I found your last couple paragraphs troubling. Obviously- it should go without saying, but I've noticed that one of the games certain obsessive characters play around this group is that shit that is flat-out fucking obvious and goes without saying needs to be said in all bold letters, and even when it is, people will still try to accuse you of not saying it. But here goes;
if you are feeling suicidal, get help. Not the sort of help that you can get from DU, but professional. Immediately. Call a hotline. Contact your therapist, or go to the Hospital.
I'm sure you know this, and again it should go without saying. But I'm saying it.
You've written about your stuff before, and for what little it's worth, I sympathize. I am sorry you are hurting and have had to walk this path. I have mentioned previously that my own relationship with my Father was, for lack of a better word, lacking. He was drunk, then he was gone. We reconciled later, before his passing, but there was always a distance between us. Nothing could make up for what wasn't there, early on.
In retrospect I have learned to sort of look objectively at the situation that faced both my parents, married far too early and trying to shoehorn their life into a sort of leave it to beaver reality which didn't suit either of them. In this regard they were not so different from many others of their generation, I think. Seeing the "walking wounded" of that era, the men and women living unhappy lives trying to play a part in a drama they didn't like, and then the inevitable implosion which took place in the late 70s when all those nuclear families fissioned- well, I suppose it might have made me committed to foisting some alternate vision on society or something, but what I walked away with was a firm belief that people need to be able to make up their own damn minds about their own damn lives, to follow their bliss as the old hackneyed hippie aphorism states.
I went through my own black, angst-ridden days, fortunately I experience them less than I did in my youth, but still when confronted with those sorts of existential crises I fall back upon what I suppose can only be described as patchwork, DIY Deadhead Eastern philosophy, one cornerstone of which is the knowledge- liberating and frightening at the same time- that nothing, NOTHING is permanent.
It is interesting, to me, that the most terrifying truths can also be the most comforting. We're only here for a brief blip. All our pain, all our joy, that which imprisons us and that which defines us, our triumphs and our tragedies... give it just a little minute, and it'll blow away.
I don't know if this helps, but I do know that our past does not need to own us. All there is is this moment. That's all there ever is.
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