Those of you who have been following me for a while are well aware that I lost my brother to suicide, since I write about it fairly regularly.
I have only been on Medium for a few months, but I have shared a lot about him and my journey through the uniquely brutal grief that suicide leaves in its wake.
Before I started writing about him here, I used my personal Facebook profile to get those thoughts out.
It helped me cope during the first six months or so, and I have to admit that it was very frequent, and it was likely brutal and not much fun for my friends to see.
I also often posted things about suicide awareness, why we should all be on the lookout for ways to help people and reach out.
Why feeling connected to people helped.
Why kindness mattered.
How we should all strive to make a difference because mental health issues are nothing to be ashamed of or hide from.
All of these things were tied to my brother, often with pictures of him, and sometimes with links to suicide awareness events being held locally.
I invited my “friends” to walk with me in my brother’s honor at a local suicide awareness event held at my oldest daughter’s high school.
Those posts were almost always met with crickets.
I worried my friends had all died.
In fact, this was one of the reasons I wanted a different place to write to him and about him. It was shockingly hurtful to me how many people just ignored my posts about my brother.
For a while, I thought maybe they just weren’t seeing them, but when I posted happier things, like me and the girls playing in the snow, or having dinner with my parents, I got tons of likes and comments.
It wasn’t that they weren’t seeing my posts. It was that no one wanted to acknowledge them.
No one wanted to engage with me about something that was killing me.
Perhaps they thought posting about him so often was a bid for attention. Perhaps it was that they didn’t know what to say. Maybe they just don’t want to talk about suicide in general.
But it made me feel like crap.
I am not friends with anyone on my personal Facebook if I don’t know them in real life. These are people I have known for years, a lot of them my entire life. At least half of them even watched my brother grow from a young teen to adulthood.
And they literally ignored him.
He wasn’t . . . acceptable enough, maybe?
Regardless of their reasons, I stopped posting about him because it was starting to make me feel worse, knowing people were ignoring him.
And it hurt.
When I had no outlet for the feelings that were building up inside of me until I literally wished I would explode, I almost lost my mind.
Now, I write about him here.
I stopped posting much at all on my Facebook page, because it seemed clear no one there really cares about me. All they want to see are feel-good pictures that fake a happiness I don’t always feel.
My kids are beautiful and getting so big!
Oh, it looks like my parents are doing so well — it’s so good to see them and they’re glad they moved in with me and my family.
That’s nice.
So kind of you to care about their welfare and brag about my kids.
Thanks.
But there is more to every person’s story than their happiest moments or their biggest accomplishments.
My grief should not feel like something to be ashamed of.
And my brother is certainly not something I will ever be ashamed of.
He was good and kind and loving and handsome and mine.
And I can and should feel comfortable writing about him whenever I freaking please.
These are the types of things that make people feel hopeless.
These are the type of things that make someone feel alone.
We have to figure out a way that we can talk about the things that matter.
If my brother had felt comfortable opening up and had known he would have a tribe to help him through his dark and twisty days, the ones that didn’t look good in pictures, the days it was all he could do to battle the voices telling him he was less than, maybe he wouldn’t be dead today.
It’s incredibly sad that we don’t talk about these things.
It’s incredibly sad that I had to move to a platform where I knew no one in order to feel comfortable openly talking to and about something that matters so much to me.
I want to thank all of the people I have connected with here. I truly appreciate how loving and kind you have been. It has helped me begin to heal each day, the fact that so many of you have expressed your support. That you have seen and acknowledged Jason.
So, thank you. So much.
Just as I was questioning everything about my life — why were these people my friends? — and wondering whether anyone but family even cared about my brother, I received a private message.
It was from a woman I have known for over twenty years. I am not supremely close to her, but I have had infrequent social interactions with her since I was eighteen years old, and I am connected with her on Facebook.
I have watched her kids grow up, both in person and on Facebook.
She connected.
She reached out.
The questions that had been circling in my mind: Was anyone listening? Did anyone care? Was I even helping anyone at all? Or was I just making people want to scream when they saw my name pop up in their newsfeed?
She addressed them.
The message from this woman stopped my heart.
The things I was doing did matter.
My brother’s life, and his tragic death, did make a difference.
My words about him and his story may have saved a life.
She told me she has struggled with depression and battled with suicidal thoughts her entire life, and she always tried to cope on her own, but she never made any real progress.
I had no idea, because as is often the case, she has always felt she needed to hide that part of herself away.
Shame makes us retreat.
Seeing the pain I was willing to share — my brother’s story — made her reach out for professional help for the first time in her life, and she was finding a new journey of healing.
The fact that she shared that with me made all the difference.
I now post on Facebook whenever I feel like it. About whatever I feel like posting, though the majority of my writing does stay here.
Words make a difference.
Baring your heart can save a life.
Don’t second-guess yourself.
If your heart is calling you to write something, to put it out into the universe, don’t let other people stop you.
Don’t worry about what it looks like to the majority.
Don’t worry that you may alienate people.
If that happens, they were never your people.
Say the words that matter to you!
Have the hard conversations!
Write the articles that are scary to publish!
Pull back the veil, and let people see the things about you that are intense and scary.
You may well save someone’s life.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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