Breaking the silence

January 20, 2016. The day my life stopped. The day my brother put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. For days afterwards I was physically ill from the shock and the grief. For weeks I couldn't eat or sleep, at times the emotional pain was so intense I could barely breathe. It would be months before my eating and sleeping patterns even began to resemble anything normal. And my heart, my heart still aches every single day over the loss of my brother, my friend, my war buddy.

And while my body, heart and spirit felt the shock of his death, I wasn't really all that surprised. The shock I felt was the trauma of actually losing him. We shared a common background my brother and I, a common backdrop of abuse and neglect. And while we each had our own individual demons and experiences, we shared many of the same ones as well. I myself had been suicidal many, many years ago, and he'd been talking about not wanting to be here off and on for over six years. So, on one level it really wasn't a complete surprise that he'd killed himself. But yet, somehow, the reality of it was still a bit of a shock.

For months, I did the bare minimum that was required for day to day survival. I reduced my work schedule. I pulled back from the world, my friends and even my husband to some extent. I let my emails pile up in my inbox, only answering work related emails that required a response because even answering a damn email took too much damn energy. And I just didn't have any. Some days I still don't.

I needed time to recover, to heal, to figure out how to live in a world without my brother in it. For I lost more than a brother. I lost my touchstone. The one person who remembered the same things I did about our childhood, who knew the truth about our situation growing up, the truth about the abuse and neglect. The one person who really understood what it was like growing up in that household because we went through a lot of it together. The one person who could back me up that my memories were real, that I wasn't crazy or making things up because he was there. And now he was just, gone. And it has been a daily struggle to piece myself back together. To deal with everything his death has stirred up.

Finally, a couple of months ago, a little voice inside said that I should write about it, that I should tell his story, my story, our story. The story of our childhood. The story of how we came to be where we are. That it would be cleansing and help me to heal. At first, the thought of doing this felt good. So good in fact that I thought maybe I didn't need to write after all. Maybe I just needed to give myself permission to do so and that would be enough. It was okay for a while. I felt calmer, more at peace. But then, I started not being able to sleep again. On one particularly bad night as my mind raced with all of the things I could write about, the stories I could tell, and I struggled with whether or not I should, I cried out to my brother for help. And he came. It's one of the few times I've felt his presence since he passed. I asked him what I should do. It was his story too after all. He simply said, "Tell our story sis."

And so it begins . . . .

Click here for the next installment "First Memories".

Back to Article Index

Alexandra Windsong is a healer, intuitive, life coach, singer, songwriter and artist. For more about Alexandra, click here.