Day 20 of 31 Day Blogging Challenge

Day 20 of 31 Day Blogging Challenge

Today is day 20 of the 31 day blogging challenge. If you’ve been following me through this challenge, I appreciate it. You can read about my other posts by clicking here. The prompt today is a difficult time in my life. I am not a fan of this prompt today.

A Difficult Time In My Life

The most difficult time in my life for me was when my best friend died. It hurts to even write this or talk about it. Hence the reason I don’t like this prompt.

My best friend dying was a very complicated point in time because suicide can’t be explained away the same way a heart attack or a car wreck can. There are always questions. I will never forget that night. I knew something was up when I arrived and his truck was gone. Another friend met me at the door. I will never forget that look on his face either. I’ve never seen him worried before or since.

Que the worry from there. Shortly after I arrived, I heard sirens. I still panic when I hear them any time around midnight. It just brings up memories for me, and wondering what had happened.

Then I had to go home and figure out how to tell Nathan. My best friend was also great friends with Nathan. They worked together, and we had all spent time together on many occasions. I’m sure when Nathan and I parted ways, he wasn’t expecting me to come home and tell him he would never see our friend again.

After the shock wore off, we cue the family drama. There are people in the world who seek attention, and so much so that they don’t care if it is positive or negative. When they cease being the center of attention, they have a meltdown. It is classic narcissistic behavior. Unfortunately for me, I had three of them in my inner circle. I wonder what I ever did to deserve that many horrible people in my inner circle, but such is life.

I tried to go on with life as normally as I could, and just support Nathan and our mutual friends as they expressed grief. I’m the one who usually holds it together and is there for everything. This was no exception and I tried desperately to do that.

The biggest problem with grief is people have no clue how to handle it. I’m not talking about the person grieving. Although you can read about the stages of grief. I’m talking about the people around a grieving person. They always try to fill the space with empty words. I’m sorry for your loss. They’re not hurting anymore. They died peacefully. Whatever. I mean, the list goes on forever.

Now with suicide, there is judgement. I’ve heard his death called stupid, tragic, pointless. He died for nothing. That list goes on as well. People have an ignorant belief that suicide is a choice. People seriously think it is a real choice, made from a perfectly logical state of mind. Just like we all make the choice on what to eat for breakfast every day, or what book to read next. By this same logic, they call suicide murder. They made the choice to kill themselves.

No! This is where I get the most upset. Because those judgments are based off sheer ignorance and stupidity. All it does is continue the stigma around suicide and keep people experiencing a mental health crisis in the closet when they say things like that. Our bodies are hardwired to sustain life. Read that over, sustain life. Hence the reason breathing is not a voluntary bodily function. If a person is in a place where their mind can override the body’s natural need to sustain life, there is a real problem. That is not a choice, that is a crisis and should be taken seriously.

Ok, I went a bit off subject and onto a rant there. But it is how I feel and I want to end the stigma around suicide. I hate that I can’t talk about it with most people because I constantly expect that judgement.

I tried to grieve, and I had an amazing support system. But there is always someone, or in my case, several people who can’t handle allowing the space to grieve that kind of a loss. That was disappointing to me, to say the least.

Looking Back

I look back on my life with these people, and I can see exactly how my response to grief developed because of them. It is always interesting to reflect like that and see how experiences with people change us. Their response, because of being narcissistic has never changed. Mine has evolved into a far more productive place. It became extremely easy to see how they didn’t fit into my life anymore because they would not allow me the space to grieve. Instead they caused more drama for me.

This confused me for a while. Why would someone who is supposed to love me intentionally cause me added drama, pain, and stress during an obviously emotional time? It was like being stabbed in the back repeatedly. It also caused a lot of anger toward them. Finally I reached the point I was done. Just over it. I cut them out of my life. Many people judged me for that and treated me like I had no soul.

Which is not the case at all. I am the most giving and compassionate person out there. I put my life on hold for these people for years and forced myself to fit into their little bubble. Why? I loved them and wanted to keep everyone around me happy. That trait became the bane of my existence after this and I vowed to break that habit.

It took months to rid them from my life completely. One of them kept trying to see me and insert themselves back into my life like we were best friends and I just had a tantrum kind of thing. A narcissist will never admit or own their own behavior, nor apologize for it.

This was certainly no exception. The other one had been allowed far too much control over my life, and systematically had to be removed from all kinds of legal paperwork. I’ve come to realize they need to feel important. The result is they insert themselves into a lot of other lives like they did mine, under the guise of “helping.” When in all reality, it is just a form of control. That makes them feel important. Me being me, ripped the rug right out from under the delusion that they were important and took back control of my life.

Taking My Life Back

Taking control of my life was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It hurt, don’t get me wrong. It sucks to say goodbye to people who were supposed to be my biggest supporters. I had spent 30-something years trying to make happy and do exactly what was expected of me. Yet I couldn’t ignore the fact I could no longer fit into their mold of who I had to be.

You know the saying about never pushing a loyal person past the point they no longer care? That is literally the definition of what they did to me, and it wasn’t pretty. But it was the beginning of an entirely new life for me, and that is a fact I can’t ignore. There is beauty in tragedy. I can’t ignore that. This all was the catalyst for starting my prepping blog, and finding myself again.

But this was easily the most difficult time in my life. Now my best friend exists in a couple of pictures and a tattoo I wear. So he is still with me, walking right beside me every day. All I can do now is live the best life possible and do everything I can to honor him by ending the stigma around suicide and bringing awareness to it. I’ll do my best to make sure he didn’t die in vain.