by Jeanette R. Harrison, MPH
This past weekend, I attended a Suicide Prevention Vigil & Gathering. And I'm trying to frame this in terms of how it ties into the 28th day of Gratitude, which is really focused on looking back at yesterday, and I added tomorrow to be grateful.
I have shared a lot about how alone I was after moving away from Kansas City. How I had to move to Idaho with nothing. And people acted like it was no big deal. Like it was a joke, almost. Like I somehow deserved that because, in their minds, I was "too much" or "too much drama." But moving and leaving your things behind is hard. I didn't just lose my whole family and my social standing, but I lost everything that I was.
Leaving everything behind is more than "stuff." It's a sense of identity; it's the memories you made, the life that you built, the person that you became. All of the "stuff" gives someone a sense of ownership over their life and a sense of worthiness. I've moved a lot of times, 42 times now, and the hardest moves are the ones where I had to leave everything. Because that was not just leaving the place, but it was losing pieces of me, watching my footsteps behind me being erased. Knowing that I mattered so little that what I had, who I was, what things represented me, didn't matter to anyone. That made me feel like I didn't matter.
Moving to Idaho with nothing was so hard. Laying on a mattress on the floor, sitting on a plastic bench as a couch, and using an end table as my makeshift desk. I was treated like I should be okay with it. The things i left behind, someone else went through and threw things away. They decided that I didn't need those items. Without even knowing or caring what was mine and why I wanted to keep it. I got sent boxes of papers that I had to go through... but the "things" that were actually me. Gone. Donated to someone. And they are just memories now when I walk through a store, and say I used to have that.
That tremedous sense of loss, that grief, stopped me in my tracks. I tried to pretend I was okay. But, I really wasn't. Even after living there six years, I had a hard time accumulating things, because I felt I had nothing. I felt hollow by the loss. And, I felt almost like I did as a child when I would get a little toy somewhere and thought "this is mine." This is something to call my own.
Because at that moment in my life, I didn't have anything to call my own. I was in a new place, with no furniture, and no plans and wondering what would happen because it was the pandemic. And, I was so alone. All I really had were my memories and how I had been abused. I had one people who claimed they helped me so much, but they really didn't. No one was there after the first 90 days. They literally gave me not even 90 days to move to a new location, get a new job and start a new life. Like that was even possible.
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