How Do You Feel When Someone Does Commit Suicide?

[mindpox]

WARNING!!!!! It seems a bit superfluous warning about triggering in a thread about how we feel when someone commits suicide, but this contains my real experiences of someone very close to me killing themselves which some may find upsetting. Hopefully not, I hope there's a glimmer of hope in here somewhere as well, but if you're feeling a little flakey at the moment, maybe best if you DON'T READ IT RIGHT NOW!!!!

Tommorow is the ninth anniversary of my girlfriend, Kate, killing herself. She jumped from the ramparts of Raglan Castle in Wales, fell 100 ft to her death. For the first few days I felt like I was living in a nightmare - everything had the horrible, over saturated colours of fever dreams, nothing seemed to make sense. When the initial shock subsided there was the usual fallout - guilt, grief, just a terrible feeling that I'd failed her and an obsession with how dark things must have seemed to her at the moment she jumped. I wondered what went through her mind in the time it took between stepping over the edge and hitting the cobbles below. I felt like my heart and soul had been shredded, I was desperate to turn back time, to have her back, to find something to stop MY pain. I went through stages of thinking that if only she'd asked, I would have jumped with her. I'll never forget the noise her mum made when she went into the hospital mortuary and saw her only child's body laid there. I spent months sitting in the same chair, staring at the wall and crying and drinking and smoking and just wanting to die...

You never get over something like this - you never heal. The wound becomes a scar and you manage to live with it, but it's there for all time. I still think of her every day, but I've not cried for her for years. When I stopped crying I felt like that was a kind of betrayal. When I took my first shaky steps into a relationship after her, again, I felt like I was betraying her. I wrote suicide notes and made plans for my funeral and became paranoid that I would lose the photos I had of her. I made copies on cds and gave them to all my friends to look after, just in case...

Nine years later and she's still gone and I'm still here. I miss her - I wish she was still here, I wish there had been some way that someone could have saved her. I've never felt any anger towards her - not even for a second, not ever. Since then, I've been married and had a son. The marriage went the same way all my relationships go and I don't see my little boy as often as I'd like but he's a ray of absolute, golden sunlight in my life and the one thing that keeps me going when my thoughts turn to darker places - as they often do. If I'd jumped with Kate, he wouldn't be in the world. You just never know what life will bring...

Anyway, I wrote a poem about her - and another love I lost to suicide - a few months ago. And this is it.

We Have Decided Not to Live

We saw a sight you just can't imagine

as we stepped off the ledge

All discussion, delay and conflict finally beaten

... we silenced the treacherous voice of hope

finally free of its relentless insistence

that we try another day, another futile second

always winding back to here - no more

Did we think of you, at the lonely junction

between the lives you dreamed for us and the ends we chose for ourselves?

We did not - but you were with us every dragging step along the road that brought us to this place

Your love bound us, tortured us, baffled us, tied us to our pain

We know you did your best - but it couldn't ever have been enough

and in the time before we ceased to think of you at all, we thought of you fondly

with a sweet, regretful sadness for our small, imperfect lives

Now the time has come for us to let each other go - we can travel together no further

We will leave you with questions that can't be answered

and lives that will never be the same again

Our passing will open a door in your souls

and to the end of your days, from the corner of your eyes, you will see from time to time something flashing briefly on your dark horizons

some cryptic invitation

Some things can never be mended or made whole

and we have outlived all hope of miracles

we have decided not to live

[greenthing]

Oh mindpox (((((hugs)))))

since we seem to be in triggering mode, please don't read on if it will hurt you.

I never thought of suicide until the boy who lived opposite hanged himself from a tree when I was about 14. Since then I have thought of suicide daily... I was shocked and horrified but liberated and jealous. I've never thought of anyone else's suicide this way, but I still see him in my mind, still see his freedom from suffering, a body inert and a soul set free. Every time I have heard of some else's suicide since then I have felt nothing but sadness. Felt nothing but a wish that I had been there to tell them how loved they were, how missed they would be, and what a beautiful wonderful person they were, how proud they should be of having survived through suffering. Like everything else in the world, I feel nothing but a mass of contradictions...

[berenger]

I've got friends with mental health rpoblems who have died but neither of those was suicide. I had one friend who died and we waited about 2 weeks for an autopsy/inquest and i feared it was suicide. I went to a & e thae night i found out he'd died as i was feeling so bad.

It turned out he'd died of a heart condition. He was only 32 and had attemted suicide many times.

Another good friend died at 50.

I think i would find it really triggering if someone died of suicide that i knew. I find it triggering when famous people die of suicide or overdose, so god knows what i'd be like if i knew someone.

I never condemn suicide and i have a huge amount of sympathy for people who die this way

[doormouse]

I'm kind of glad we've felt able to discuss this - Statistically, somewhere between 1 in 10 and 1 in 15 people with BPD ultimately end up taking their own lives, so its a sad inevitability that once in a while, this happens in our community.

Three times, people I knew online have died. The two from here are H2H (Kerry) and icu baby. They were both women, 18 and 31 years old.

I felt shocked and sad, but its an odd feeling of loss, the loss of someone I never had a physical connection with, but a loss that I feel none the less. I also feel scared - I have been suicidal, and I guess its just a reminder that I can't have a "it'll never happen to me" attitude. It reminds me of the fragility of life, and the fragility of recovery in MH.

I've had longer to reflect on losing H2H, so I guess I think about how bad I felt at 18, and I feel sad that she'll never see what things are like the other side of it, sad that she'll never experience the enormous 'growing up' that happened for me through my early 20's.

