question for those who have lost someone to suicide

Post Reply New Topic

I would like to know how loosing someone to suicide effected you?

Ive always imagined that people who know me would be very releaved if I killed myself. I think this stems from my families reaction to my dads death through alcholism, everyone seemed very releaved that he died and felt they could finaly let go and move on and get their lives back now that such a difficult and stressmaking fellow had gone.

However I appreciate that my predictions for peoples reaction to my own suicide may not be accurate because of my theory of mind problems.

So I thought it would help me to hear about how looseing someone to suicide had effected other people. I appologise if people find this post bad taste and not ok

This has only happened to me once, with someone I knew only slightly, ( although at least two very close friends, and I, have thought very seriously of doing it on several/many occasions ).

What I felt was shock, and sadness, and a feeling of great waste.

I felt very shocked because he had seemed so alive, so brilliant and sensitive, and awake, and questing, and thoughtful, ( like you do to me ), and it was difficult to associate suicide with someone like that; sadness because I had liked him and would have liked to know him better, and "waste" because by the time I heard about it, I had worked out, for myself, the answer to what seemed, ( I remembered him talking about his struggle with the issue, and his frustration and confusion and despair about it, at a time when I still struggled with it too ), to have been one of his greatest problems, and I wished that I had had the chance, the time, to tell him.

And although neither of the very close friends did in the end commit suicide I know that would have felt the same about them, only, because of their closeness, a thousand times worse. I would have been stunned with grief in both cases, even though both of them had been suffering from depression, manic-depression, and worse for many years, I would not have felt that it was a relief, and in fact they have gone onto recover, train in careers they love, one to have a child, one to find a partner, ( after years of loneliness ), and find happiness in their 40's and 50's which for quite a long time would have seemed unbelievable/impossible.

.

I have known several people who have committed suicide. The first was Ian, a friend of mine who had HIV. He moved to another city and I found out about his death when I was fifteen. I went numb. I got off the phone, walked into the bathroom, shoved an earring through my nose (he used to always tell me how he thought I should pierce my nose... I still wear a ring in my nose to this day) and then went about life as normal, but took to binge drinking on the weekends in his honor... did that for about a year... Next one was Matt. I worked with him in my early twenties... he and I hired in at the same time. He was also HIV positive... he got his from a blood transfusion as a child. I took his death worse because his roommate (who happened to e the love of his life) also worked with us. One night he and I worked together, he seemed fine... That night he saw his roommate dancing with another coworker, went home, wrote a note, went out back and shot himself. I flipped right out. I had to go from his funeral to work. People kept asking me what was wrong until I freaked out on this guy, screaming, crying, throwing stuff... then I just went back to working like nothing happened. I was not ok after Matt died for about a year. He and I were not close, but he never told me he had HIV, he never told me the developing relationship with the roommate upset him so, he never said a thing. I wanted to bring him back to kill him myself. His death f****d me up bad. Next came Selena. She was severe bipolar and the best friend of my husbands 'brother'. She could not afford her meds. She went depressive, hid in her room, left a note, ate enough pills to kill a horse and washed them down with alcohol. She was hard to deal with due to how she effected my husbands 'brother'. He still has not recovered, I doubt he ever will recover. That was seven (?) years ago? He fell into a deep depression that almost killed him. He drank every day, did heavy drugs, got fired, started having brutal panic attacks (not that there are nice, calm ones... but his scared me)... He had to leave state. Being here became hell to him. The last one was Warren. I grew up with him. He hurt me the worst. He was messed up. His dad was an abusive alcoholic... but Warren always tried to be better... it just never worked out for him. I watched him go from a crazy kid to a man who just wanted to get a good job, a good woman and become a good dad. He was the first person to hold each of my kids. He went home one night and shot his face off. His sister found him the next morning. She is not ok. His mom is not ok. His daughter is not ok. I am not ok. This was six years ago. I spent the first month crying. I spent the next six months screaming at him while crying. I went through three years of severe depression. When I started not thinking of him everyday, I immediately felt guilty, like I was by not mourning, taking away from the memory of how wonderful he was and became depressed again. I resented anyone who encouraged me to get better. I screamed at people who told me to not be morbid and obsess over the dead. I threw things at almost everyone who told me they understood, because they did not. The only person during those years (my kids not included) was an internet friend of mine who lost someone around the same time in the same kind of way who had similar history with the woman he lost. He was good for me. I was good for him. He and I hated the world together for awhile. I know I will never be the same because of Warren. I keep crying while writing this... It took me years to be able to live again. He took part of me with him. Earlier this month my friend of twenty years got a call... her brother in Indiana hung himself in the garage. His wife found him hanging there with his hands bound. My friend is not ok. Her family is not ok. He was depressed... he left behind not only a wife, but three young children. She keeps thinking she has no tears left to cry... she keeps being wrong.

