A little over a month ago my two best friends tried to kill themselves on the same night. Throughout the month one of those friends has done that several times. Thankfully they’re both still alive today.
Ever since that happened I haven’t felt like myself at all, I just, feel like I’m carrying too much and like I’m all alone. People know being suicidal is hard and loosing someone to suicide is hard but having someone you really care about try to kill themselves (and describe how they did it) can also be hard on anyone. I can’t make a description of the event on this post but I can say that they didn’t pull back, they didn’t stop and turn back, they tried to go through and were stopped by an external source. For me that’s the part that hurts the most. Knowing they wanted to go through with it.
Ever since it happened Ive been having intrusive thoughts/images about it and just feeling constantly stressed/irritable and having nightmares every now and them. Nightmares in either which I watch them hurt themselves or they die by some form and its my fault. I also had per-existing abandonment issues so before this happened I’d constantly wonder how I would feel if my friends died but the one thing that kept me grounded was knowing that that can’t happen in any realistic scenario and now its happening.
Going through life I feel so different, like none of the people I see from day to day have gone through something like this so that makes me different, and if I told them what’s going on in my head they’d see me as pathetic because I shouldn’t feel this way since they’re still alive.
I feel so isolated. Like I want someone, not anyone, but a close friend, who I can talk to about this, but then I remember I have three friends in this world, and two of them want to die. The third one I can talk to but wasn’t affected the same way and doesn’t really relate.
I don’t really know what I’m asking through this post, I guess I just wanted to let it out. I guess I also want to know I’m not alone. Anyone else going through this?
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I’ve been on both sides of this, and the important part is to know that it is not your fault if they do kill themselves. I know this is easier said than done since that is a deep deep emotional thing, but it is the truth; you are their friend and you clearly want only good things for them; you caring about them isn’t the thing actually hurting them. The depression or whatever mental health issue it is at the root is taking them from you, and you aren’t losing them because of something you’re doing. They likely don’t even want to die, but in their views warped by the mental health problems see it as the only option they have; it is a terrible situation for everyone involved.
I don’t know any words to fix the situation, but just know that you aren’t alone. I prevented my friend from killing themselves by calling help, which I did knowing it would push them away from me and they wouldn’t tell me the next time. And they didn’t, and later succeeded. The same friend told me long ago they wouldn’t leave me, when I talked about my abandonment issues and how everyone is always eventually leaving me behind. Even then I knew they would leave me too; and they did, the worst and most permanent way…
What’s stopped me from killing myself so far is 100% others, because knowing how much it would hurt them hurts me too. When things get bad I still always end up in the same dark place, and it is impossible to say will the void take me when the next time comes around. It is a battle where I have no winning moves, since no matter what I do, I’m just hurting everyone and myself too, and knowing this just makes things worse. I am suffering and it is out of my control, and that is making others suffer too.
You are trying so hard you’re hurting yourself, and there’s probably nothing more you could do in this situation; you can’t fix it since it’s out of your control too. Sometimes life’s just total shit, and we can’t do anything about it.
Thank you for sharing. I know how it feels to have people near and dear to you wanting to off themselves, whatever their reasons…
The first time it happened, I went all in. It was my responsibility to keep them alive. I acted like I was a court appointed guardian, like a therapist, a parent, a friend and I tried to act in many more capacities. I sacrificed school and work just to physically be with them. I had them sleep over at my place. And much more. And how did I act? I tried to guilt them into staying alive. As in, I could say things like “how could you do that to me/your loved ones/etc?” Whatever effect that “strategy” had or didn’t have on them, it absolutely destroyed me. I got burned out. I had to recuperate for months, which in turn - naturally - impacted my school and career.
The second time it happened, I had learned my lesson: it’s not okay to blame people for wanting to die. I am not them. I cannot understand what they are going through. Even though them wanting to end their life made me angry, I held it back and told them how sorry I am that they feel that way. And that I am here to listen. And that they are not alone. And that feelings come and go, and that tomorrow may very well be the best day of the rest of their lives. No more shaming somebody who is already at their lowest. No more taking on the responsibility of professional therapists and doctors.
Five years later, here I am, having for the first time in my life feelings of absolute worthlessness and - would you know - the thought of death being a way to end my suffering does cross my mind. I’m not willing to die yet, but the sense of helplessness makes me understand even more how bad it was to try to keep somebody alive through scorn.
You may disregard everything I’ve written. I don’t know where it came from.
You are not pathetic. If anything, you’re empathetic.
One that I know of, but probably more. We are not living in good times.
are they willing to talk about it / can you talk to them about what you’ve been going through?
it might feel like something you’re burdening/guilting them with, or “making it about you” or something, but speaking as someone who’s lost others to suicide & made some attempts myself, it’s all too easy when in that SI headspace to forget or dismiss the knock-on effects that happen to everyone else after someone kills themselves.
it might be useful for them to know that they would be missed, that people care deeply about them, that the world’s not better off without them, and to hear about the ways that that near miss is affecting you.
idk, i think we tend to be very afraid to talk about mental health & we want to leave it up to the mental health professionals etc, but healing happens in community first & foremost, imo
Last time i tried to talk to them about how id been feeling they completely started blaming themselves for it. I didnt tell them much, just that having to constantly hear about their self harm habits is overwhelming and I often don’t know how to respond to things. I do tell them I would miss them and that I enjoy spending time with them. But its so overwhelming because every single message I send to anyone I always overanalyze it to make sure it won’t affect them negatively. I have frequent nightmares where my friends die of any circumstance and its always my fault. So I’m terrified of accidentally tipping them over the edge.
i’d definitely recommend having these conversations in person (or over video- or voice-chat if they’re long-distance friends), so you both can have a better idea of each other’s tone & how you’re each feeling in the moment
if you have the capacity for it, let your friend know that they can vent to you about things along these lines, if they start to feel like that again. and/or that you’ll be on hand for distractions.
you seem to be placing a lot of blame on yourself, but ultimately, you can’t force someone to want to stick around. what you do have control over, is whether you made sure your friends know they can reach out to you for support, then actually show them examples of that over time.
I can only imagine what you’re going through right now. I hope things get better, and I hope you will feel safe talking to someone in real life about this.
While I do not have any personal experiences to relate, I want you to know that it’s perfectly normal and not at all pathetic to react this way from someone attempting suicide. That is a horrible experience, and it’s perfectly okay both to be traumatized from the experience and to be worried about the future.
Is there any way you could talk to a therapist of some kind? Maybe you would feel more comfortable talking to someone about it if they were not in your circle and there was confidentiality?
