**Content Warning** This piece discusses suicide and suicidal ideation, as well as the loss of a child.
If you or someone you know is suicidal, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the suicide prevention hotline in your country. For the United States, the numbers are as follows: The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Both programs provide free, confidential support 24/7.
Suicide hurts, and deeply for those left behind, I'm seeing that now as I mourn the transition of my "stepson". Stepson is in quotes because his mother and I were never married, and we're not even together now, but I helped to raise him for 5 years of his life. Most of the time I felt like we didn't get along; he was a typical teen boy: lazy, selfish, rude, stubborn, etc. He would sneak out to do things with his friends that he knew he shouldn't, was always in trouble at school, and would never do what he was asked. He drove me crazy most of the time, and I was the disciplinarian so I usually felt like he didn't like me much either, but now I grieve in sorrow wondering if I was too hard on him, what should I have done differently, and what could I have said that might've made a difference? What was he feeling or going through that he felt he couldn't or didn't want to talk about? How could we have not known that things were so bad inside of him? Why couldn't I have been there? I reach out for answers that I'll never know.
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