Daisies and Bruises.

Erin over at Daisies and Bruises has a post up about her experience losing a family member to suicide. This kind of poked me, since this week a suicide devastated my best friend.

One of Erin's sentiments has been something I've been thinking a lot about:

I realize that no matter how much I educate myself on mental health, I can’t protect anyone from their pain.

You can check out Erin's blog, Daisies and Bruises. She also has an Etsy shop. Her post just aggravated an already raw wound. It's like because I understand considering suicide, it speaks specifically to me. It's like it calls me out.

Over the last week I've had conversations of all kinds with friends, about depression and anxiety, trying to help where I can. Really it's about sharing what helps me, and talking through what they're feeling and potentially exploring why they're feeling that way. It's often about getting them out of a thought spiral.

Part of me is grateful that I have the language to be able to talk to my friends about this stuff. It seems sick, to be grateful for a level of psychological pain that's crippled me, but there it is. I'm not grateful for the pain, I don't want to solicit it by invoking it (like saying "Bloody Mary" three times in a dark mirror). But I am grateful for the language experiencing it taught me.

Funny how it is. How I've lived long enough, experience depression enough, read enough books, paid for and worked through enough therapy to be able to potentially assist those around me. I'm better than I was. That's worth remembering.