I do not think your post is in bad taste. It is hard to know how suicide will effect people. It is hard to appreciate the devastation it leaves behind because people grieve in the weirdest ways. Even people who seem ok (unless the have some kind of disorder that genuinely alters their reactions) are not ok. They usually harbor guilt for feeling relieved if that person is a burden... They feel misery, then guilt for not doing something or knowing or saying the magic words that would have made them alive still, they wait for some guy to come in and tell them they are on candid camera or some crap, they feel rage, they feel dead inside. Sometimes they feel all that at once. I have watched people fall apart and never put themselves back together. I am one of those. When someone in my family dies naturally I just see it as part of the cycle of death and rebirth. I might miss them, but that kind of death makes sense to me. Suicide makes no sense to me. It really can destroy the living. I have seen it first hand too many times... trust me... I know.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with me Ouinon and Dossa, it means a lot to me and is very helpful.

thank you

In 1991 I lost a good friend to suicide. I still think somehow it was my fault. He and I went to high school together and he was in a little group of guys who were sort of loners. Not many friends, folks made fun of them. But they didn't really like other people either and were cynical and kind of a**holes to people. Anyway, I ran into him through another guy I had ran into from school and we really hit it off. As I have said before I like to have acquaintances but not many close friends. We got to be close friends. He was in college and I was married with a baby, and he would come over and hang out with me and my husband and we used to have such a nice time. My husband and him got along together because he was a huge math fan and my husband loves math and even took trig as an elective in college because he LIKES it. So they would talk about that and history and we would talk about all kinds of stuff. He would hang out with me, and my husband went out of town to see his parents a lot and they didn't like me, so I would stay home and Ronnie (the guy) would stay with me. He would sleep on the couch and all or we would go out, my husband would take our son with him, and me and Ronnie would do our own thing at the house. It was fine and dandy for a while, then he told me he had feelings for me. I told him that that couldn't happen. I'm married, I'm happy, but I truly DID want him to continue to hang out with us. He hadn't ever been in a relationship before and we had long talks about maybe that was why he thought he felt so much for me. Anyway I didn't say "lets just be friends" like a brushoff, we had long talks about it, because he meant a lot to me. He knew that. Anyway, he got back into drugs right after that, and after one weekend that he came over and I got up and came into my livingroom and he was snorting Special K on my dinner plate, I took him home and said call me when you get off that sh*t. The next weekend I told him if he wanted to come over, no drugs. He didn't say yes or no so I said fine, nevermind, I'll go out for pizza with these other people. And I did. I got drunk and crashed at their house and went home to get the battery charger for their car and his mothers friend from church came over and told me he killed himself the night before. Drank a pint of whiskey, did a bunch of Special K, and cut his wrists. This was his sixth or seventh suicide attempt. He succeeded that time.

I know it wasn't really my fault and the drugs probably had a lot to do with it. He wanted to hang out and be friends, but then again he wanted more and that couldn't happen. I had asked if I had ever given him any signals that made him think otherwise and he said no, it was just what he wanted.

Anyway, I was messed up in the head for about a year after that and when I think about it, I still get that way. I still have that guilt to this day. Suicide may be a good way to really get back at somebody and mess them up for the rest of their lives, but you won't be around to see it. So what good does that do?

PaganMom

Thanks Paganmom Im very glad you shared your experience with me.

I find it very hard to not just focus on my own pain and to think about how it would effect other people. Its hard as its so hard not to think everyone would be much happier and better off if I was not here.

LotusBlossom, that is one of the reasons why I am still here. Even if my life is in the toilet, I know that my family would be devastated. My mother would not recover, my father would be heartbroken, my brother would probably go off the rails... I have friends and acquaintances with AS and even though I know they wont have the typical grief reactions, it will likely screw them up psychologically in other ways. In some ways it will be even more confusing for them as their minds dont have the mechanisms to process it that NTs have...

