Why birthdays hurt so much after suicide…Is it trauma or is it drama?
Yet, these emotions are like tsunamis.
After the suicides of my younger sister and then two years later, my younger brother, I struggled everyday to chose to continue to live. The darkness that shrouded my world was as visible and real to me as a storm that never ends. It followed me everywhere. No matter where I went or what I did, no matter how much I tried to medicate myself into numbness or distract myself into escape, the darkness was always there. I went through years of therapy called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy to rescript my trauma. I saw a therapist twice a week. I journaled as a means of survival and documentation. And after a decade, the darkness slowly lifted and I was able to have a functional life.
It was on my birthdays when my dark friend would re-emerge. It would lure me back into my hole. And this time, the hole was not only about the loss of my sister and brother, it was the regret of my own survival without them and my apprehension around living. I hated my birthdays. I hated them because it meant that I lived while they died. For decades, I was reluctant to celebrate my birthday, because I was still torn about my self-worth and struggled with self-love. It was a monumental task to put on a happy face that day. Blowing out candles made me physically ill. When I sang the happy birthday song my lips would quiver and I would hold back tears. And then when I was 23, I received a birthday card from my boss. He wrote simply, “I am so glad you were born.”
Survivors guilt is real. The weeds of my past created a separation within me that made it difficult for those who came after these events to understand how I process my emotions in relation to my past trauma. As much as I tried to explain the sensitivities around birth and life, it came across as drama and unnecessary emotional baggage. And honestly, it felt that way to me too. I could see the outsider’s perspective and I agreed that it was irrational and I was too much to handle. All I wanted to do was lock this darkness away like so many other emotions. Yet, these emotions are like tsunamis. They are too great to handle simply like a bad day or unpleasant moment. These emotions take over your entire being. They live inside your body. They transform you. They twist your heart and mind.
Each year, I made small baby steps toward my healing and overcoming survivors guilt. I started to write “I am so glad you were born” in friends and family’s birthday cards. I began to try to do one thing each year to acknowledge my life and move my mind away from the past. Eventually, this practice expanded beyond one day to a personal mission to promote the possibilities and fragilities of life. It took me many years to finally celebrate my birthday. By the time I had my own children, I found new reasons to celebrate my life and theirs. And while there are good birthdays and there are so so birthdays, I know the journey of trauma. It changes you forever. I will never take a moment for granted or cast judgement on negative emotions. It is all part of the drama that is life.
