(They Gave Him To Me)
There is a phrase I keep returning to, because it explains more than people want to admit:
They gave him to me.
It sounds dramatic, like something ripped from a Netflix series about kidnapped baby goblins (or goblins kidnapping babies. Whatever).
It is not.
It is the most accurate description I have for what happened when a suicidal man was discharged from psychiatric care and handed over—like a responsibility, like a parcel, like a problem—to the nearest competent woman in the room.
Me.
His parents were there. His family was there. They all agreed he was fine to leave with me.
No one asked me if I was okay with this.
No one asked whether I had the capacity or whether I had support.
I was not asked if I wanted to become the person responsible for keeping him alive.
They just… transferred him.
As if suicidal illness could be managed by love, and a partner’s competence could replace a medical system, as if I were a discharge plan… a service.
People love the responsible one… I did not say respect. The accountable person makes everyone else’s life easier. S/he organises, absorbs and becomes the container.
S/he is the person everyone relaxes around, because hey, s/he will handle it.
It is convenient for everyone to pretend that their strength is infinite. Strength becomes expectation. Expectation becomes entitlement.
And entitlement becomes silence: Of course, s/he can carry this. They always do. No one bothers to check on them.
Why would they?
S/he is the responsible one.
No one told me his family had generations of suicide in its tree. I was not informed of the risk. I did not know he had attempted before.
No one sat me down and said:
“This is not just sadness. This is a legacy. This is a pattern. This is a high-risk situation.”
I was not given context, preparation or any idea how to handle this.
I was given the illusion that if I loved hard enough, held steady enough, managed correctly enough… then this would be survivable.
And if you are a certain kind of person—if you were trained early into competence as survival—you believe that for a while.
You believe that if you can just find the right words, the right strategy, the right ritual, you can keep disaster from arriving.
His family saw that we loved each other and assumed it would be okay. That I can understand. But the medical system knew he was a repeat offender.
Two days before he died, he went to the crisis unit and begged them to admit him.
He told them he could not cope.
And the crisis team told him to go home and call his doctor in the morning, so the doctor could make an appointment.
Yeah… A man says, “I can’t cope.”
And the response was: “Call your GP tomorrow.”
They are a CRISIS TEAM, not a receptionist desk.
If someone comes to you asking for emergency help and you send them away with administrative steps, you are not offering care.
You are offering a procedure.
You are handing them paperwork while they are drowning.
And when someone is drowning, “tomorrow” does not exist.
His first attempt on my watch (there were eight before me, three while living with me), when he returned alive—dehydrated, mentally shattered—he got a 72-hour hold, and then they gave him over to me.
Me.
I had a child with autism. I was miscarrying. I was traumatised by his disappearance.
He had moved in less than a month before.
And yet everyone looked at me like the logical conclusion to the crisis was: send him home with her.
As if I were a competent piece of furniture. As if I was built for this.
And I will say this bluntly: No one is built to carry someone else’s suicidal illness alone.
Not a girlfriend, spouse, or best friend. Not even love itself can carry it.
That is clinical territory. That is community territory. That is systemic territory. But it was placed on my shoulders anyway.
The cruellest part is that they did not ask. Asking would have meant acknowledging how heavy and dangerous this was. Oh, and that I could refuse because it was not my job.
But if they did not ask, they did not have to witness my humanity. They did not have to face what they were doing.
So they did not. They assumed. People assume the responsible one can carry it. And then they act shocked when she collapses.
I could be judged when I failed to keep him alive, though. When he died, I became responsible for the emotional atmosphere around the death.
I did not just lose him. I became the person expected to soften it for everyone else.
To manage it. Translate it. Explain it. Hold it. Make it survivable.
I had to repair the rainbow parachute we all used to hover over the gaping, steaming abyss. That is what people do when they do not want to face horror directly. They create rituals. They create narratives. They create scapegoats. They create roles.
And somehow the responsible one ends up holding the edges of the parachute. Even when her hands are bleeding. Even when she is shattered. There is a difference between support and conscription.
Support says, “We will hold this together.”
Conscription says, “You will hold this for us.”
And I was conscripted. Into carrying risk I did not create. Into managing damage I did not cause.
Into becoming the plan when the plan should have been medical care, community care, family care, systemic care.
So when people ask why I am strict now—why I have boundaries, why I mute, why I disengage, why I refuse to be pulled into chaos—I want to hand them this sentence: They gave him to me.
And I will never allow myself to be handed another human like that again.
Not by a family, crisis unit or anyone. I am not an institution or plan.
I am a person.
