Hi, my name is Andrea, and I lost my father to suicide in 2014.

So, he was actually my stepdad. He married my mom. I want to say I was I was … seven or eight?

She was my best friend. I was an only child, so we did absolutely everything together.

He did officially adopt me. I want to say I was in fifth grade. But it’s something that I wanted. So he raised me. I mean, I had a happy childhood. I started with my anxiety issues, probably around my teenage years.

I did self-mutilate for a long time in my high school years. I don’t know if it was for attention. Some days it was just to kind of feel the pain.

Those teenage years were a little rough. That’s why my dad actually opened up to me about everything, and I think I was about 14 or 15 when that happened.

My dad had at least two attempts prior to him dying by suicide, and they were in his college years.

I saw him as human I guess you could say. But, you know, maybe he really understood how I was feeling.

Right after I graduated with my bachelors, October of that year, my mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. Pretty much at that point, there was nothing they could do.  Even the whole time she was sick I kind of had to step in because mentally he couldn’t process some of the stuff that was going on. I became her primary caretaker, which definitely increased the anxiety.

I just remember taking on every role. So then I, you know, was cooking and cleaning and caring for my daughter while also caring for my mom. I would do her Lovenox shots in her stomach every day. I remember, you know, she weighed 90 lbs., soaking wet on a good day. She had passed away by January.

So he kind of clung to me. We’d clung to each other afterwards. And then it was actually on the anniversary of my mom’s death that he also passed away.

I don’t think he was thinking, Oh, I’m going to be missed. He was thinking, everybody’s life will be better when I’m not here.

I mean, if I had one more chance to talk to him, I tried to get through to him that, you know, this is what it would be like without you here.

It sucks! I mean, I don’t know any other politically correct way to say that some days are hell, because I get to see, I mean, when he passed away, I only had three kids, but now it’s like … well, there’s seven. So he’s missing out on all these awesome moments and, you know, one of them’s named after him. But he he’s not here to see that.

I have my days here and there where I want to just crawl my hole and be left alone. But I know there’s a reason to come out of that hole and I hope I continue to do that.

And if I had one more moment with my dad, I would, you know, let him know that the positive impact that he has had on my life and my children’s lives far surpasses any negative impact he could have ever had, and that he is so missed and he was so loved.

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