She Lost Her Sister to Suicide. Now She’s Speaking So Others Don’t Have To.

My sister and I both grew up very close to each other. Um, you know, because we were growing up abroad. Um, and away from our extended family, we were, you know, a small nuclear nuclear family living away from the rest of our extended family. Um my sister and I uh were very very close because we were we were we truly understood each other and the the whole experience of growing up as immigrant kids. I lost my sister to suicide uh when she was 30 years old and um that was after u many years of her struggling with bipolar type 2 depression. Um, and it was a devastating loss for our family, for me because um, you know, she and I were so close, but also just because that type of loss is is is heartbreaking regardless of the circumstances. It it affects everyone in more ways than in more ways than one. She was diagnosed um, at the age of I think 22 or 23. So um and then she passed away at the age of 30. So we had known for a while before she passed. Um but um it's not that we missed the signs. It's that there was such a lack of awareness and so much stigma around this. This was um you know we grew up in the 80s and '9s and um our when we were adults it was like late ' 90s right and so uh there was still a lot of lack of awareness I feel like school kids and college kids now have much more awareness worldwide not just in the western world but worldwide there's a lot more awareness and like lot more um just people have the language with which to speak about these things. People have, you know, if I say bipolar type two, people understand what I mean, right? Back then it was not that way. Uh not a lot of awareness or education. But even if we were told what the diagnosis was, there was a lot of stigma and a lot of just um shame. Yeah. Just uh being uh thinking of it as our problem to solve, not wanting to ask for help. um feeling like we couldn't um justify the expense of getting help, feeling like we um were letting our parents down. The way it manifested initially was she kept saying that she um she felt like a failure or like there would be a lot of negative thinking that kept getting repeated, you know, like I feel like a failure. I feel guilty. I messed up. I don't I feel tired. I don't feel like, you know, it would all be like sort of these I feel statements that were negative. But they kept getting repeated again and again and again that those only thoughts she would have. It got to a point where her college uh called called me and said that she's not going to any classes. The family needs to intervene. She needs help. Right. Um but also um you know because she was bipolar she had lows and she also had highs. So like this is what I'm describing was the low. During the high she would be extremely productive to a like she would not be sleeping. She would be getting so much done. She would be like everybody would be in awe of how uh gregarious and bubbly and joyful she was. She would be going to all of these events and making new friends and being like suddenly very extroverted, right? Yeah. Uh so there was these two extremes of where she was either very withdrawn and didn't want to do anything, didn't want to leave the house, continuously blaming herself for a lot of stuff. And then the other extreme where she was very always out there doing everything, taking on more than she could, like you know um putting too much on her plate, overcheduling herself, o overspending without realizing. Yeah. Um and all of that. So there was a lot of she would go through ups and downs and but neither was healthy, neither was balance. One of the things that she was very worried about was that she um felt she was a burden to us because she was going through all of this stuff and particularly to me because I was the one who understood it and accepted it and was trying to help her and and she felt like she was a burden and she wanted to um she didn't want to be that person who was constantly like requiring my care and attention. She wanted to be the one who was caring for me, right? This is the because she was the old um and also I think she she did have many suicidal thoughts before she actually attempted and she attempted once before and so um I think every time her biggest worry was what would I do if like she didn't want to hurt me by harming herself and so I think that there's enough time passed now since this happened that I can look back and say that I'm okay. You know, I'm I'm I'm I'm not um obviously I would want her back in my life, but I would want her to know that I would want her to be free of any guilt or shame or anything.