My mother confided in me (I was like 12 when she told me this) that she had once planned on taking my brothers and I into our car in the garage and turning it on, killing us all through carbon monoxide. At the last second she abandoned the plan and called my father, who was at work. My mother has always had mental health issues and I assume that's where my genetics come in for my mental health. Anyway, my brother and I were talking about how she almost did that and he said "I just can't believe she was going to do that, it's just so selfish. She would be leaving dad without a family, ripping everything he had away from him." This immediately made me angry. He's not wrong, it would be a horrific ordeal for my father and he would likely never pursue another try at a family ever again. And my heart breaks at that thought. But him saying that suicide is "selfish," is what made me automatically get defensive. He even has dealt with depression and he still thinks that, which of course is the separation between types of depression. There are a lot of people that do deal with depression, but just a brief period of it. No longer than a year or two. These people often resolve their depression through therapy. At least, that's what he says fixed his. But, then there are people like me. People who have been depressed for as long as they can remember, people who can't tell you any childhood memories because they've repressed absolutely everything and at this point they can't even tell you what they did yesterday. Those of us like that are the ones who understand how difficult it truly is to kill yourself, therefore, we are the only ones who know just how bad people who have ctb must have been hurting. To end my rambling, the main point of everything I said is that the reaction that we have when a friend or loved one commits suicide truly depends on the kind of person we are and what we have been through. When my mother told me about the plan she almost went through with, I thought to myself, man I really wish you would've done it. My brother on the other hand was horrified. It's just interesting how different we all are, how different our brains work.
