lovethyself
Posts: 1818
Joined: 11/4/2012
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Gauge
quote:
ORIGINAL: MariaB
I have had two friends who ended things. My best friend when we were 18, who talked about it often and who tried it often. I betrayed her in the end because I thought she was attention seeker. I have to live with that. Would I of had her committed? god yeah I would, if only I'd been a bit older and a bit more sensible.
Saying that you "betrayed her in the end" because you thought she was seeking attention is being pretty harsh on yourself, no? You saw someone that talked of suicide often and made multiple attempts. Obviously she didn't get the help she needed or she did get it and she really didn't want it. You can only do so much for someone and the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf applies here. How were you to know that after multiple tries she would really go through with it? Maybe she was seeking attention and she wore people down around her until they became dismissive of her talking about killing herself. Then when she really needed the help everyone around her chalked it up to, "We've been through this before many times." That is her fault, not yours. Ultimately you did the only thing you could which was remain her friend and be there for her as best as you were able. While you may feel guilty, it wasn't your fault, nor was it your choice, it was hers and hers alone.
Gauge, thank you for this post. It always helps to have someone else put into words how it isn't the fault of those left behind. God knows that I'm still dealing with it over a decade later.
quote:
ORIGINAL: hlen5
quote:
ORIGINAL: pahunkboy
He has 2 kids- so that will be something for him to think about.
Tell him that the children of suicides are 10 times more likely to kill themselves too. Does he want to set that example??
Hunky, here's something for your friend to consider. Up until your life is touched by suicide, most people don't consider it a real option. They joke about it ("Oh shoot me already"), make snide comments, or just insincere ones. It's made light of in a lot of our everyday language. Someone says that they just want to die, and some people just think to themselves that the person is just being dramatic. "No one does that anymore...."
That's how it was viewed in my school.... at first.
But once someone actually does it, it starts to become a real option. Not a healthy one, but one that perhaps they hadn't seriously considered before.
Now picture his daughters having to live through him making that choice. Not only have they been shown that this is an option, they've been shown it by one of the people that are supposed to show them how to develop into adults. How much more impact is his choice going to have on their growth?
I went through a number of suicides while in school. Every time it made my depression harder to fight through. The option of following them, making the pain end, became more real each time someone else chose that path. The one thing that kept me going through it all? I SWORE to my best friend that I would never put her through that hell again because of me. Even years after we stopped talking, that promise kept me going. I extended it to whoever I had to in my mind to remind me of how much pain such a choice leaves behind me. I could never be that selfish.
It's sometimes hard to see the pain it would cause others when we are in so much pain ourselves. Remind him of it.
One other thing that helped me fight through when I was feeling particularly low was chatting in a depression chat room. It's not for emergency situations. But what it did for me was give me a place to go where there were others that understood what I was going through. I felt not as alone with my pain, which made it more manageable. For me personally, it also helped that I was able to help others. Sometimes just having a private chat and sitting with someone that didn't want to be alone with their thoughts. I've always functioned better when I am helping someone else.
I know your thread was more about getting his medical card, and this doesn't really help that at all. I'm sorry for the tangent.
< Message edited by lovethyself -- 8/14/2013 8:10:53 PM >
|
RE: help getting PA medical card- friend becoming suicidal - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread