content warnings: [parental] suicide, incl. discussion of methods, abuse [domestic and psychiatric], drugs
i'm not sure why, but it feels appropriate that i'm writing this huddled in a corner in the waiting room at shrewsbury station. all i've got keeping me warm is a not-very-helpful coat and a £3.25 cup of mediocre tea. i wish i could like winter as much as i'm still convinced i do. genuinely, it did use to be my favourite - especially around december and january. it makes me feel small now, though. it makes me remember all the times i wanted my dad to be dead.
there were more of these times than i'd ever really care to admit. but i wanted it. i believed my life would be better, and i wasn't wrong. i was right - it is better. for nearly six years now, i haven't been abused by anyone to even nearly the same level. i haven't been scared in my own home, or at all reasonably afraid of being watched. i haven't come home to paramedics, or police, or the scent of cider, blood, and what i can only describe as coldness.
i come home to quiet, and i don't know if that's any better. i don't come home much at all, actually. i made a new one, at least for the last and next 18 months. still, i don't come home to a text, call, or poorly timed birthday card. i come home to a letter from the psychiatrist, piles of dishes, a bedroom i swear i just cleaned, soundtracked by the playlist i practically inherited from the man i wished dead. i got my wish, so i should be happy about it, but i'm not. it's a rock and a hard place; either i'm abused, or i'm alone, and god do i feel alone.
i think that's destiny. with him around, i had to take care of myself. i couldn't tell anyone who he really was, or i'd be in the company of social services (i think i'd rather be alone, thank you very much). with him gone, the loneliness of being "the sick one" eats away at me every day. i have no one to look at and envision my future except a dead man. it's wishful thinking, but i find some comfort in the idea that, in another world, maybe we'd make it out of this hole together. in this one, not a chance. in this one, i get to look forward to slitting my wrists and overdosing in the bathtub. or, if not, i get to look forward to thinking about it every day; what did it look like? which one killed him first (how can a coroner just not work it out)? what did he think last? of me? not of me? which of those would i prefer? what if i followed? was he really in no pain?
for a pretty damn long time (over five years!), that was what i heard - he didn't go in pain. i didn't know how, but not in pain. what no one knew was that i had tried to kill myself once before, and i knew better than to accept that statement. it's pure damage control. i didn't know better than to let my curiousity get the best of me. one day, in late 2025, i asked how. i've already told you here how, so no need for a repetition. i'll keep those to myself. "he wasn't in pain" can never comfort me, because it's false in a few ways. firstly, killing yourself is always horrifically painful. do you know how hard your body fights against its own hand to keep breathing? secondly, he was in so much pain he killed himself, for christs sake!
it all lives beside me still. everyone tells young guys they look just like their dads, its just... what you do, i guess. i do look like my dad, weirdly like him, actually. i feel like, in that way, i carry him with me everywhere. i have his eyes, as if he sees through mine now. but also, the "so much pain he killed himself" lives in me, too, and i can't seem to get it out. it isn't his fault i want to join him - i don't know why i want to. how could i want to after all of this? it sickens me that i do. this keeps me alive, even if begrudgingly. how could i put someone through a day like mine was?
[authors note: i'm on a train now!]
february 20th 2020 was a thursday. it was half term for me, i was in year 11. on february 19th, my mum told me that my grandma would pick me up to go rock climbing tomorrow without my dad. there was a lot of emphasis on "without", i remember the exact tone. i went rock climbing - me, my sibling, 2 of my cousins, my dads mum and sister. after, we got a kfc, and i had to apologise for my grandma's "karen behaviour" (god, 2020 was a time, huh?)
on the drive home, we passed my dads house - once, and now again, the family home. there were police on the street, but nothing except my gut to suggest it was his house they were barging into. i wasn't stupid, though, it hadn't even been a year since i came home from school to an ambulance in the same spot, my mum waiting in the alleyway, telling me to go straight to my room, don't look in the living room. something in me said he's dead. it didn't bring me relief - i don't remember it bringing me anything in the moment. i just kept looking out the window as we drove the next ten minutes to my house.
