I lost my daughter on March 2, 2011, to suicide as a result of a mental illness that was erasing her as a person. She couldn't recognize herself, she lost herself, she disappeared. We lived together for her entire life, I almost got her to age 24, she was a month short. I fought this illness from the time I knew it was there, when she was a little girl, and therapists and child psychiatrists couldn't tell me what I was seeing. I gave her a fantastic childhood, if I had been raised that way I would have graduated from Harvard and cured cancer.

I know exactly how you feel. I'm a very strong independent woman and a single mother BY CHOICE. I had her at my age 40. She was the love of my life. I always treated her as a unique person, not an infant, toddler, preschooler, preteen, teen, she was herself, a person. She was beautiful and smart, started drawing (really drawing, not scribbling) at age three, wrote a novel at age twelve, was a wonderful affectionate child who never did one thing wrong except for the dyregulation of emotions which came with her illness. The illness the mental health professionals kept telling me wasn't there. Her grades were so high, her ACT score was so high, Johns Hopkins invited her to a special camp in DC when she was in 6th grade. By the time she got to junior year in high school, she already had college credits. She was funny, had her own unique sense of humor. We loved each other. I fought for her life when she wasn't able to. But I lost her that day in a horrific and shocking way. I put myself into the hospital that day because I needed someone to keep me safe. I wish I hadn't. I should have gone upstairs, taken my handgun out of the safe, and shot myself.

I admin a group of 3,000 people on FB who have lost children this way, to mental illness, to suicide. Some of these children were ten years old or slightly older. Most of them were about the same age my daughter was, 23, 24, 25. Some were a little older. We're all destroyed. None of us can live one day in peace. Not one of us can enjoy anything, behave as we used to, be in "normal" company, have conversations with people whose lives aren't obliterated by horror. We can barely function in society. Other people abandon us. Other people, even relatives or spouses, even siblings (I have no other children), want us to GET OVER IT because this pain is a monster, this pain has made of us the haunted, permanently scarred and emotionally disabled shadow of our former selves. The name of this group is Grieving The Child I Lost To Suicide. You can scream there, you can beg for help, you can tell us how you feel when you feel it. Someone is always listening.

You are not alone.