Losing a parent is one of the most difficult things that a young adult can go through, especially when that loss is compounded by the hurt and confusion surrounding mental illness. Mind the Gap reporter Sarah Homewood shares a personal story and discusses how some people may feel on suicide awareness days.

I couldn’t help but be filled with dread as I logged onto my Facebook account today. My wall, as I had expected, was filled with the R U Okay Day message. On the surface the message is a good one, but for someone who has lost a parent to suicide it makes my stomach flip.

It doesn’t make me feel as I thought it would. I don’t feel sad, I more feel angry. I feel angry at a message that I don’t feel like I get asked enough.

Initially today felt like a day where people who I haven’t spoken to in months sent me text messages with three little words in them, R U Okay?

There is part of me that wanted to scream at my phone. Scream something along the lines of I am not okay would you be?

However today I didn’t scream, I didn’t cry, I just kept doing what I usually do I put on my happy face and pretended like none of this was bothering me.

It was bothering me though, as I’m sure you can tell from the first few paragraphs of this piece. How could it not?

Everyday it bothers me that in August of last year my Dad took his own life, just a month after my twentieth birthday. It bothers me because he is not here, because he will never see me graduate, has never read my byline and won’t be here for all the things that a girl needs their dad for.

Honestly, what bothers me most everyday is that he did what he did. In society’s eyes he didn’t fight for his family, it seems as though he didn’t even fight for himself.

And in the beginning that is what I thought too.

If you had asked me a few years ago what I thought of suicide, I would have said that it is selfish. How could someone do that to the people who care about them let alone themselves?

But now, having gone through what I have I see it differently. My Dad battled the black dog, something that nobody could see and something that is even harder to explain to someone who has never lived with the illness of depression.

The worst part is that like a cancer, I saw it eat away at him. I saw the disease take over his body and his mind until I know that he couldn’t fight any more for me. But that’s not what everyone else sees when they think of the term suicide. Hell, that’s not what I think some days and I know better.

I think that’s why I don’t tell people what happened right away. I feel as though it’s my dark little secret that I can keep all to myself so that people don’t treat me differently.

I expect a reaction from people, I expect them to be shocked and to think that I am “crazy” like my Dad must have been when I tell then how my Dad passed away. But today while I was sitting in the Journalism common room at my university, I got a completely different reaction from two fellow students who I didn’t really know until today.

My head was all foggy with R U Okay day rage when I started talking to these two girls.

I told them why I was feeling the way I was and for the first time in a long time I was forthcoming about why I felt the way I did today.

I let the words, “my Dad committed suicide” reverberate around the table. I expected to see shock and a sense of discomfort on the girls’ faces, but instead they were looking at me the same way they were before.

We started talking about our own battles with anxiety and depression and how they had shaped us. We talked about bursting into tears in inappropriate places and how we finally came to the conclusion that we needed help.

Inadvertently, I may have had a conversation that changed my life today. Before today I was angry because I felt as though there was a wall between me and normal functioning twenty one year olds. I felt as though I couldn’t talk about what I had been through because it would be incomprehensible to “normal people” my age.

Today I learnt that I was wrong. The kindness I got from two girls who barely knew me is what inspired me to write this piece, and at the end of the day this is what I think R U Okay is truly about.

Not false outpourings of emotions, but rather quiet conversations that make you feel like you aren’t as crazy as you once thought you were.