I guess for both of them, I feel the loss of people I cared about, and the loss of so much potential. I feel grateful that I've recovered anough to feel some good things, even though life can be hard. And I feel devastated that they can't have that.

I do have religious beliefs about what happens when somebody dies - and for me, they are a source of comfort.

Jealousy? I think if I am not well, I could potentially feel envious of someone who no longer had to deal with life's generalised crap. I can also very much understand feeling angry - When my best friend died from leukaemia, I was furious that she's given up and left me, although it took more than a decade for me to realise that's what the feeling was. And I don't think anyone should beat themselves up for feeling that way.

Mousexx

[Ubix]

It makes me sad for the individual who as died, it also makes me angry at the MHS for not doing enough.

:)

[Carol-E]

In all honesty I have to say I feel

• Sad for all the families and friends
  

• Envious - that someone has achieved something that I want so often, but am not brave enough to do
  

[PlasticInsanity]

I'm sad she felt it necessary to go to those lengths to be happy, and I really feel for her family - I lost a family member just in October and I still vividly remember how uneasy everything was that first week, how lost I felt.. and he went from health issues. I couldn't imagine what the family is going through right now.

I'm not jealous.. there's a good chance that she's wishing she could come back. I wouldn't want to go and be forced to just sit back and watch the world go by. My thoughts go to her family, may they preserve her memories in peace..

[fedup!]

An ex boyfriend committed suicide when I was 24. I had a breakdown at 26 but to be fair I knew inside I'd been struggling with/trying to make sense of my MH issues since I was about 7 years old - there breakdown was inevitable.

My ex's suicide was a huge shock to everyone that knew him - honestly, none of realised he was going through a terrible time. This part really upsets me....should we have noticed? Did we not look closely enough? Could we have helped?

His daughter has grown up not knowing a truly lovely guy.

God. RIP J and all others who have taken this road. I really hope you are free from the pain now xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[successful_workthru]

Sorry to hear that someone has died on these forums.

Condolences to their friends and family.

It is sad to see such an intelligent professional person kill themselves, possibly due to not receiving the right health care and being treated badly.

I feel jealous of people who have died. Although I battle with suicidal thoughts, I always fear what happens to my consciousness when I kill my body. Will this violent act of self-destruction give me unpleasant karmic events? Thoughts like that.

A much liked friend of mine had a suicide verdict death a few years ago. I had no idea this friend was so depressed to commit suicide. Where I am concerned, I just miss the friend and wished they hadn't died, no matter what the cause was.

TRIGGER

If you have been in abusive relationships, or are in one, please think carefully before reading the text below.

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A question I always ask myself if this. What if someone who is being abused in any way, mis-treated by either an abusive parent/friend/spouse/workmate or whoever commits suicide?

How does the abuser/perpetrator feel when they hear of the suicide?

Do they blame themselves and learn the hard way that bullying is very wrong and become a better person for it?

or;

Are they so deep in denial about the abuse that they don't have any reaction or worse still don't care?

When I attempted suicide the people that had hurt me were very angry. I think they were angry because their actions held potentially terrible consequences and they didn't want that, they want to treat me like dirt without repercussion. None of the people involved became "better" people, they became in their eyes victims of my illness!

So sorry to hear this x

[successful_workthru]

I am so shocked and sad to read that ICU Baby has died. I didn't know her well, but had seen her around.

How I feel when someone commits suicide really depends on my own emotional state at the time. When I am feeling healthy, I feel sad and wish that something had been done. Probably angry that they weren't able to get the help they needed. If I'm feeling depressed/suicidal myself, I probably just feel jealous (and then guilty for feeling jealous.)

With abusers, maybe it depends on the type of abuse and the reason for it. For me, physical and sexual abuse of children (or adults for that matter) are so totally messed up that I can't see how the person could feel guilt. My parents emotionally abused me, but I feel that on some level they almost couldn't help it. Maybe I'm just minimising it, I don't know, but I know they'd feel guilty if I killed myself. My mum has told me she feels guilty for how she treated me as a child.

I know some emotional abusers do it very deliberately and with forethought. I don't think my parents did though. It doesn't stop it from messing people up, but I think some abusers would feel guilt.

Guilt is bad, but, it is good that your mum showed some remorse for how she treated you as a child.

This shows she must care about your welfare.

[Love&Me]

Sorry to hear that someone has died on these forums.

Condolences to their friends and family.

It is sad to see such an intelligent professional person kill themselves, possibly due to not receiving the right health care and being treated badly.

I feel jealous of people who have died. Although I battle with suicidal thoughts, I always fear what happens to my consciousness when I kill my body. Will this violent act of self-destruction give me unpleasant karmic events? Thoughts like that.

A much liked friend of mine had a suicide verdict death a few years ago. I had no idea this friend was so depressed to commit suicide. Where I am concerned, I just miss the friend and wished they hadn't died, no matter what the cause was.

TRIGGER

If you have been in abusive relationships, or are in one, please think carefully before reading the text below.

v

v

v

v

v

v

v

A question I always ask myself if this. What if someone who is being abused in any way, mis-treated by either an abusive parent/friend/spouse/workmate or whoever commits suicide?

How does the abuser/perpetrator feel when they hear of the suicide?

Do they blame themselves and learn the hard way that bullying is very wrong and become a better person for it?

or;

Are they so deep in denial about the abuse that they don't have any reaction or worse still don't care?

When I attempted suicide the people that had hurt me were very angry. I think they were angry because their actions held potentially terrible consequences and they didn't want that, they want to treat me like dirt without repercussion. None of the people involved became "better" people, they became in their eyes victims of my illness!

So sorry to hear this x

Thank you. As others said I don't think this is unusual sadly.