it only took another hour or so for me to find out that i was right. i wasn't told an hour later; my gut took a second, much harder punch hearing unfamiliar voices and radio noises downstairs, followed by a scream from my mum i don't think will ever leave me. my heart still sinks when i hear a loud noise downstairs. i didn't just know he was dead, i knew he had killed himself, and suddenly, what i had wished for, i wished to reverse. you can't wish away a wish, though, hard as you might try.
i'm sure there are people reading this who i'll need to explain the feeling to, so i'll try. everything left my body at once - the past 16 years died in a second. everything was gone. nothing was real. the walls of my bedroom were suddenly covered in spikes, and if i moved, it'd go from nothingness to debilitating pain. i stayed dead still, and i mean that with my whole heart. for about 20 minutes (i think), i didn't even put my phone down or move my eyes away. i stared at a half-typed text message the whole time, listening to my mum sobbing and screaming. i don't know why i couldn't do anything for so long, the guilt of it kills me. eventually, i deleted the text, and on autopilot, just typed to a group chat, "i think my dads killed himself." then, "well, i know."
it took a few hours for my mum to tell me to my face. she sat me and my sibling down on my bed, and told us that "your dad's died, he's really gone this time, okay?"
i don't remember much after that.
i have tiny snippets i'll relay to you. i remember my mum was wearing a split-patterned hoodie of mine. i remember i was wearing a black/purple/blue patterned button up. i remember "this isn't your fault, okay?". i remember trying to make the tea for the house (my mums parents, her, my sibling, and me), and being told to stop, that my mum would do it. i remember resting my head on my grandad's shoulder on the sofa as i joked "great timing, that, isnt it? three months before my exams." my grandad's dying, now, too. weird. and, it was 2020, so of course, the first thing i did upon getting back to my own room was watch unus annus.
i was never really allowed to grieve how i needed to. i'd never grieved before. to this day, my dad's suicide is the only death i've experienced. i learnt i need to do it in peace - other people are too overwhelming. i need time, space, to not be held, to not be forced to talk. all very different to my mum, apparently, who i had to physically stop from holding me, and shout at to stop and to leave me alone several times in those first few weeks. that's one of the things that's stuck with me most, being suffocated, unable to cope how i needed to. made to grieve in a way that made me feel like i was losing myself, too. i've never really healed from that. i think i lost myself that day, too, honestly, in being treated like i had no wishes, no needs, no self. i still can't be held, touched, talked to. something in me - i think a bit of pre-dead-dad-me - dies every time. i don't want that kid to die. i've learnt my lesson, wanting people to die.
nowadays, i don't really know what i'm doing with any of this. every time i talk about it, i feel like i'm holding my internal organs in my hands, looking horrified, unsure what to do with them. i don't want him back, but i wish i didn't have to deal with this. it's definitely selfish. the main emotion i have nowadays, though, is anger. i know that's meant to be, like, step one, but i came full circle i guess. i'm constantly angry that the systems that claim to save lives, actually serve to take them, or at least destroy them. my dads institutionalisation made him more suicidal, and even angrier - i watched it with my own eyes. the crisis team didn't go to him the last time, because he was so depressed he couldn't speak. they wouldn't listen to his next of kin and come out anyway; instead, they let him die there. the psych system produces only death. as 'mentally ill' people, we deserve to choose what happens to our bodies. where our bodies are, what drugs enter them, what we do deal with whatever we're feeling. even when suicidal - what good does stripping someone of all autonomy against their will do to make someone want to live? to make them less angry? what good does it do to abuse people to make them want to die less? it's entirely irrational.
my dad wasn't irrational for his reaction to psychiatric abuse, as much as the world wants me to think he was. that he acted impulsively, that one more stint in the prison-besides-only-name would've fixed him, that he just needed less autonomy for the sake of being alive at all costs. this is why i say that "you HAVE to speak to a doctor if you're suicidal" rhetoric is bullshit. what good did that do for the thousands (more, actually) of people dead at the hands of the psych system that's supposed to help, huh?
get good friends. find anti-psych friends. find friends who won't turn you over to the carceral system for being in distress. find friends who'll make you a good soup and sit with you while you get high to make it through the night. find friends who'll only take you to a "professional" if you ask. we've got to be here for eachother as much as possible, when the system that claims to be there to help, is only there to quite literally beat you into submission and even deeper misery.
i'm not sure how to end this, i don't have a profound statement to end on. i'll go in silence, then. like father, like son.
