Category Archives: fear

Closet Ghosts

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by in courage, father, fear, hope., invisible, poem, suicide

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I found the poem below in some old documents the other night while looking for something to read at my writers group.  I wrote it in 2004 and revised it a little more this week.  Daddy’s shoe was the first thing I saw when I found him.  Reading this poem in the group gave me some trouble.  No one said much in the way of helping me make it better except one person.  She told me to put the word “alone” in a line by itself.  

I’ve found it is good to talk about things that trouble me and not hide myself from them.  As I read the poem, I could feel that old shitty fear rising up in my throat, scared of something that had already happened.  Scared of how the people in my group might think. I read it as fast as my heart was beating. Someone said it was “dark,” and I said yes, I wrote it while I was in a dark place.

The same person who offered constructive thoughts on the poems I read that night wrote a note just for me to see.  These are real life experiences, don’t apologize for how you felt or express them.

When I hide away from the things that scare or trouble me, when I don’t speak what I believe or feel, then I make it easy, too easy, for me to fall back into invisibility.  Being invisible is just as terrifying as finding that one left shoe.

 

Closet Ghosts

Peering

into the closet

I found a shoe,

Alone,

resting sideways

containing my father’s foot bones.

Wanting to just close the door,

I stood focused on the one

left behind

shoe. 

 

Memories

shivered up my spine as

I watched him lace up

his one-day-in-my-life

Sunday best. 

Shoe morphed into a boot

fragile now and

cracked from years

walking construction sites.

A hard hat ghosted in,

completing the wardrobe.

 

If I could, like God,

raise up from the essence

of those shoe bones

the image of my father,

I’d ask

“why did you leave

only a shoe?

Why not a note?”

 

Karen Phillips, 2004, revised 2013

Contagious Depression after the Suicide of a Loved One

18 Saturday Jun 2011

Posted by in counselors, depression, fear, genetic suicide, pain, suicide, trustwrothy

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            You might have called my father an adventurer.  Certainly his suicide caused me to explore a new whelm of thought.  Before he ended his life, death to me was something that came swift or slow either unwanted or welcomed.  The key idea, though, was that death came; it wasn’t an option.  Something innocent in me had the notion that no one person had that much power as to end their own life.  Death, like birth, came from God.
            The first few years after Daddy died, I went through my own depression.  I suffered through countless child-like angers at family and friends.  Little problems or stresses brought about a thought of how easily death now could be called upon.  Suicide or perhaps more the fear of it carried a heavy weight in my thoughts. 
The fear that I could simply kill myself sat upon my shoulder like a maliciously smiling monkey, chattering extreme suggestions into my ear.  I was scared of my own thoughts.  Dangerous thoughts came from the mile-wide crack in my soul; I wasn’t in full control of myself.  I felt no one in my family would understand, but they, too, were just as shocked by my father’s death.    
            Rather than death, I sought help.  I began talking, first to counselors, then to a priest, and then to friends.  It was important that the people I chose to talk with about my father’s suicide and my fears were not dependent upon my being ok—that I didn’t have to put up a front for them.  I needed to tell the truth; I was horribly afraid that suicide was genetic.  These trustworthy, objective people allowed me to safely expose my fear and be as weak as I felt.  They listened, nodded, and assured me that I wasn’t crazy—and that I had more strength than I realized.  The fears eased up as I shed light upon them.
            The thing about suicide is that its bleak aftermath wants to spread like a bad cold or influenza.  Get help.  Talk to someone immune to your pain.

