Personal Narrative: Life After Mom's 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.

Mother is long gone. Even though she died nearly 3 years ago I still feel empty. Ever since, it has been my responsibility to take care of grandmother even though she believes I’m the one who killed her only daughter. This is why she refuses to live with me, she thinks I’m going to kill her as well because I have cruel vengeance against them for taking me away from my father at such a young age. They thought he could never change from his old ways. But truth is that it is unknown of how she died but it was too much of a coincidence to grandmother that me and mother were in a fight and we were all alone in our small house right out of town, all I remember is running up to her room after hearing a loud crash and all that was left of her was gone. The police gave up the investigation knowing 100% sure that she was dead by the amount of blood that was left behind by her thinking she would have bled out before she

‘I don’t want to lose her,’ I kept repeating in my head trying to look strong for her. I was trying to not show how scared I was, trying to stop bursting into tears the second I saw her in the state she was. She was so weak and there was nothing I could do to help, except stay out of the doctor’s way. There were nurses and doctors rushing around and giving me a strange look until realization dawned on them. I was at the hospital with my mom around 10 at night, in my pajamas, wondering what was going to happen to her and if she was going to be okay.

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.

“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,

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

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.

The day I almost died was the day my child came into this world. She came bursting into this world four weeks earlier than expected and it all started a week earlier. A simple checkup that resulted into an ultrasound, labor, and finally the moment I almost died.

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

It was 2nd quarter in 6th grade. I was sitting on my saucer chair relaxing, and enjoying the silence in my bedroom. I sit there thinking in my sweats cuddles up in a large fuzzy purple blanket. Then suddenly I was awakened after spacing out from my phone. The text was from Emma, I was a little sceptical because we hadn’t talked in a couple of days. I hesitantly opened it and slowly and carefully read it. The text said, “I hate myself, I hate how I look, I hate how I feel, and I hate how people look at me”. I felt absolutely terrible, and was in a bind not knowing what to say back. All I knew was Emma needed to know how important she was to this world and that she meant so much to her friends and family.

When I was a kid in Lakewood Washington I had always loved Halloween and going trick or treating. I was going to be a ghoul that year and I had just gotten home from school and I said “Mom, mom where are you.” and I see Torin my little brother in his crib crying my moms door was open and I walked in to look for mom and I see her dead in the closet hanging.

The Oxford Dictionary states that excellence is the quality of being outstanding or extremely good. This noun embodies who I am. Not only that but I also work to achieve excellence as often as possible. In my lifetime, I have learned so many things and have been through a lot. All of this help me to be excellent.

A dark grey ghost passes by my sister and I in the front room of our house. It was our mother. Our Aunt Paulette approaches us a few seconds later. She takes us by the hands, looks at us, and from her lips she says, “girls, your baby brother is an angel now.”

The week before Anabelle and I moved out into the city, I felt the nerves, the jittering butterflies of happiness, and the warm hugs our parents gave us in the limited time that we had left. The week after we settled and moved into our new apartment If I had known what was to come, however, I never would have departed from my parents. All the good memories I and Anabelle shared throughout our lives, were taken away, all vanquished because of one night. Those hours of darkness that which we spent out, I wish so much that we could take back. It was supposed to be a night of fun, an awakening of our new lives as adolescents, but what happened instead was a tragedy. In the blink of an eye, I was gone. My soul, my body, my entirety, erased. And so was Anabelle’s.