When I was 13, my dad killed himself. He thought he had cancer, and tried to kill himself by drinking 6 bottles of wine and walking across a bridge. The post mortem showed that they were wrong and the tumour was benign. Two years later I'm struggling to be OK.

My dad was the most amazing man ever. I'm not saying that just because I'm his daughter, it's the truth. He taught me so much about life and how to enjoy it. I loved him so much. When I turned 13, it all came crashing down. A couple months before he died, my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumour. I was obviously devastated, but I had more or less accepted it. My dad was sick, and that was that. I didn't think much of it when he had a bottle of wine with dinner, he used to do it every now and then before. I didn't notice when he finished the bottle, I was in my room. It was the same story every night for a few days, I was busy with school and getting used to dealing with his impending death. I didn't realise how bad things were until one night, I was going to bed and saw my dad putting the bottle in the recycling bin. I asked him if he'd been drinking and he said he had been. The bottle was almost empty. I asked why he'd been drinking so much and he said he wanted to die. I knew what he was doing, I'd seen it in the news. A couple months ago, a man in the town next to ours had tried to kill himself in the same way. He had drunk a bottle of wine and gone to a bridge and jumped off. He was trying to make sure his death was an accident so his family would get the insurance money. I didn't want my dad to die, obviously. He promised me he'd stop drinking and I went to bed like a fool. The next night, I heard a bottle being thrown out when I was going to bed. I went to the recycling bin and it was a different brand of wine. He was still drinking and I didn't do anything. I went to bed again and then the next night I heard two bottles. I went to check, and I was right. He had somehow managed to drink two bottles of wine in a night. He promised me he'd stop again and I believed him. He said he wouldn't drink anymore and I was stupid enough to believe him. He knew that I was keeping track, so he started hiding the bottles. I checked the recycling bin every night for two weeks, but he didn't throw any more bottles away. A week after my 13th birthday, my dad didn't come down for dinner. Mum thought he was just sick because of the chemo, but I knew he was drunk. I was right again. When I went upstairs I saw he was dead. He had timed it out so that he could drink 6 bottles of wine and then walk to the bridge before he passed out. I didn't see his body, my mum stopped me from going outside, but I saw the bodies of the people he killed. He hit a car and it swerved out of the road. Two people died, a mother and daughter just like if my mum and I had been in the car. I can't believe my dad is gone. It's been a couple years and I still can't get over it. He killed himself because of something that was never going to happen. The tumour was fine. I can't get over it and I can't believe that he did this to me. I was his daughter and he chose to die and kill other people. I miss him more than anything.