Survivors Guilt ;

The guilt of being a survivor is sometimes worse then the guilt you feel right after a suicide attempt. The guilt I felt after my suicide attempt was guilt for putting my husband through something like this, putting my mom is this situation and feeling completely guilty for almost leaving my children without their mother. But in reality nothing compares to the guilt you feel for surviving an attempt.

People talk about survivors guilt all the time from the view of the survivor of a loved one who committed suicide, but coming from someone who has attempted suicide and lived I also feel survivors guilt. Guilt that I survived while others loved ones didn't. Guilt that my family still gets to love and hug me while others loved ones can only visit their graves.. I feel guilt that this world chose me to survive while it let others ended their lives. It chose me to keep living and fighting while letting others succeed in their suicide and no longer getting to be here with their loved ones. I feel so guilty today because I don't understand. I don't understand why this world let me keep living while taking other people who are so special to the world and to their loved ones. I don't wish to die, I don't wish to leave my loved ones, but I don't understand why I am still living when at one point dying was all I wanted and why I am still breathing and fighting when I chose to die last year, but there are others like me who wanted to keep fighting, who wanted to keep living and who wanted to spend another day with their loved ones but lost their fight and their loved ones lost them and now have to survive without them while my loved ones are here spending time with me, but then again not really me. It's just a shell of myself because I'm still dying inside.

I wish I could look at all those loved ones who have lost someone and tell them it wasn't their fault. It wasn't what they did or didn't do. In the end if someone if determined to die unfortunately their illness will win in the end. For me I saved myself and I wish everyday that those loved ones who have lost someone would get another day with that person, another day to hug them, love them and another day to tell them it will all be okay and that they are here for them. I wish those who were struggling would all be strong enough to be saved like I was, to have another day to see that this roller coaster of a life is not easy but it's worth living for. I wish I didn't feel so guilty for still being alive. I wish I didn't carry this pain along with the other pain I carry with me everyday. This guilt literally eats you alive from the inside out. It kills me everyday to wonder why this world decided I needed to be saved, but others didn't. What made me worth saving and others not. Why did this world give me another chance to live and breath another day. I try not to think about it because the guilt kills me inside, but some days it's just harder than others to deal with. It's hard knowing I am here still fighting everyday, still breathing everyday while others who were struggling are losing their battles and their loved ones are losing them and living with their own guilt. 

If I can end this in anyway I would just want people to know just because I survived last time doesn't mean I will get lucky if I ever fall that hard again. My life will never be easy, my suicidal thoughts will never go away and while I keep fighting everyday some days I don't feel like fighting anymore and in all honesty you never know how hard it is to fight the same demons everyday and choose to keep living because realizing that when you wake up the next day you will have to fight again is hard and that alone makes you wanna give up. 

If I could say anything to my own family I would tell them that I'm still trying to survive everyday and yet some of you don't even realize I could still choose to end it tomorrow so maybe you should cherish every moment with me because my mental illness will never go away and my suicidal thoughts will never leave me and one day it could end me but right now I wanna fight and I will keep fighting everyday to stay alive because I never want my family to have to be on the survivor side of this. I will keep fighting no matter how hard it gets. Right now I'm just breaking and feeling all the guilt that survivors do. Right now I need your love and endless support instead of your judgments and silence. I need to know people stand behind me to hold me up with I feel like falling. I need to know people hear my cries when somethings wrong and that people truly care if I am alive or not because feeling like the people you love the most don't support you is the loneliest feeling in the world and makes you want to give up on living instead of keeping up the fight everyday. 

With Love;

Brittany