Frank nodded to the room. To me. To the silence, and he said nothing else. Before I could find out if he would be okay, I was gone.
21
Luke and I stood behind a white foldout table off to the side of what looked like a church community room with crosses everywhere and murals of Jesus and his disciples painted on the far wall.
"I didn't think you'd be able to step foot in a place like this."
Luke stilled. His ice-blue gaze grew wide. "Careful. I could burst into flames at any moment."
I held a bated breath and waited. I wasn't sure what for, until a low chuckle came from him.
"So gullible. You still don't know what side I play for, do you?"
No point in denying it. I shook my head. His chuckle grew louder before it faded into silence. Never confirming anything one way or the other.
A middle-age woman pulled cookies and muffins out of a Tupperware bin and set them carefully on a tray to the side. Her chin-length, blond hair fell forward as she leaned over to scoot the coffee creamer and sugar closer to what was likely a freshly brewed pot of coffee. The aroma filled the air, making my mouth water.
"I'd give my soul for a cup of that right now."
"That would require you to still have one."
I shot him a menacing glare as the woman set a dozen chairs around heavy tables already set in a U shape. Slowly, people started to trickle in. No one I recognized until Maggie came in and lingered by the table with the coffee.
The blonde made her way over almost immediately.
"Hi, you must be Maggie. I'm Dr. Paula Lynch. I'm so happy you could join us tonight."
Maggie's face pulled into a tight smile. "I'm here. I don't know if I'll ever get to the happy part."
"Well, this is the first step. Dr. Collins told me you'd be coming by. Why don't you grab some coffee and a snack and come join us at the tables when you're ready?"
Maggie dipped her chin in a curt nod. "Okay."
Another woman about the same age as Maggie approached a few moments later and reached for the coffee. Her dark hair was piled into a messy bun on top of her head. It matched the sweatpants and don't-care attitude she seemed to be rocking.
"First time to a group?" the woman asked as she poured creamer into her cup.
"Yeah. I've never done this kind of thing before. I mean, I've done one-on-one therapy, but the group thing feels a little overwhelming," Maggie admitted, grabbing a muffin.
The woman turned to face my wife. "I'm Amy."
Maggie pointed to her chest. "Maggie."
"Now we aren't strangers. Groups can seem overwhelming at first, but this one is kept small for a reason. You're more than welcome to sit beside me if you want. And you don't have to share if you don't want to. I've been here for six months, and I usually just listen. No one will pressure you to talk until you're ready."
This was another path I'd thrust my wife into. More therapy for a situation I'd caused. I didn't want to stay and watch. Watching Grace's session was bad enough.
Luke's fingers flicked open his suit jacket, and I took my cue for what it was.
We were in for the long haul.
Once the room filled, I watched as Dr. Paula Lynch took a seat at the head of the U.
"Welcome back, everyone. I'm happy you all could make time to be here tonight. We have a new member joining us tonight, so I'll go over some things most of you already know, but are nice to be reminded of, and it will introduce our new member to how we do things. Everyone, this is Maggie. Maggie, welcome to our Trauma and Suffering Support Group. I'm not sure what you were told, but I am a fully licensed psychologist, here to help guide everyone in a group setting. This is a closed group, so you don't have to worry about random people showing up. The people who are here have been recommended to me by a colleague and have something in common in their traumas. What is shared in the group, stays in the group. If you want to share, great. If you feel more comfortable listening, that is okay too. Some of you share similar traumas. Others have very different experiences, but the underlying current that brings you all here is suffering. Keep that in mind as we share. I'll have everyone introduce themselves before we start, and we will get going."
Maggie looked around at all the faces and shrank into her chair. Her slouch much more pronounced.
"Would anyone like to begin?"
"Um, hi, I'm Troy." He lifted his hand in an awkward wave. "Um, I guess I've just been struggling a lot lately. The people around me try to invalidate my feelings as much as possible and it's killing me inside. It kind of makes me understand why people feel so desperate at times."