I knew a girl who committed suicide. I saw what it did to her friends. I know that if she wasnt so depressed she never would have done it but she wasnt thinking clearly at the time.

You're quite welcome.

I'm sure Ronnie thought that too. It didn't turn out that way though.

Or maybe he wanted to get back at me for not feeling the same as him. It didn't make me wish I had felt like that at all, but it sure did mess me up for a long time.

If you think people would be better off without you, why not just move to another city away from them and never contact them again? By killing yourself you will saddle them with guilt that they will carry for the rest of their lives. It will make everything very very difficult for them. Every year on his birthday and the anniversary of his death I think about him. When we lived in the city, I would visit his grave and be in a funk for days after. Now that I'm out here, I can't do that. But I still think about him.

PaganMom

yeah, Ive already moved away from where anyone one in real life knew me.

Ive closed my accounts on most of the forums I was on (I was going to kill myself a few weeks ago so was prepareing things but I managed to hold off).

Im sure it would make my mum sad, she has asked me to wait till she is dead so she doesnt have to go through it. However Im sure she would understand as she knows how hard life is for me, she says she would understand. She had her dad die when she was a teen and my sister died and my dad and she coped ok with that (though was very very upset). I think having my kids to look after would give her strength and get her through.

I do understand that it would be horrible for her though so am trying my hardest to find strength and keep going.

I feel ambivalent about what affect it has on friends. Ive known a couple of people (aquaintaces) who killed themselves and there was very mixed reaction to that by people and most people (who were not very close) seemed not to be very botherd and the ones that were bothered seemed to recover relatively quickly. My cousins dad killed himself and all the family said it was a good thing (though Im sure his wife and my cousins themselves were upset).

someone who I did not know on another forum killed themselves and people did not seem that bothered and some people on the forum wrote 'hate posts' about them and made negative videos about them.

Think about this too. If you kill yourself, there is absolutely no chance of things getting better. If you live and keep trying there is at least a chance.

I don't know what happens in the afterlife. I'm a Pagan, and I have an idea of what does, but I don't know. Nobody really knows. All we have are our best guesses, no matter how much faith somebody has, they haven't been there and back and don't know. So, it could be better, it could be worse. It could just be nothing. But either way, it will negate any chance of something good happening in this life. You never know what good thing really may happen to you if you just stick it out. Then again, it might not, but if you don't wait around to see, you'll never know.

PaganMom

yeah, thats what my mum says too.

Sometimes I think we might go back to source and feel free like shaking off an over tight shoe, sometimes Im more athiest and think we are just nothing.

Society puts animals down that are in pain though and lots of countries do assisted suicide for people with cancer and motor neurone disease.

its hard weighing up the pros and cons of all of it. I dont want people to suffer because of me, I would have done it years ago if I did not care so very much.

How do you think they suffer because of you? What is it that makes them suffer?

PaganMom

I meant I dont want them to suffer if I kill myself.

They will.

I was wondering what you think would be less hard for them to deal with if you kill yourself than if you were simply to leave, leave your children with your mum, ( who you say would love them and find strength in mothering them ) and go?

I think some people commit suicide because although there is something that would solve the problem it seems so "awful"/unacceptable that they are unable to face doing it, and although killing themselves will cause as much or more pain to the people at least they escape people's grief/shock/wrath and their own guilt/self-accusation, or even worse, happiness, after doing something so shocking.

I am perhaps projecting some of my own most recent depression, 2000-2002, when all I thought of was abandoning my baby son, and didn't dare, and wanted to kill myself because I didn't dare, and couldn't cope. Apologies if it is totally not the same sort of overwhelm and despair that you are feeling.

PS. Equally serious aside: are you eating enough meat/fish or other source of Vit B12, because a B12 deficiency can cause very serious depression, fatigue, and inability to cope with stress and pressure etc.

Last edited by ouinon on 25 Nov 2009, 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yeah my mum says she would rather I walked out on them all and started a new life and left the kids with her. I think that I could not live with myself if I did that though and would feel so ashamed and awful. and like you said I would not have to see the devistation or know about it if I killed myself.

I always soul search and weigh up all the options and end up decideing to try and hold on a bit longer. Often I find a book which gives me a bit more strength or make a plan of action which gives me more hope.

I just keep trying to dig a bit deeper and find some more of myself to give and hold on with.