DEAR SEAN:
My dad committed suicide last night.
I just need to tell someone,
ELEVEN-IN-EAST-FLORIDA
DEAR ELEVEN:
I have only one thing I want you to know. I want you to know that I love you. I truly mean it. I love you.
Read that last sentence again. Read it often.
You don’t know how much I love you. You will never know how much. But it doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t know because it wouldn’t change how much I care about you.
And I am only one person. I am one of thousands who love you. Millions. Septillions. Octillions. Nonillions. Decillions. We all love you.
That’s a lot of love with your name on it.
I bring all this up because the first thing you’re going to feel after losing a loved one to suicide is that you live in a loveless world. This is how I felt when my family endured the suicide of my father. I was about your age. I felt, for some reason, that nobody in the world cared about
me.
I have spoken with thousands of people throughout the years who have undergone the same trauma. They all say pretty much the same thing. They feel like the love has been sucked out of their whole existence. They feel as though they themselves are unloved.
So in the following weeks, you might start to mistakenly think this world is totally against you. You might start to think life is full of people who are self-centered, self-righteous, self-congratulatory, self-important, self-seeking, self-interested, self-whatever.
You might feel that nobody is really paying much attention to you. You might feel unloved. Unseen. Misunderstood.
And, to be fair, you aren’t totally wrong. People are selfish in this world. They are uncaring. They are indifferent. They are cold. Not everyone is paying attention to you. Some are too concerned with themselves right now.
Believe me, over the…