Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
This is total bullshit. Because I am here. And you are not.
The most creative, artistic, kind and young hearted one of us all.
You stood in front of that train, looked Death in His face, and felt free.
Almost a year ago, I would have envied your conviction. Because my own idea of taking my life matched yours.
I had the plan all worked out.
I would get up in the morning, drop my daughter off to my in-laws (with the pretense of doing some grocery shopping) but instead drive to the train station where I had seen the unfinished fence with enough space to walk through on to the open tracks.
I came so close to doing it. I had taken my daughter to her grandparents. I got in my car. I drove to the local supermarket and parked outside, just to stop and collect my thoughts.
Yet my thoughts, through all the fucked up commentary that my illness fed me, could not convince myself to shut off, go in to autopilot and drive to that train station. So after a time I returned to pick up my daughter and got on with muddling my way through my first year of motherhood.
The crippling bout of post natal depression and anxiety that I faced on a daily basis, amazingly, could not contend with my stubbornness and reconciliation of values to be the best person I could for myself, child and husband. Given the self protection and barriers put up around myself, the means to disclose any of this was petrifying.
But the worst passed, the fog lifted, and I started to look forward to life again.
Then came the phone call to say you were gone. And the regret that I had never shared my experience with someone such as yourself, whom I loved as fiercely as my own brother, hit with a force I would never have thought possible.
What if I could have spared you the anguish and doubt to get unstuck? To know you were loved without consequence and not alone in idealizing Life Without Pain?
I’ll never know. But I do know that I will never stop missing and loving you and this is something I can now share freely with those present here who also cared and loved you the most.
Please send me courage and strength to pass on my story to others so that suicide is no longer the final and desperate act of a troubled soul.
Rest in peace darling Greg.
I am, and will always be, your baby cousin Nat.