-----
for the 20th of february 2020, i'm going to give you 20 songs that either my dad liked, we have history with, or that just remind me of him.
1. as the world caves in - matt maltese
"it's you i watch tv with"
2. exit music (for a film) - radiohead
"today we escape / pack and get dressed before your father hears us / before all hell breaks loose"
3. greek god - conan gray
the song i had on repeat that day
4. motion sickness - phoebe bridgers
"i'll be glad that i made it out and sorry that it all went down like it did"
5. the father complex - many rooms
"bet you're looking for a sorry / well i'm looking for one too"
6. no surprises - radiohead
ok computer was his favourite album. "such a pretty house and such a pretty garden"
7. kyoto - phoebe bridgers
"i'm gonna kill you if you don't beat me to it." also just the entire song. jesus fucking christ.
8. sticks n stones - jamie t
played in the car regularly
9. high and dry - radiohead
"two jumps in a week / i bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?"
10. phantoms - holding absence
"in the face of death, forgiveness is a small small price"
11. penance - holding absence
"you, penance, a lesson in misery"
12. killing in the name - rage against the machine
one of his favourite songs to blast in the car, though he clearly didn't listen to it
13. audience of one - rise against
"you gave my emptiness a name"
14. marisol - static dress
"fix your disease / leave in a cardboard box / syringe induced dreams help forget all of us"
15. mercia - thornhill
"in death would i make you see that your pain ruminates in me / is that why you couldn't face it alone?"
16. gay bar - electric six
he thought it was really funny how much 3 year old me liked the music video. he was right!
17. hey boy, hey girl - the chemical brothers
one of our songs
18. tick tick boom - the hives
another one of our songs
19. lets dance - david bowie
his favourite bowie song
20. weird fishes - radiohead
one of our songs, and the song i had played at his funeral.
there were more of these times than i'd ever really care to admit. but i wanted it. i believed my life would be better, and i wasn't wrong. i was right - it is better. for nearly six years now, i haven't been abused by anyone to even nearly the same level. i haven't been scared in my own home, or at all reasonably afraid of being watched. i haven't come home to paramedics, or police, or the scent of cider, blood, and what i can only describe as coldness.
i come home to quiet, and i don't know if that's any better. i don't come home much at all, actually. i made a new one, at least for the last and next 18 months. still, i don't come home to a text, call, or poorly timed birthday card. i come home to a letter from the psychiatrist, piles of dishes, a bedroom i swear i just cleaned, soundtracked by the playlist i practically inherited from the man i wished dead. i got my wish, so i should be happy about it, but i'm not. it's a rock and a hard place; either i'm abused, or i'm alone, and god do i feel alone.
i think that's destiny. with him around, i had to take care of myself. i couldn't tell anyone who he really was, or i'd be in the company of social services (i think i'd rather be alone, thank you very much). with him gone, the loneliness of being "the sick one" eats away at me every day. i have no one to look at and envision my future except a dead man. it's wishful thinking, but i find some comfort in the idea that, in another world, maybe we'd make it out of this hole together. in this one, not a chance. in this one, i get to look forward to slitting my wrists and overdosing in the bathtub. or, if not, i get to look forward to thinking about it every day; what did it look like? which one killed him first (how can a coroner just not work it out)? what did he think last? of me? not of me? which of those would i prefer? what if i followed? was he really in no pain?
