduated. How do I function without all of these THINGS? I didn’t know. Not to mention the pressures of the real world creeping up on you.”
‘Post College Depression is a thing, I have it, WHY DOES NO ONE TALK ABOUT IT?’
‘I begged for you to stay the night, but you said you had to go. I gave you a big hug, not knowing it would be the last. You told me you would see me soon. I believed you.’
“As it hit midnight, I felt this overwhelming urge to call you. I knew something wasn’t right. I fell to the floor in shock. ‘Your sister has taken her life.’ I could not believe you were gone.”
‘I cleaned my house. A solid few hours. I did the tidying thing. The vacuuming thing. Heck, I even did the wiping the finger prints off of every surface thing.’
“Things looked good last night. Someone could ‘drop-in’ and I wouldn’t be ashamed. My house was cozy and my mind was calm. Man, does a clean house make my mind calm. But then the boys woke up in a needy mood.”
‘I watched him cry through the bus window. The next morning I pulled a pen from my coat pocket, grabbed his wrist, and drew this heart.’
“He crossed the road, climbed the bus steps, and I watched this time as his face appeared in the window. I waited for him to see me, to smile or wave or even to cry, but he never even looked at me. Instead, he looked at his wrist.”
‘You wouldn’t have lost weight at the holocaust.’ I had things like ‘fatty’ and ‘ugly hippo’ scrawled across every school book page. I felt like dying. I felt like giving up.’
“I was shoved down the stairs by a drunk guy at a party. ‘You are going too slow,’ he said as he pushed me. Once again, visuals of high school flooded my head, and I started to feel myself giving up.”
‘He was her strength, her protector, her everything – until he wasn’t. Nothing, absolutely nothing, prepared us for the affect it would have on Dad.’
“He started calling at 4 a.m. He was extremely agitated. Panicked. He told us we have to come get him – NOW! The father we know and love is almost unrecognizable to either of us.”
‘I began pushing my wife away as harshly as I could, yet she stuck around. Why? Why won’t she just leave? We are all miserable and it’s because of me. Doesn’t she see that?’
“My wife and son would come home and tip toe around me as my anger would rear its ugly head. Unbeknownst to me, my wife was scared to be out of the house for too long as that caused my anger to rise as well. ‘What the f*ck were you doing? You know I am f*cked up and can’t ‘babysit’ our son!,’ I would shout.”
‘I get it. I finally get it. You see moms committing suicide. And I couldn’t understand it. How do you leave your kids behind like that?’
“And then everybody posts, ‘Oh, I never knew. She didn’t say anything. She seemed okay.’ She TOLD you.”
‘I told mom not to get out of the car. She nodded. When I walked into the parking lot and saw another woman standing at our car, my heart stopped. I knew something was wrong.’
“She was furious I was stopping her from rescuing ‘Sharon.’ As soon as I got her buckled in, we got the hell out of there.”
‘He screamed horrible things at me, broke my wall mirror, cornered me and told me he’d murder my family if I left him as he shook a butcher knife in my face.’
“I realized I couldn’t remember when I last had a period. I took a pregnancy test when I got home. It was positive. I was pregnant. I was freaking out.”
