[alwaysrejoice]

Why didn't she do something when she knew I was suicidal at a very young age?

[mgran]

Perhaps she was frightened to accept the depth of your feelings, and went into denial. I made a suicide attempt when I was about seventeen, and nobody in my family noticed. (I was out of my head for three days, vomiting and hallucinating... they thought it was the flu and didn't even call the doctor.) The whole family was in denial, because my mother was in the middle of full blown psychosis herself, and we were all shell shocked from her repeated suicide attempts. So, my own suicidal impulse was ignored.

I'm not saying things have to be as bad as that for someone to ignore the reality of a suicidal teen or child, but suicide is such an emotive issue that a lot of people try to sweep it under the carpet. generally speaking (there are always tragic exceptions) there's nobody in the world that a mother loves more than their child. Even bad mothers usually love their kids, even if they can't express it very well. if you love someone the last thing you want to think is that they are not loving of themselves, that they are are so unhappy they want to die. I'm a Mum, and I want my son to be happy, I love him so much it hurts me almost physically when I hear him curse himself or see him unhappy. I pay attention to these things, because of my own experience, but for some people it might be easier to simply ignore the truth, and pretend that everything's okay.

[alwaysrejoice]

I totally see your point. I don't have kids so I don't know what I would do. I have really been digging deep lately into my issues and it keeps popping up that my mom clearly knew about my problems when I was even a CHILD like very young...maybe 6 or 8?