A bit over a month ago (early June) my girlfriend, my soulmate, the person I thought was going to be my forever home, decided to take her own Life.
My girlfriend was in a really bad Life situation already when i met her.
She was a Veterinarian and in the process of getting her PHD but with rocks thrown in her way at every possible point, stuff like professors pushing the PHD paper out for years, her then being late because the taxi to the other campus drove god knows where (she was literally terrified she'd get abducted) and the professor when she finally did arrive cancelling on her because they felt disrespected by her being late, or her requiring a material just to find out it shot up by 100x the price because her country decided to tighten the import laws on everything in hopes of stabilising the economy and that was just a few of the many things like her colleagues mishandling the animals for her case studies, subsequently lowering the potential cases she could observe to a number that would never get accepted, all whilst she was pushed into an insanely hard PHD topic whilst other students got easy bullshit like "we test this medication on this animal".
On top of that her PHD supervisor used their position to run the stupidist errands impossible "can you call the on duty veterinarian", "who is the cleaning staff today" or "Can you pick up the animal from the emergency clinic and take it to the wildlife clinic" (they are physically 20 meters apart and she was supposed to do it whilst at home, instead of asking the on duty veterinarian.)
And on top of aaaaaaaall that, she was working in her university's Emergency Veterinary Hospital, an emergency hospital that only had one veterinarian per shift working there, even at night and with the biggest joke of security i have ever seen. And in case you didn't know this, yea, they need good security, especially in the circumstances the hospital put them in. A lot of the common good medications? not available, either because her country didn't allow the inport, made it extremely expensive or because her hospital just didn't want to provide for it. Literally, the more professional vets like her kept certain medications in their own lockers which they bought from their own money.
And we are still only scratching the top of the iceberg here because there is a lot more, like violent clients, death threats and biggest of all The huuuuuuuge amount of Deaths on her hand. Due to it being an emergency clinic her death rate per client was 1/3 to 2/3, she felt like a grim reaper and often said shevwas going to hell, especially since her hospital didn't provide the medication necessary to put animals humanely out of their pain.
All that whilst constantly being bombarded by her veterinary students and colleagues about stuff they should long know, basically pulling permanent advisory shifts for the emergency hospital too.
In the end during a shift she snapped, she told the hospital she had to leave her shift for an emergency, she probably took some of the medicine the hospital did provide to put animals to their final rest, snuck it home and used it on herself.
I feel awful. i feel like I could have done more. I tried to get her to look for professional help, i tried to get her to quit her job and tell her we'd find a solution and tried helping her build up the walls and boundaries she needed but I feel like it was too little or too late. Through the relationship i felt it was incredibly hard to communicate about these topics, i was always worried I'd just make it worse, most of her days were bad and i was worried I'd just make it worse or accidentally push her over the edge, and the very few good days maybe one or twice per month, i didn't want to ruin them, i thought she needed and deserved the rest it gave her.
Through the relationship i tried sharing what happy stuff happened in my Life, thinking that it might cheer her up like how happy it makes me when my friends or her have happy situations they share but in the end she kind of communicated that it hurt her. I feel like so often i accidentally hurt her. I know i also have needs and that i have my own mental issues but i still feel like I could have done more.
In the weeks upcoming to her death, marriage was a big topic we both agreed that we wanted to in a way but the distance across multiple countries made it hard, especially since she didn't get a single chance to visit me due to sone very racist immigration policies in my country towards people from her nation, so only i could visit her but not the other way around. She talked a lot about weddings and was in a bit of marriage fever due to a lot of her friends marrying, whilst i felt a little bit uncomfortable with the topic because we haven't even been dating for 2 years yet and and the effective time we physically spend time together was like 2 weeks. It was just too early and honestly...i just wanted to see the girl she was when not under such a tremendous negative life situation, before I'd make the choice because marriage means commitment for me, then a week before her death the topic kinda exploded as i accidentally snapped a little too hard back at her when she asked if i was also getting a suit for our engagement, after i told her i helped a friend pick out a suit for a friend's wedding and immediately tried to communicate what i actually meant and that i just meant i needed more time. It didn't help that she was a bit older than me so she probably felt her clock ticking harder than i did mine.
The evening before her death she visited a friend's wedding, she told me she cried there. I honestly didn't know how to handle it.
I feel so guilty. I even feel guilty for hoping my push back at the wedding topic wasn't the thing that pushed her over the edge.
I genuinely feel like I tried my best but simultaneously I feel like I didn't do enough.
The day she chose to end her Life she kept me updated in text. She told me she went home to kill herself but for a couple of minutes I didn't take it seriously because through the entire relationship she a couple of times said she wanted to die but reaffirmed afterwards that she was exaggerating, it didn't help that i got PTSD on that topic which made me borderline unresponsive every time she said it. (i tried communicating that with her and that it was due to a previous ex faking her suicide as a revenge for me breaking up) but after a few minutes went full into action, i tried telling her to please wait, that we'd find other solutions together, asked her to please call the crisis hotline but she just lashed back at me. All whilst I was simultaneously desperately trying to get the emergency Services of her country on the phone, which is impossible as it turned out.
I feel so awful. if i had committed to one way instead of both, could she had been saved? In the end, some minutes after she stopped responding i remembered that at the start of our relationship we exchanged emergency contacts, so i called her's, her mom and begged her to call an ambulance for my girlfriend. I waited hours before I got a call from her mother, she had passed away.
I wish i could have done more. I wish i jad remembered earlier that i had her mom's number, i genuinely tried finding any other contacts like finding her friends on social media but all where on private and non messagable, after calling ambulance directly turned out impossible due to the first thing you hear being not a person but a tape recording in her Nations language. I literally tried everything, i even called the consulate of my country in her country begging them to call an ambulance.
I miss her. I wish i could have done more. I wish i had spent even more time with her. I wish we could have had a nicer farewell at least. I have so many things I wish i had told her when i was begging her to not do it. I don't even really know how she died and when and where because I'm too scared asking.