Personal Narrative: My Father Committed Suicide

I wait at the door. I put on my solemn, grim face, I cannot let these children see me as a soft women. I am anything but that, well I guess I am, but we all need to hide our inner emotions some how. My useless husband, Hans, mumbles, “I see the car”. We step outside, most people think Hans and I are crazy for opening our home to these two children, but every little bit of money that we can earn helps. Plus, they can help with the laundry, I think and smile.

I somehow knew what my aunt would say to me when I answered the ringing phone in my hand. There was an unexplainable, sickening feeling in my abdomen that told me something was wrong. Hesitating, I frantically tried to think of what else it could be before finally clicking “answer.” The cold surface of my phone pressed up to my ear, and my aunt spoke words that I will never forget.

Four years ago, surrounded by Hartford Hospital’s emergency department surgical staff, I struggled to process the fact that the unidentifiable man laying on the gurney, covered in second and third-degree burns was my seventy-year-old father. The disordered urgency with which he had tried to take his life reflected not only the terror one can experience during a brief psychotic episode but the almost unfathomable emotional pain which accompanies living with an untreated major depressive disorder. It was at that moment I realized that the senior population, in which depression is prevalent, needs better access to age-sensitive counseling, screening, and other behavioral health services. While my father’s suicide attempt was a horrific event, it remains one of the principal reasons I chose to pursue a degree in clinical counseling. I believe it has also afforded me a sincere and natural capacity to empathize with those in crisis.

Do you ever ponder how your life would be if an event didn’t happen? Or yearn to go back in the past? If I had a ticket in my hand that gave me the opportunity to go to any place I desired, I would travel back in time and meet the one person my mind always wonders about, my grandpa.

“My ex-girlfriend was taken away by the cop and taken to the local jail. My ex-girlfriend’s Dad showed up and I rode back with him to their house. Finally my parents came and picked me up. I went home and maybe got two hours of sleep, if you even call that sleep. The next morning, I went back to my ex-girlfriend’s house and she was later released from jail that day. For the longest time, we would just sit there in silence, because, what do you say? It was time to comfort one another. I not only felt bad about the whole situation, but I knew no one was going to believe me, us. Believe that a girl purposively jumped into the moving vehicle. I later learned that the girl who died had been suicidal. Earlier that day, before the accident,

December 6th, 2009 I woke up just as I did any other day, not knowing that day would be a day I would never forget, a day that would change my life forever. My dad had always been my anchor. Then one day my anchor was broken away from me and I was set adrift. Suicide had claimed my father’s life.

Thank you Max, for sitting down with me for this interview, I know it’s a hard subject but if you don’t mind can you tell me a little background from the suicide of Katrina? Yes detective, but it dates a long time back, back to this little barn. Katrina and her brother would always go out to the barn and play. Katrina’s father would always tell her to not go out to the barn and play and he would tell her brother the same thing. They never listened though. They were having so much fun until one day. I was a neighbor to Katrina for a while, she asked me to come play the day an accident occurred in the barn. I was just in the corner watching her climb this unsturdy ladder, it would crack going all the way up. She got almost to the very top

It's been over two weeks and Evan is still not sure what he's gotten himself into and the only one to blame is himself and his wired therapy letters. So now where is he? Oh yeah, pretending to be Connor Murphy's best friend because his parents thought he wrote a suicide note to Evan. And of course, he just went with it. Told the Murphy's all about his great friendship with their son who was surely going to kill him once he woke up. Evan would love it if the ground could just open up and swallow him whole. His phone ringing interrupts his daydream about no longer existing. Evan pulls his phone out of his pocket and blanches when he sees it's Mrs. Murphy.

When I was in the seventh grade I fell down the stairs at my junior high school on slushy December day. One of my friends helped me to the school nurse and when I got there she simply handed me a ziploc bag of ice and sent me on my way back to class. I went the rest of that day limping class to class. After school, my mother picked me up unaware of what happened earlier that day. Once I told her she took me to the emergency room right away. After numerous x-rays the verdict was in... I had fractured my growth plate in my left ankle. I believe the school should have taken better safety precautions since I was not the only one to fall on those stairs, there were two other falls on the same stair case prior to mine. In my option I think in

About fifteen years ago on a beautiful Saturday a devastating death occurred. My Aunt had walked in to a room after my Uncle had committed suicide. My two cousins were heartbroken that their new step-dad had killed himself after living with them for only two years. Although depressed with the weight of her late-husband happened to make the situation better. She began to apply and send both of her children to a Christian School in Wisconsin where they live. If my Aunt had not sent her children to a Christian School, I would not be at Faith today.

The sun glares down upon me from the sky. Sweat drips from my brow as I search for any signs of a cloud that will provide some respite from the 100 degree heat. I cling to the chain-link fence that surrounds the tennis court for support, my lungs desperately pleading for air. The soles of my feet burning underneath me, I feel ready to collapse. We – I and seven other students – had just finished our second suicide after a series of other training drills, and I was ready to go home for a cold shower and some much needed rest. Our coach, who we call Coach G, then yells, “Again!” We line up at the white doubles line. “Suicides,” I thought, “a more appropriately named activity I have never heard in my life,” as I just about felt ready to die. The whistle shrieks, my deadened ears barely able to hear the strident sound. We set off, touching each consecutive line and returning to our starting position. Doubles line, singles line, center, singles line, doubles line – I finish the first court. We then continue on to the second, repeating the routine with the added challenge of having to return to the doubles line of the first court each time. This continues on to the third court, then the fourth. Finally, after reaching the end of the

comes back full force. My straight A’s start to drop to D’s and E’s, I quit all my after-school activities, stopped talking to everyone, and started to skip school almost everyday. I had always struggled with depression, but it had never been this bad before, I felt like I was drowning and she was pulling me down with her. I struggled a lot with my depression, I had to go to the emergency room twice during the school year for suicide attempts, I just wanted to give up on everything. During this time things kept getting worse and worse, tension kept on building between my mom and me and I still hadn't seen my dad. I remember that night so clearly as if it was yesterday. My mom and I had been arguing all day, We were in my room and kept on arguing

Imagine you are drowning, and people consistently tell you swim; yet you do not know how. That is what mental illness feels like. I was diagnosed with depression when I was twelve years old. I had constant barraging thoughts of suicide and I was rarely happy. I cut my right wrist with a pair of sharp fabric scissors that I used for making blankets. I hated myself and thought myself to be irrelevant to my family and my community. It was as if there was a crushing weight on my chest, and I was dealing with things that no twelve year old should have to deal with. My father would get angry and yell, I felt that my mother wouldn’t understand what I was going through so I withheld information from her, and I was even letting my

I don’t think there’s been a day when I haven’t checked my Instagram direct messages or my iMessages around 1 a.m. to see if my friend from the UK was up. I love talking to her and one main reason is because at this time nobody I know in real life is awake. I love that no matter what time of day it is somebody is up and willing to talk to me about anything from what Kylie Jenner said on Snapchat last night, to the meaning of life, or even our true purpose in the world. Communication with social media was such a signifcant convenience for me because to be honest, I didn’t even know how to communicate in real life. Discovering this format where I could talk to somebody helped me eventually to get the courage to get actual mental help. I believe

My father passed away in 1991, two weeks before Christmas. I was 25 at the time but until then I had not grown up. I was still an ignorant youth that only cared about finding the next party. My role model was now gone, forcing me to reevaluate the direction my life was heading. I needed to reexamine some of the lessons he taught me through the years.