Have You Even Known Someone Who Committed Suicide?

[RJDiogenes]

A friend of mine from High School committed suicide a few years after graduation. His parents were religious fanatics and all the other kids in the family were damaged by their upbringing, all social misfits who couldn't really function outside of home or church. He was the only one of them who appeared to be able to get past it and get along with people and function normally. He got a job and a car (which was forbidden) and had friends at school and so forth. But I guess all the pressure from his family got to be too much, though he gave no outward sign of it....

 

[SiorX]

IMO, the worst bit's the never really being sure why they did it. A person could leave a 100,000 word suicide note, and family and friends will still be left with doubts and guilt. You start second-guessing every part of your past relationship, and doubting how well you thought you knew what was going on. It can lead to getting bogged down in fear and conjecture. I reckon for a lot of family and friends that's the hardest bit to get past - the guilt can be harrowing because there's no way of getting answers.

It may be easier if the person who committed suicide was known to be in physical pain, or perhaps if they were struggling with a substance abuse or had suffered a huge trauma. I don't know.

/2c

 

[Pingfah]

My uncle found his father hanging, and then a few months later he found his mother dead of an overdose, she had not been able to cope with the grief and did herself in as well. This was about 30 years ago.

That whole side of the family suffers from depression related problems, my cousins have bad problems, my Uncle himself is the only stable one. Does't seem to have impacted him too badly, but i'm not in his head, so who can say.

 

[CmdrAJD]

A guy I knew in high school killed himself several years after we graduated. He went to West Point after high school, but couldn't hack it and flunked out halfway through his first year. That had been his dream for years, though, and I think losing it just about destroyed him. He meandered around a bit after that, but it seemed like he finally started to rebuild his life. He got married, had a kid, and got into some type of welding or other metal work. I ran into him about eight years after graduation, and I almost didn't recognize him. He used to be clean shaven and have a buzz cut, but when I saw him, he had long hair and a scraggly beard. He talked about some upcoming job opportunities in DC and seemed happy. A year or so later, I heard that he'd shot himself. Evidently his wife had left him and taken the kid. I'm not sure what other factors were involved. As for the aftermath, I was shocked, but I can't say I was close enough to him to be affected more than that. I felt terrible for his mother, though. She was one of my favorite high school teachers, and I was closer to her than I was to him.

 

[1001001]

Two of our fraternity brothers committed suicide after graduation. One shot himself. One hung himself.

At first I was angry with them. Then I felt very sad, especially for their families. It's terrible to think they felt they had nothing to live for, or that life had become so painful to them that it wasn't worth it.

Substance abuse was involved in both scenarios.

 

[Ood Sigma]

My uncle committed suicide when I was in junior high school. That day that we found out was absolutely horrible. I remember thinking that my grandmother wouldn't survive, she was so distraught. As it ended up, she did live for another 8 years or so, but she was never the same. She developed Alzheimer's shortly after this, and I can't help but think that it was at least partially a defense mechanism against remembering what had happened to her son.

As for me, I was probably too young to be severely affected by it. I remember being sad but more concerned for how it would affect the other members of my family.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I had a friend in college who hung himself. I knew him for about a year. He was friends with some other people I knew. We lost touch for a little while, and the next time I ran into someone that knew him, I asked about him. I was not expecting to hear "he hung himself." But, I guess he'd been depressed for a long time.

I also had a neighbor who hung himself. He worked as a plumber for the owner of the building we lived in. He had an estranged wife and daughter, and I guess money was tight. He told his boss he'd be late paying his rent because he had to pay child support in order to see his kid. The boss said, "pay your rent on time or find yourself a new home and a new job." I guess he didn't really see any other way out, so he killed himself. His five-year-old daughter was the one who found him--walked in when they came by to visit. It was pretty surreal to wake up to cop cars all around the building, and everyone standing outside crying.

 

[SicOne]

I had a coworker who, we believe, committed "suicide by cop" last summer. He had been off work for several months working his way through our company's substance abuse rehab program (drinking). From what we gathered afterwards, from some of us who knew him well and were talking with his wife, his wife was going to leave him and take their young daughter; he prevented them from leaving at gunpoint. Neighbors called 911, and the Sheriff's deputies convinced him to let them go, and he was down in the basement with two deputies with their guns drawn and he had his gun now held to his head. It is believed that he then pointed a gun at one of the officers, who then shot him. I had heard several rounds struck him, including a head shot, but there is still debate on whether or not an officer shot him in the head, or was trying to shoot his gun arm to get him to drop the gun when his own gun discharged into his head. Regardless, it was a closed-casket funeral. Some time thereafter, the grand jury (a grand jury is convened whenever a person dies in police "custody") exonerated the officers involved, though I understand the family is still pursuing a case against the county Sheriff's department for his death.

He loved his wife and his daughter very much and spoken openly of them at work; when working with him, it was obvious that they were the center of his life. We had heard afterwards that she was cheating on him, and indeed came home early from work and opened his garage, only to find another man's car parked in his spot. Did not hear how that particular situation turned out, but this was apparently the guy she was going to leave our coworker with and take their daughter to, and he developed a drinking problem while attempting to deal with her infidelity and betrayal. We never knew a thing until it was all over, and his wife had nothing further to hide.

