People Choose To Save Themselves, This Was Not Your Fault

She was the only one I would talk to the day after.

Her name appeared on my phone.

I was sitting on a deck in the Sunshine Coast–my eyes were swollen and it all still felt like a bad dream.

All the rooms of the house were full of friends grieving–screams and sobs and silence throughout the night.

“Hello?” I answered.

“It’s not your fault. Janne, you couldn’t have saved him. This is not yours,” she replies.

I begin to sob.

“But, what if I could have loved him back to life? What if I could have carried him? What if I could have kept him alive?”

“No. You couldn’t have. You might have kept him alive for a little while–but it would have taken every inch of your life force. Every inch of your light. You wouldn’t be able to do the work you’re here to do because you would just be the hands to hold him. Janne, it was not your job and this is not your fault.”

There are three humans in my life who I have let in when the darkest blankets of trauma wrap around me.

These humans know exactly how to navigate.

If you have lost someone to suicide, and you were close to them and didn’t know they were suicidal–I want to speak to your heart for a moment in case no one ever did.

Maybe you felt their sadness–maybe they cried and you held them.

Maybe you even asked if they were suicidal and they lied–because of pride, because of shame, because of fear.

You were not meant to know.

You couldn’t have known.

And furthermore, you do not control the feelings, actions or thoughts of anyone but yourself.

Even if you laid by their side for 48 hours and listened, and held them and loved them through the nights and did it all “right” you still couldn’t have saved them.

People choose to save themselves.

People choose to live.

This was never meant to be your feat–to save them.

Forgive yourself. It is not yours to carry.

A wise woman in my life once informed me of soul contracts–this theory that we have many, many lives and that before each life up in the sky–we decide what we want to learn about in this life.

I believe we float around and choose to learn about our greatest sorrows and triumphs.

We choose the souls who will be our teachers, our lovers, and our perpetrators.

I think is some lives we are the villain and in others the victim.

That we bounce through each life, learning and before each life that we sit down with souls and choose who will teach us about what life lessons.

I believe in my soul contract I choose to learn about grief in this life, through suicide.

I believe as a little soul, I chose this.

It made it easier for me to heal, and understand it all from this vision and this way.

Maybe it won’t help you.

Maybe all of this was not the right thing to say to you.

I’ve learned there really is no “right” way and that grief is a soul specific emotion.

This is just what helped me.