TW: Hey reddit this post contains mentions of sensitive mental health topics.

Recently, it was my mother’s birthday and I unfortunately had two important papers due and errands to run on the same day. When I woke up on her birthday, the first thing I did was to text her “happy birthday and i love you” following with “I’ll try to call, but I have a paper due and I have to sell some stuff today.”

For context, I currently live in a different state than my parents because I am going to school out of state. It’s my last year in college and I’ve had trouble with school in the past, but had a lot of conversations with my parents about it and they just want me to finish school. So, I’ve been trying my best to finish my studies off strong. I take a very long time to do simple tasks like selling my things off to people and writing a paper, so the day went by and I was still working on my paper when my dad texted me to ask “did you call her mom for her bday?” I immediately put my stuff down to call her on face time and she looked like she was crying. I told her happy birthday and i love you again and apologized about how late my call was. I asked her how her day was and she said she was crying the whole time and that she had sui***al thoughts. All I could do was I’m sorry (as in I feel bad that you’re going through this) and tried to ask what she was going to do the next day. Once we wrapped up the conversation and hung up, I felt so bad. I felt like I messed up. Not only did I not call her earlier, but I couldn’t do anything substantial to help her with her situation.

Have I become an asshole by getting my priorities mixed up?

Also, how do you help your parent with su***dal thoughts? I didn’t want to tell her I understand how you feel just because I have depression and have had suicidal thoughts in the past. Nor did I want to overstep and ask why she was suicidal/what brought this on because I never appreciated people doing that to me.