"What do you mean by they're invalidating your feelings?" Paula, the group leader, asked.
"Everyone wants to play the compare game. Their trauma is worse than mine, so I couldn't possibly be suffering as badly as they are. The worse ones are that I shouldn't even have any trauma at all because I was on an administrative floor when our bank shooting happened. It doesn't mean that I don't feel crippling fear and anxiety every time I go to work. Or jump when I hear any kind of loud noise now. I knew two of the people who were shot. My therapist diagnosed me with PTSD. And yet no one takes it seriously because I wasn't in the lobby when everything went down."
Paula folded her hands together and leaned toward Troy. "No one has the right to tell you how you feel. You suffered. You're suffering right along with the rest of us. Your trauma was real. It is real. That's why you're here. Playing any kind of compare game in the envy trap is dangerous. Your pain is not diminished because someone else went through something they perceive as more. Your pain doesn't change as it is your experience."
"She is right, Troy," Maggie chimed in. "Everyone's experience is unique to them. And I'm glad you come here, to a place where we will validate your feelings. They are valid. You still experienced something horrific, and that is not something you just get over. No matter what ill-informed people may be telling you. Sometimes I wonder if that's how my husband felt too. I didn't always say these things to him. So I want to make sure I say them to you."
He sucked in a jagged breath. "Thank you for saying that. I'm so tired of it. It's just been so hard. Our company offered counselors for two weeks to the entire staff, and we closed the bank during that time. But then they expected us to just move on. To act like it never happened. To walk by the spots we know one of our colleagues and our customers were gunned down like animals and have that visual not affect us." He sniffed and wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I know it's a business. And I know they want us to move forward, but it's like they threw some bleach on the floor and ta-da were all supposed to make-believe nothing was ever amiss." He wiggled his fingers back and forth like jazz hands.
My heart ached for this kid. And that's exactly what he was. He couldn't have been a day over twenty-one or twenty-two at best. Right out of college would have been my guess and his life would never be the same. He was now facing the crippling PTSD and anxiety I'd run from. Only, he was facing it head-on.
"I remember that shooting. The call came out just as I was getting off shift. We all hung around roll call to find out what was going on. I had a lot of buddies working that call." My hands shook and my pulse thrummed in my neck as I remembered the anxiety of that morning. Watching the newscast of my friends running into the building while everyone else ran out. They had a job to do against a madman and they did it well. "Three people lost their lives that day. Two more were critically injured."
Luke crossed both arms over his chest. "And now this kid is just one of many trying to cope with surviving and the guilt."
Paula looked not only to Troy but to everyone in the group. "People forget the one rule of grief—there is no time limit on how long it lasts. One day you may feel you are doing great, and within seconds, a sound or smell will take you back to the day your world changed. As time goes on, sure you may find the pain softening, or maybe the landing from being knocked to your knees again is less painful, but the event is still there,
and it will be up to you to learn how to manage it and not let the trauma control you. It's healthy to feel the pain, to stare it in the face, to talk about it, to express your worries. That is what we are doing here. We're taking a step at regaining our control over the event."
It was quiet for a few moments as everyone seemed to silently reflect on what Paula had said. It took me a few moments to sit in it, and I wished I'd heeded that advice before I'd made such a rash decision.
"Would anyone else like to share?" Paula prompted?
A man raised his fingers.
"My name is Carl. My son, Mike, was a Marine who did two tours. When he came back, he was never the same. I wasn't ignorant enough to think he would be the same kid he was when he left. I'm a veteran myself. I know how war changes a man. It changed me. There are still things to this day I don't like to discuss or think about from my time in the service. I understand that. It seemed like he viewed everything through this skewed lens. We worried for him. My wife and I.
