Recovering Your Life After Losing Someone to Suicide

How do you recover when you lose someone you loved so deeply, thought you were going to marry and knew deep down your souls were a part of each other? You cry for weeks or months, wake up and carry on, burn, or throw out all the things that remind you of that person, and eventually start dating again. Now, what do you do when that person you lost is gone because of suicide?…. How do you recover?

The short answer… you don’t. You’ll never be the same, you’ll never recover the person you used to be. In a way, that version of you died with that person. As the days and weeks ticked by and every memory, argument, moment of love repeats inside your head you realize how broken the relationship was, and that’s the hardest thing to accept. You loved this man with your whole heart, would have done anything for him, but you were codependent, wrapped up in his narcissism to see all the red flags waving vigorously in the whirling monsoon of emotional turmoil you two generated. Yes, you loved him, loved him with your whole heart never for a moment think you didn’t…. but it wasn’t healthy for either of you.

And that’s what you have to recover from, that is what you have to heal, change, and accept.

From the deepest depression, I’ve ever felt, too afraid to leave my bed for hours because I didn’t trust myself, couldn’t process rationally I wallowed in my darkness. Putting on a facade when I went to work. Spending time with my friends and family wondering if they could see me holding on to a lifeline, wanting all the pain to go away but no knowing what to do. 

So I found myself running, jumping on planes to leave the country to get as far away as possible because my heart couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted to be somewhere different, someone different. I wanted to run away from this life I knew. How could this be my life? I just wanted a shred of happiness. I was chasing happiness, peace, acceptance, life, adrenaline. Anything to make me feel alive! In retrospect, I probably should have taken medication to help with my depression, but I was so afraid of them. So please if this is you….I know it’s scary, but they can be temporary, just for a moment until you are out of the trauma response phase.

I stayed away from drugs, knowing they would just send me deeper into the despair I lived in. I did seek companionship, even though it wasn’t for the right reasons. Loneliness and solitude will have you grasping at anything to feel real. The red flags were crimson, with each guy I dated. I found the narcissist, the damaged one, the one who lead me to love and ripped my heart out. I carried on. Silently spinning out of control, but gaining control as I let go of what I thought I wanted and who I wanted to be as the version of who I am meant to be surfaced with a strength I never thought existed. I wanted to be seen, heard, loved in a healthy way. I wanted connection and friendships that were deep, meaningful, and respectful. So I sought them out. I wrote, created, spoke up, changed my career, stepped out of fear, and into the bravery of no longer missing opportunities.

It’s been over a year and I feel like I lived a decade. I can feel myself coming out of the grips of grief, my trauma responses have dulled, my mind is clear, depression no longer camps out in my mind, I can feel my body again. More importantly, my life path has changed significantly, the way I desire to love and desire to be loved has boundaries that I will not let anyone cross. For once I feel healthy mentally, physically, and emotionally.

There is so much work to do. I am thankful for my therapists, friends who have let me cry at work, in cars, during concerts. The family that just listened and saw how broken I was and could do nothing, I am grateful. What I’ve lost and what I’ve gained do not even compare, but I know you are always with me and are proud of me for how far I’ve come.