Who’s shoes are these?

For suicide survivors aftercare , in 2021 there are lots of options to reach out. To be honest, I’m still on the fence with this. In the mind state I was in, I think there could have been 1000 options to reach out and I wouldn’t have taken them. I do think that the support of 2021 may have helped the people around me to feel supported if that makes any sense. Awareness does have its impact but until you have been a suicide survivor or lost someone close to suicide I know you do not know of this impact.

My dad always told us – do your thing, have fun but don’t ever hurt me. I heard these words so many times in the aftermath. My dad carried that with him everyday. His eyes had a level of sadness and hurt in them that never went away.

This path of my brothers that intertwined with so many that loved him, it left a mess of tangled knots, some we never could unravel.

My dad had idle hands following my brothers death because he was still in recovery. I worried about him constantly, checked in on him to a level of annoying I’m sure. I imagine his thoughts got the best of him some days, probably most days. I remember him making a lot of soup. This was the only thing I had ever seen him cook in my lifetime with him.

My mom went back to work right away. It was harvest she said and they needed her. I think she needed them.

2 weeks passed. Wham bam let’s get back to normal. I was not strong enough to face people. My husband told me it was time to get back to work, and I did not want to hear that. How does a person go from flatline to a new normal? Had he not pushed me, I might have continued to stay in bed ….. either way he was a part of that walk home for me. The second thing I remember is my first day back, my coworker (the same one who sent the muffins I mentioned in my prior writing) said “I am sorry about your brother”

Oh no I gotta get out of here, I can’t do this, I don’t want to be here. As tears welled up for both of us I told her it’s ok.

Stop.

It wasn’t ok. It wasn’t ok to be in this space, to have a broken family, to have a dad with a serious heart condition making soup and a mom working so hard she had no time to think. It wasn’t ok to be so lost and feel so alone. The weight of the day was heavy. She knew it. I knew it.

But at that moment I needed it to be ok, to have a space I would go to every day where people wouldn’t look at me and feel sad.

You know the look.

Even though we weren’t close friends, she has a place in walking me home probably without even knowing it. Because she let me know she cared and then let me choose how that day and all the days following would go in that space.

We push forward because we have to and because we can. We continue the walk in shoes that don’t feel like our own. Like who’s f&(($g shoes are these?