Recently, I started using Twitter. It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how it works, and to be honest I’m still not entirely sure. I was scrolling through the page with the posts of the people I follow, and I read that today is International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day. Had I not come across that through social media, I would have let the day slide by like many weekend days do. Now I am sitting here and trying to figure out exactly how I feel. Today is not my father’s birthday, or the day he died. I think about him every day, but mostly to remember the moments that made us all smile. The times he cracked jokes that maybe were a bit over the line. The afternoons when we walked around Manhattan together in the warm sun. He had a bright personality, loved conversations with friendly strangers, and believed that every day was beautiful.
I’m crying while I am writing this, which is unusual for me. I’m remembering the last time I saw my dad in person. It was his 50th birthday, and he was wearing a white colored polo shirt. It was the day that he, his partner Raul, and my brother dropped me off at college. I remember feeling nauseous, I didn’t want them to go.
After everything in my new dorm was put in its place, my family headed towards the door. I had cried enough that day, and my eyes were dry. I hugged my dad for the last time, holding tightly and wishing that he would just take me back home. I did not want to start a new life, and I did not want change.
College classes were painful to me. I was not confident. I didn’t know what to say. My dad listened to all of these concerns, and stayed on the phone with me for hours. He pushed me to try and get out of my shell, to socialize, but I couldn’t figure out how. I was stuck inside my labyrinth mind, and unable to escape.
One day, a month after my father’s 50th birthday, I called him to ask about an essay. The phone went straight to voicemail. I thought nothing of it. It was only when I had called him about three times, that I started to feel anxious. I called Raul, who also had not heard from my dad. At about 11:00 PM, I decided to buy a train ticket home. My dad had never disappeared for that long. My thoughts bounced all over the place, wondering what could have possibly happened. None of my conclusions were good.
The train ride was excruciating, and I cried the whole way while listening to about five Norah Jones albums on repeat.
Once I reached my hometown, I dragged my suitcase up my driveway and willed myself to feel hope. I walked inside, stood on the cold tile floor, and listened to Raul’s voice as he told me that dad wasn’t here anymore, that “it was suicide.” I was shocked, and that moment of bewilderment and pain has never faded. Every time I replay that moment in my mind, I feel the same crushing fear. I think the same thought: how am I going to live in this world without him?
I have tried asking endless questions, that I know will never be answered:
Why?
Was there anything I could have done?
He was happy, right?
Didn’t you think he was happy?
Was he depressed?
Did I just never know that he was living with severe emotional pain?
Would I have seen it in his eyes if I were home?
Heard it in his voice?
The note he left was brief and vague. All I remember from it was him writing that my brother and I “need each other more than ever now,” and that the concluding line was “be stronger than me.”
Be stronger than me has lingered in my mind over the four years since his death. I wonder what he meant, and what had suddenly made him so weak. Was he really weak? Or was he just sick, suffering, and stuck without another way out?
I will never know, no matter how many questions I ask.
He is gone.
He is gone, but I am not, neither are you.
We are survivors.