"He was diagnosed with PTSD after he was discharged and had such a hard time readjusting to civilian life. Back in my day, they called it shell shock. There weren't really a lot of resources for my generation. I thought more would exist for him. Maybe that's where I went wrong in my thinking? Did you know according to Ruderman White Paper, twenty-two soldiers commit suicide a day in the United States alone? That number includes veterans and active duty from all branches. I'd heard the statistics, and it made me sad, but it never really hit me until it was on my doorstep. I was one of those ignorant twits who had the mentality, it'll never happen to me. Until it did."
Paula's lips tilted into a small sympathetic smile. Her eyes held not an ounce of pity, but of understanding. "Did you feel like there were any resources for you at all when you came back?"
Carl shook his head. "We've been conditioned as soldiers to not feel. To bury it. To be men. If my son would have told me what he was feeling…I don't know… If he'd needed to cry? I would have cried with him. Or just talked. I went through a lot of similar things he did. I would have understood. He didn't want to talk about any of it. Instead he drank it away. He said the alcohol helped him take the edge off his anxiety. Only I didn't know how much he was actually drinking. That's how things were handled in my day. I'm not saying it was right. I know I couldn't be there to watch his every move and monitor every drop he drank. He was grown man making his own decisions, but part of me feels like if I had paid closer attention, I could have caught the warning signs. Or maybe there were a thousand of them, and I was too blind because my generation was told to shut up and get on with life. And this is just like what Troy said is still happening to him."
In some ways, Carl wasn't wrong. The systems in place were trying to do better. There was more awareness for mental health and yet people were still falling through the cracks. Like Mike. Like me.
"I feel like I failed as a father. I feel like the system failed my son as a whole. People saw a vet. They figured if he survived combat, then being home where there are normal people and peace, life should be easy. No one understands unless you are struggling too. The silence can be the most deafening. When you're on duty, you don't have time to think. Too many things are going through your mind. The grief is held at bay. You can't remember the pain. You're forced to focus on surviving and protecting your men. But when you get home, and the nights are quiet—eerily so—and things feel safe, you'll find the memories resurface. The guilt begins to grow, the what-ifs run through your mind until sleep takes over and allows the nightmares to relive themselves over and over until there is no escape. Then you just give up on sleep."
"You speak on the subject of nightmares like they still plague you?" Troy said.
Carl took off his hat, rubbed his head, and replaced his hat. "Not like they once did. But I figured out how to deal with them, I guess. I didn't just give up. Maybe his issues were a lot worse than mine. But how many others have the military failed? I looked at the numbers this morning. As of this year, 3,759 military men and women have committed suicide. I'm angry more isn't being done to help these guys. If there is already a process, they need to do better because it isn't working. The resources aren't enough. There has to be a way to do better. I just don't know what that is. I'm angry at my wife for giving up and leaving me after he died. I'm angry at Mike for giving in. I'm just angry."
There wasn't a dry eye in the room. A box of tissues was passed around. Maggie sucked in a deep breath and wiped her nose.
"My daughter is angry at me. I'm Maggie, by the way."
"Hi, Maggie," everyone said collectively.
My wife lifted her fingers in a halfhearted wave.
"Why do you think she's angry with you?" Carl asked, his salt-and-pepper brows furrowed together.
Maggie snorted. "Well, she's told me as much. The clincher was when she wished I'd died instead of her dad. That one was about the hardest thing I've ever had to swallow and not retort in pain. Because I had to remind myself, she is my child and she is hurting and lashing out."
"How the hell did you do that? I'm sorry, but if my daughter had said that to me, I would have been gutted," another woman said from across the table.
She hadn't introduced herself yet.
My stomach roiled in discomfort and knots. My throat felt thick as my pulse increased. This was wrong. Everything about this was so very wrong. Grace was still taking my death out on Maggie and that was unacceptable. "Can't you do anything about this?" I turned to Luke. "Change it to make Grace upset with me and not her mom?"
Luke flinched his shoulders forward. "Nope."
"Why not? Maggie doesn't deserve this. She did nothing wrong."
"Because you skipped out on the game we call life. You relinquished your opinion and say in how Maggie's and Grace's lives will be from now on. You made yourself the spectator. Now sit back and watch."
