*Trigger* friend committed suicide

Yup just as it says... a guy I was just at college with killed himself last week. His Sister put it up on Facebook today. I'm in shock. Can't believe it. His death is the first death I have known personally in regards to suicide. I'm truly in shock. How do you guys deal with death in this way?

I wish I had words.

I'm so very sorry

I don't know what to say except that I am so sorry.

I don't have words. I am so sorry.

I am sorry for your loss.

((((hugs)))))

I am sure you know (or maybe not), that the same thing happened to my friend bethany.

it happened a while ago, but i still mention it a lot, because she meant a lot to me

I can't imagine the pain, the amount of unanswerable questions and what ifs. My heart goes out to you and this persons entire family and friends.

I am sorry for your loss.

Your friend had to be in a lot of pain in order to take his own life.

That's what I try to remember. The person was in severe psychological pain, was suffering and was desperate for relief. This deserves compassion.

Like other illnesses, depression can take lives.

Some religious figures condemn people who commit suicide. I have talked to a couple of ministers who have thought this way. I express to them that MI is an illness, like any other illness. I tell them the person was ill, in severe pain, suffering and desperate. One minister changed her viewpoint entirely.
Nobody deserves that kind of judgement and condemnation.

I have had 3 suicides close to me, starting with my dad when I was 12 y.o.
Each one felt a little different, depending how close I have been to the person.

My advice is to show compassion for your friend and have a lot of self-compassion during this difficult time.


WC

I am so very sorry for you're loss

I'm so very sorry. Feel free to write as much as you want or need to process and purge feelings here.

So sorry for your loss.

So sorry for the loss of your friend.

Just don't be down on yourself. He was in a lot of pain and didn't see another way out. He's now at peace.

Oh, Miss Laura, I am so very sorry. Please be gentle with yourself processing this.

I don't have any wisdom but that. Be gentle with yourself. It is ok to feel your feelings, and there will very likely be quite a number of them.


(My experience was a bit more removed -- someone whom I knew only moderately well, and had not known she struggled with this. So yes, in the same way it came as a shock.)

How devastating. I am so sorry for your loss and grief. You have support here.

I wish I had the words. I am so sorry.
Please take care of yourself. We're here for you.

Thank you guys,

I kinda feel a bit stupid as I didn't really know him. I knew of him as he was in my class and I spoke to him whenever I saw him in class which wasn't much. I am just more in shock than anything else. He wasn't from Scotland and his family are coming up this week.

I told my parents and I just wanted them to ask if I was alright but they didn't. Don't think they understand how that affects me. I feel so selfish for thinking of myself when he was hurting so much.

He is the first person I know of that has killed himself....

Sorry for the loss of your acquaintance, Miss Laura. Only he knows why he made the decision to end his life. Maybe in his mind, it was the best option.

It sounds like your parents aren't very emotionally supportive of how his death has effected you. That's more about how they feel towards the subject of suicide, than it is about how they feel about you. Western society in general, tends to label suicide as a selfish, shameful act, which I think is totally wrong.

Don't feel selfish for thinking of yourself. It's how you're processing his death which I think is totally normal.

I lost a friend to suicide in college, and three friends of mine lost children and siblings to suicide. If it helps you to process it with a counselor better, then I recommend setting up an appointment with one. I did that in college, after my friend ended his life. It really helped me process his death, to talk about my feelings around suicide, and the guilt I felt about not being able to prevent my friend from taking his own life. It helped me reach the conclusion, that we can't force anyone to do anything no matter how good our intentions are.

Don't feel stupid. I think it's a normal reaction to feel an especial shock at a suicide. I work in a cemetery and every suicide we have a service for generates powerful feelings in me. I ache for their pain, even not knowing them. There's so much surrounding a suicide, don't feel stupid about any of your feelings. I would encourage you to share it all here in our forum.

Hey Ceilpur,

Thanks! I find any kind of death difficult to process... but even though I never really knew him I knew who he was in the class. He was funny and clever and young and we laughed at him (in a nice way) cause he wore shorts in Scotland in January.... we had snow and he wore shorts lol!! He was nuts like that but really cool. Just wish I had FB'ed him when I thought of him before he died. But I never.

Hey Vertigo,

To be honest I feel numb.... like I have no emotions. I smiled when I told my friend about it today WTF is wrong with me. It was my nervous smile though in my defense but I felt like a right twat.

No need to feel "a bit stupid". Even if you didn't know him well, his death can still have considerable impact upon you. It shows you are a caring person. And that, if course, is a good thing.

It's not selfish to think of yourself in all this. It's an event that asks for thought and reflection, and part of that is introspection. How it affects you. Why it affects you as it does. What lessons it might provide. It's very complex sometimes. And consider too that, as folks with bipolar, we have a certain insight into these things makes it all the more so.

I'm sorry your parents didn't ask. How ARE you doing?

He sounds like he was fun to have in class with you. Death is never easy to process, even if its the death of a funny classmate from school.

Whenever death happens to someone around us, it forces us to contemplate our own mortality, as a reminder that some day, as Shakespeare wrote, we will "shuffle off this mortal coil" (our troubles will end when we die) in his play Hamlet:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life. (3.1.56-69)

When we think about death -- even our own death -- it's scary. Why? We have to protect our own sense of sense from the thought of life coming to an end.

And suicide is viewed by Western society as a moral violation of the natural world, because it is a break from societal norms (which is to live out one's life until death occurs due to outside forces). And, since suicide is such a taboo subject, people tend to shame and reject the person who expresses a desire to end their natural life.

Whereas, in Asian culture, people tend to embrace the person who feels suicidal, because the Asian culture is connected as a whole whereas Western society promotes social isolation. Does that make sense?

It's not ok, in Western culture, to discuss taboo subjects like suicide. It's the societal norm to blame the victim of suicide for his/her depression, rather than try to just be compassionate and celebrate the person's life instead. It just makes no sense to me at all, the way Western culture treats taboo subjects with kid gloves, which is so counterproductive to our society's socio-cultural development.

It just irritates me how afraid people are in European American culture to discuss suicide out in the open, as if not discussing it, will make it disappear, or make it less shocking to deal with when it does happen.

Thanks Inner and Ceilpur,

I guess my folks just don't get it cause I don't tell them when I have been suicidal. I am just glad I have survived as I now know how I can not leave this planet without a cause (ie illness). If I ever get this low I am going to talk to someone.... if I can. I know this is sometimes not even in the top 3 things to do if in a suicidal mind but I can not leave this planet. My Twin would be heartbroken. She was asking if I was okay when I told her