When I get off work, I call Mrs. SicOne and tell her I'm on my way home. She then knows she's got 35 minutes minimum to get rid of any evidence before I walk in the door. Ignorance is bliss.

A few years after I graduated from high school, I heard some freshman kid had impregnated a classmate and both families were going berserk over the situation; the kid dealt with it by means of double-barreled shotgun suicide in his bedroom when he got home from school. Good friend of mine, his dad was a town cop and told him the details; kid knew where the keys to his dad's guncase were and took a shotgun, put a skinny aluminum broomstick through the triggers, sat on his bed, put up under his chin, and sprayed himself all over all four walls and ceiling and floor.

 

[wew]

I knew someone who comiitted suicide wihle in the Air Force. He put a plastic bag over his head and covering his face, tied it somewhat tight with his tie, then went to sleep. Ended up suffocating himself to death.

 

[SicOne]

As a locomotive engineer, we have two or three suicides each year on our route. Most of them occur around Christmastime. Last one was an elderly lady who had a few weeks earlier been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and parked her car along the right-of-way, left a stack of letters on the front seat, and stepped out in the path of a 50 MPH coal train, facing away from the train. The crew placed the train in emergency, which locks up every car's braking system, but they don't stop on a dime, and they had very little reaction time. We are used to cars on the right-of-way, as our route is one of the busiest in the U.S., and we see foamers (train fans) taking pictures all of the time; the crew thought it was a foamer until she stepped out, turned away, and didn't move. Statistically speaking, we are told as firemen (student engineers) that we will kill two to three people over the course of our career. The crew of that coal train had a fireman on it, and he was operating the train at the time of the suicide. I have not hit anyone yet, though I have hit a herd of cattle (who wandered out of their pens during a blizzard)(hellish noise) and appear to have developed a penchant for hitting deer (thick around here, usually hit one every other trip).

 

[Rowan Sjet]

My best friend killed himself while we were both in High School. I don't know how, and I only found out for sure it was suicide a few years later, last year in fact, when I finally bucked up the courage to ask his brother. I'd had my suspicions though, as he'd made a few references to suicide over the years. I didn't take it seriously at the time and often wonder whether I could have helped him if I had, and what kind of friend I really was to him because I didn't.

I was too shocked to process it when my mum sat me down that night after school to tell me what happened. It was only on my way to school the next day, when I had to tell someone about it, that it really hit me. That was a bad day, but it helped me get through it.

 

[Neopeius]

A few posters on here have expressed dissatisfaction with their lives to the point of considering suicide. It is certainly something I have grappled with for many years.

Don't do it. As bad as you think it is, it could be much, much worse. And there's always fun stuff to do.

On topic, my cousin blew his brains out about a decade ago. Not really sure why. Good looking Israeli guy. Liked to pick up on tourists. Probably had depression.

 

[SeerSGB]

Yeah I've known a few.

After the fact and the "oh why did they do it, they had it so good" a lot of people were embarrassed and ashamed they didn't help them when the reasons came out about their lives. From one where a guy was a teen and had abusive parents that the cops and the teachers didn't believe the person about-- told the guy to "Man up and fight back", he tried and his father broke his arm to "teach him a lesson about respecting his parents"; he overdosed himself on pills from his parent's medicine cabinet. To a girl who was in a abusive relationship and the boyfriend convinced her that if he ever dumped her she'd be a worthless whore, by the time he broke up with her, her family and most of her friends had stopped talking to her cause of the guy; so, literally, right after he walked out on her for being- in his words- "to much of a doormat", she took a gun out of the nightstand and shot herself in the head.

The oddest one, was the son of a friend of the family that killed himself cause he was a twin. Around the time the boys left highschool, he started getting freaked out over having a twin brother-- completely out of the blue, the boys were close as close could be growing up. It got worse, and just shot himself one night.

 

[Garak]

Yes. It sucks and makes me quite emotional whenever I think about it. Please don't ever do it, the effect it has on people that care about you is undescribable.

 

[Aurian]

My cousin killed himself. And 10 years later my brother copycatted his death and committed suicide... our cousin was his best friend..

It's not easy to live with, I will tell you that. I will never forget and never forgive. But I will love him till the day I die.

 

[Niorah]

Yes I knew someone who committed suicide. A friend. The day I was told what had happened I cried for hours on end. Terrible.

 

[DarkHelmet]

Yes. It sucks and makes me quite emotional whenever I think about it. Please don't ever do it, the effect it has on people that care about you is undescribable.

Ditto.

I've heard that many people believe it's a "selfless" thing they're doing, when in fact it's completely selfish.

 

[Kira's Mom]

A classmate in high school- didn't know him that well, but the whole school was shocked. He was a good kid.

A student in my dorm hanged himself my senior year.

My cousin has attempted suicide several times (nearly successful with the latest attempt). I worry that someday she will likely succeed.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

The previous owner of my cat, a neighbour. overdosed after multiple attempts.
The ex girlfriend of a friends girlfriend.
and a few other friend of a friend types. No one especially close to me though.

 

[RandyS]

My mom died six years ago of an "accidental overdose" of one of her medications. While it was never officially ruled a suicide, I've always believed it was from stuff she said just before she died.