Maggie's voice filled the space. "My mother-in-law and my therapist both tell me this is normal behavior for a child who has just experienced such a tragic loss. She has to work through her feelings, and while her anger may be misplaced, it doesn't change the fact she feels it. I know deep down she doesn't wish I was dead instead, but it doesn't make it hurt any less that she said it. And I know she would give anything to have her father back. But I have to be careful not to invalidate her feelings. Even when my husband was at his worst in his depression, in his darkest of places, that was better than not having him at all."
"It sounds like you're already at the acceptance stage. How long ago did your husband pass away?" Paula asked.
"I'm not even close to that. It's only been three weeks since my husband committed suicide. I've just accepted that my daughter's grief is going to be a long and painful process for both of us, and I have to do my best to not get lost in my own. That I have to check in on her twice as much as I check in on myself. My brain seems to be in logical mode right now, and I feel like the tears are all dried up. Maybe I'm in survival mode because I know I can't fall apart because of her? I think hearing your stories have and will help me understand different parts of where he was in his suffering. I keep replaying things in my mind and trying to pinpoint moments where I should have done and said more. I know PTSD is a viscous beast and I don't think I ever will ever full comprehend it because I didn't suffer from it the way he did, but according to my own therapist, I have my very own version of it. Now it's trying to finish a puzzle that will never be complete because the final piece will always be missing. So I'm thankful to be here hopefully over time I can learn to heal."
"I'm Amy. I've been coming for months and have been blown away by how brave you all are in sharing your stories. I wasn't there yet, but I think I am now. I know I'd shared briefly that I lost my daughter to suicide, but I…um, didn't say much more than that." She sniffled and dabbled her eyes with a tissue.
Her middle-age face distorted in grief.
"Ashley, my daughter, was only eleven. The bullying started at school and it got worse and worse. Then the cyb
erbullying started. We did everything we could to get it to stop. We went to the teachers, to the principal, the school board, you name it. When people told us just turn off the phones and computers and my daughter wouldn't see the hateful words, poof problem solved. Only, it's not that simple."
"The cruelty of children and people who hide behind screens is unbelievable. The same thing happened to my daughter," a dark-haired woman from across the room said.
They shared a grief-stricken look.
Amy's sigh held a heaviness you could tell she felt in her bones. "Even when my daughter didn't have access to the things kids were saying online, word still traveled by those who did have access. At volleyball, they tortured her with the rumors until she quit. When she played out front, she was harassed by the neighborhood kids. It got to the point she isolated herself. I was ready to pick up and move. To completely uproot our jobs, sell our house, and get her away from it all. Give her a fresh start. But before I had the chance, she'd had enough, and I found her."
A sharp intake of breath was heard around the room. The silence was heavy. You could have heard a pin drop. I knew what I'd done. I'd made the decision as an adult, but this child. This baby was the same age as my Grace and to think of her in that same situation made bile burn up the back of my throat.
"I'll never get that image out of my mind. When I close my eyes, I no longer see the beautiful smiling face, or the big green eyes. Or the dimple on her right cheek. All I see is that horrible, horrible image that haunts me every time." Amy blinked slowly and shook her head. "I'll never be able to give her advice. Which obviously I failed to do well in the first place. I'll never take her dress shopping for prom. I'll never teach her how to put on makeup or to shave. Or to not do those things if she wanted no part in it. I'll never know because she took that away from us."
Amy's breathing was shallow and shaky as she tried to keep it together.
"I'll never know if she would have gone to college or worked a trade. Or chosen to get married or have a family. Or have twelve cats. Whatever future she could have had, she took it away. I was doing everything in my power to try to make the situation better. I listened to her. I took her to therapy. I changed her school. The bigger things. The move, it took time. I needed more time. I tried to explain to her that her life wouldn't be like this forever. We would find healing. We could do it if we stuck together."
The Suicide King Page 10