for a pretty damn long time (over five years!), that was what i heard - he didn't go in pain. i didn't know how, but not in pain. what no one knew was that i had tried to kill myself once before, and i knew better than to accept that statement. it's pure damage control. i didn't know better than to let my curiousity get the best of me. one day, in late 2025, i asked how. i've already told you here how, so no need for a repetition. i'll keep those to myself. "he wasn't in pain" can never comfort me, because it's false in a few ways. firstly, killing yourself is always horrifically painful. do you know how hard your body fights against its own hand to keep breathing? secondly, he was in so much pain he killed himself, for christs sake!
it all lives beside me still. everyone tells young guys they look just like their dads, its just... what you do, i guess. i do look like my dad, weirdly like him, actually. i feel like, in that way, i carry him with me everywhere. i have his eyes, as if he sees through mine now. but also, the "so much pain he killed himself" lives in me, too, and i can't seem to get it out. it isn't his fault i want to join him - i don't know why i want to. how could i want to after all of this? it sickens me that i do. this keeps me alive, even if begrudgingly. how could i put someone through a day like mine was?
[authors note: i'm on a train now!]
february 20th 2020 was a thursday. it was half term for me, i was in year 11. on february 19th, my mum told me that my grandma would pick me up to go rock climbing tomorrow without my dad. there was a lot of emphasis on "without", i remember the exact tone. i went rock climbing - me, my sibling, 2 of my cousins, my dads mum and sister. after, we got a kfc, and i had to apologise for my grandma's "karen behaviour" (god, 2020 was a time, huh?)
on the drive home, we passed my dads house - once, and now again, the family home. there were police on the street, but nothing except my gut to suggest it was his house they were barging into. i wasn't stupid, though, it hadn't even been a year since i came home from school to an ambulance in the same spot, my mum waiting in the alleyway, telling me to go straight to my room, don't look in the living room. something in me said he's dead. it didn't bring me relief - i don't remember it bringing me anything in the moment. i just kept looking out the window as we drove the next ten minutes to my house.
it only took another hour or so for me to find out that i was right. i wasn't told an hour later; my gut took a second, much harder punch hearing unfamiliar voices and radio noises downstairs, followed by a scream from my mum i don't think will ever leave me. my heart still sinks when i hear a loud noise downstairs. i didn't just know he was dead, i knew he had killed himself, and suddenly, what i had wished for, i wished to reverse. you can't wish away a wish, though, hard as you might try.
i'm sure there are people reading this who i'll need to explain the feeling to, so i'll try. everything left my body at once - the past 16 years died in a second. everything was gone. nothing was real. the walls of my bedroom were suddenly covered in spikes, and if i moved, it'd go from nothingness to debilitating pain. i stayed dead still, and i mean that with my whole heart. for about 20 minutes (i think), i didn't even put my phone down or move my eyes away. i stared at a half-typed text message the whole time, listening to my mum sobbing and screaming. i don't know why i couldn't do anything for so long, the guilt of it kills me. eventually, i deleted the text, and on autopilot, just typed to a group chat, "i think my dads killed himself." then, "well, i know."
it took a few hours for my mum to tell me to my face. she sat me and my sibling down on my bed, and told us that "your dad's died, he's really gone this time, okay?"
i don't remember much after that.
i have tiny snippets i'll relay to you. i remember my mum was wearing a split-patterned hoodie of mine. i remember i was wearing a black/purple/blue patterned button up. i remember "this isn't your fault, okay?". i remember trying to make the tea for the house (my mums parents, her, my sibling, and me), and being told to stop, that my mum would do it. i remember resting my head on my grandad's shoulder on the sofa as i joked "great timing, that, isnt it? three months before my exams." my grandad's dying, now, too. weird. and, it was 2020, so of course, the first thing i did upon getting back to my own room was watch unus annus.
i was never really allowed to grieve how i needed to. i'd never grieved before. to this day, my dad's suicide is the only death i've experienced. i learnt i need to do it in peace - other people are too overwhelming. i need time, space, to not be held, to not be forced to talk. all very different to my mum, apparently, who i had to physically stop from holding me, and shout at to stop and to leave me alone several times in those first few weeks. that's one of the things that's stuck with me most, being suffocated, unable to cope how i needed to. made to grieve in a way that made me feel like i was losing myself, too. i've never really healed from that. i think i lost myself that day, too, honestly, in being treated like i had no wishes, no needs, no self. i still can't be held, touched, talked to. something in me - i think a bit of pre-dead-dad-me - dies every time. i don't want that kid to die. i've learnt my lesson, wanting people to die.