Post-Traumatic Stress—Blood

10 Friday Jun 2011

Posted by in blood, fear, Post-Traumatic Stress, suicide

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            I didn’t realize the streams of dark liquid were blood.  Maybe it was because Daddy was in a shadowy area in his garage, or maybe it was because my mind had begun already to mercifully stop processing reality.  My thoughts had reduced to a crawl.  I didn’t see the gun hidden in a sock laying a yard or two away from his body.  It must have jumped from his hand when he shot himself.   There was no exit wound from his head because he had used such a small bullet.  Thinking he had perhaps had a massive stroke or heart attack, I didn’t know he had shot himself.  I saw the dark streams as motor oil.  Slowly, looking at his body, I wondered what he had been working on before he died. 
It bothered me that I hadn’t recognized something as vital as his blood.  That first night at home in bed, I tried to explain to my husband how guilty I felt that I didn’t know it was his blood.  The words howled out in such rushed anguish that the bedcovers twisted around my body.  I had seen my father’s blood rolling away in rivulets and didn’t know it.  If only I had of known, I could have tried to scoop it up.  Surely, I could have done something!             
Afterwards, if I saw where someone had poured out liquid on to concrete, I felt queasy, a sick pounding just under my heart.  My ribcage would widen-out in fright.  I worked, then, at an automotive dealership.  Seeing oil or some other dark liquid on the concrete was an everyday occurrence.  I felt I couldn’t get away from the sight.  Even the habit of tossing out the last few swallows of coffee from my cup when I got out of the car took my mind right back to that moment.
I had developed a phobia of dark liquid.  I felt no one would understand, so I only spoke of it once in a support group.  I cried so hard that I lost my breath.  I didn’t speak of it again for nearly a year.  I wrote my thoughts and fears in a journal where I felt comfortable crying in private.  Thankfully, that intense fear of liquid being dashed out on the ground subsided.  I’ve since learned that no matter how much I think to the contrary my mind can’t hold itself in an extreme state of fear forever.
The thing about fears is that they always seem to have a source of origin.  The truth is fears are wider and taller in the shadows than they are in the light.  Put them in the light.

Explaining his death

25 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in Daddy, explaining his death, fear, suicide

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            I had a catch-up conversation with a childhood friend I hadn’t talked with in years.  We’d lost touch for too long, so the topics covered a lot of ground, divorces, remarriages, children, grandchildren, and even new careers.  The topic changed to how our parents were doing, and I asked plenty of questions to keep her talking.  I didn’t want to say anything about my father.  I hated saying the way Daddy died.  How do you explain? His death carried an undreamt shame.  Years had passed, and I still had trouble. 
I felt double-minded.  She spoke unguarded and defenseless about her life.  One side of me wanted to open up to her, to be vulnerable and share.  The other side wanted to keep my grief a secret and press it tightly against my heart.  It was hard to even listen through my loud and harassing thoughts.
            To leave out such a significant detail of my life in this conversation felt a betrayal to my own person. This woman was a part of my life—a part of my good memories.  Daddy was a part of those memories with her.  I stammered my way through the words and felt the whole time I should have kept them to myself.  She hesitated, listened, gave her sympathy, and asked if his health had been bad.  I said yes, changed the subject, and asked more comfortable questions.
            Keeping my father’s suicide a secret is as monstrous as finding his body.  It walls me off and isolates me.  It’s a part of this hell, at least, that I have some control over and can change.

Spirituality—Strength

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in choice, depression, evil, fear, suicide

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            Almost immediately after my father’s death, I had suicidal thoughts of my own.  These thoughts seemed so alien; I didn’t believe they came from me—as if the same dark force that had killed my father now stalked me.
The demon whispered killing directions into my ear.  It stayed at me—bullying me into a whimpering mass night after lonely night when my husband worked night shift.  In isolated moments of the day, it seized me.  I shuddered when I picked up a kitchen knife.  “This sharp edge will easily slice your skin”, it whispered.  I gritted my teeth and finished putting away the silverware.  “Just take out the gun and look at it,” it begged.  I asked my husband to take the gun out of the house.                    
Finding Daddy’s body had dislodged my thinking.   Evil became tangible to me.  The demon was too real to think otherwise.  I had never been as frightened as I was then.  Daddy’s suicide had terrified me.  What I didn’t realize was how a serious depression can manifest itself.  I felt that I needed help to fight an evil spirit.  What I needed was help to find my way out of the hole I’d fallen into.
            After my father’s death, I asked a priest for more information about evil.  I wanted that knowledge to fight my sinister enemy.  “Take your eyes off of it,” she said, “focus on the good in your life.”  Each week I met with her and discussed bible stories.  They nurtured my battered spirit.  The talk, just as fortifying as the stories, helped me see the good in my life.  My thoughts about evil stepped back and became less commanding. What I consciously (or unconsciously) chose to center my attention had a powerful effect on my mental health.
   Search out something that will feed your soul with strength and light.  Listen to good music, walk in the woods, or discuss a good story.  Talk to someone who listens. Don’t look evil directly in the eye; there’s a black hole behind it.