The Second Call

I thought I had made it through the living nightmare. Grief and depression had already carved their signatures into my life.  They each left a path of destruction and left me with wounds that never truly closed.  No matter how much time passes.

And then the unimaginable happened.  Again.  

The second call.

Justin.  Was gone.

This can’t be happening!  The same thought I had after receiving the first call, yet I believed this one instantly.  It had a familiarity with it.  A dark, haunting familiarity.   Justin and I were only one year and three days apart in age.  We were built-on-the-same-DNA best friends.  True partners in crime.

I’ve learned there’s a sound to your soul ripping apart. It doesn’t come with screaming or sobbing, not right away. It’s quiet at first. So quiet, you can feel it.  It’s instantly paralyzing, and time stops.

And there are no answers.   Suicide bulldozes through a family’s sense of reality and rewrites everything in its path. There’s guilt, anger, overwhelming sadness, the inability to sleep, eat, or think.  There’s profound silence, an instant void, and a lonely ache that can’t be described.

If you’ve received a call like mine, you are not alone. If you carry hurt, let it out in language, in movement, in quiet sobs or furious dancing.  Let it out however you must.

This blog is my place to name pain and, eventually, to help others name theirs. I hope someday, someone reads this and feels just 1% less alone.

For now, I breathe. I write. I remember.

And I refuse to let silence win.