nowadays, i don't really know what i'm doing with any of this. every time i talk about it, i feel like i'm holding my internal organs in my hands, looking horrified, unsure what to do with them. i don't want him back, but i wish i didn't have to deal with this. it's definitely selfish. the main emotion i have nowadays, though, is anger. i know that's meant to be, like, step one, but i came full circle i guess. i'm constantly angry that the systems that claim to save lives, actually serve to take them, or at least destroy them. my dads institutionalisation made him more suicidal, and even angrier - i watched it with my own eyes. the crisis team didn't go to him the last time, because he was so depressed he couldn't speak. they wouldn't listen to his next of kin and come out anyway; instead, they let him die there. the psych system produces only death. as 'mentally ill' people, we deserve to choose what happens to our bodies. where our bodies are, what drugs enter them, what we do deal with whatever we're feeling. even when suicidal - what good does stripping someone of all autonomy against their will do to make someone want to live? to make them less angry? what good does it do to abuse people to make them want to die less? it's entirely irrational.
my dad wasn't irrational for his reaction to psychiatric abuse, as much as the world wants me to think he was. that he acted impulsively, that one more stint in the prison-besides-only-name would've fixed him, that he just needed less autonomy for the sake of being alive at all costs. this is why i say that "you HAVE to speak to a doctor if you're suicidal" rhetoric is bullshit. what good did that do for the thousands (more, actually) of people dead at the hands of the psych system that's supposed to help, huh?
get good friends. find anti-psych friends. find friends who won't turn you over to the carceral system for being in distress. find friends who'll make you a good soup and sit with you while you get high to make it through the night. find friends who'll only take you to a "professional" if you ask. we've got to be here for eachother as much as possible, when the system that claims to be there to help, is only there to quite literally beat you into submission and even deeper misery.
i'm not sure how to end this, i don't have a profound statement to end on. i'll go in silence, then. like father, like son.
-----
for the 20th of february 2020, i'm going to give you 20 songs that either my dad liked, we have history with, or that just remind me of him.
1. as the world caves in - matt maltese
"it's you i watch tv with"
2. exit music (for a film) - radiohead
"today we escape / pack and get dressed before your father hears us / before all hell breaks loose"
3. greek god - conan gray
the song i had on repeat that day
4. motion sickness - phoebe bridgers
"i'll be glad that i made it out and sorry that it all went down like it did"
5. the father complex - many rooms
"bet you're looking for a sorry / well i'm looking for one too"
6. no surprises - radiohead
ok computer was his favourite album. "such a pretty house and such a pretty garden"
7. kyoto - phoebe bridgers
"i'm gonna kill you if you don't beat me to it." also just the entire song. jesus fucking christ.
8. sticks n stones - jamie t
played in the car regularly
9. high and dry - radiohead
"two jumps in a week / i bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?"
10. phantoms - holding absence
"in the face of death, forgiveness is a small small price"
11. penance - holding absence
"you, penance, a lesson in misery"
12. killing in the name - rage against the machine
one of his favourite songs to blast in the car, though he clearly didn't listen to it
13. audience of one - rise against
"you gave my emptiness a name"
14. marisol - static dress
"fix your disease / leave in a cardboard box / syringe induced dreams help forget all of us"
15. mercia - thornhill
"in death would i make you see that your pain ruminates in me / is that why you couldn't face it alone?"
16. gay bar - electric six
he thought it was really funny how much 3 year old me liked the music video. he was right!
17. hey boy, hey girl - the chemical brothers
one of our songs
18. tick tick boom - the hives
another one of our songs
19. lets dance - david bowie
his favourite bowie song
20. weird fishes - radiohead
one of our songs, and the song i had played at his funeral.
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