Venting Has anyone here lost friends due to becoming suicidal? What happened?

[RileyTanaka]

It's funny how suicide prevention campaigns always tell people to open up to others about their suicidal thoughts and to reach out for help. Listening to someone talk about their reasons for wanting to die and actually being inquisitive - more importantly, without an agenda - is simply more difficult than what most people can do. Unless they're someone who can actually sit and think critically about the kind of suffering people can experience, and more importantly, ask "why do you want to die?" it will automatically seem like a drastic, unnecessary option. They may not fully grasp the obstacles, pain, or circumstances you're dealing with. They won't be in your body, mind, and feel what you have to feel on a daily basis. Most people will want to either help you on their terms (e.g. getting you into a hospital, calling 911, etc.) or distance themselves from what they consider a frightening situation.

I wonder what it's been like for others who have made the choice to tell their friends they don't want to live anymore? How was it received? How did it affect your relationship?

I opened up to about 3 friends in my real life about my need to die a few years ago when I became chronically ill. Every single one of them stopped talking to me. One of them phoned the cops on me, saying that I didn't give them a choice. The ones who didn't call the cops simply cut me off, despite many years of faithful friendship and help on my part. One of them said they understood why I'd want to die, but that they couldn't be involved in any way with our friendship anymore... It didn't matter that I used to be someone they respected, went to for advice in the past, or offered practical or emotional support to. All of that went out the window when I spoke about the fact that my health was making me want to die.

I find the isolation of being suicidal to be the hardest part, and while it's amazing that this site exists to connect with each other about it without censure, it would be so much better to have honest, intelligent discussion about it with the people we love in our lives. Maybe they wouldn't feel so betrayed, hurt, and confused when you finally do go. Maybe they'd even be able to say goodbye and end any unresolved business you may have with them. And without people being encouraged to have open conversation about quality of life, suffering, and death with dignity, I don't see how suicide will ever be fully understood by people around us. If you're teaching people that it's unilaterally the wrong thing to do, then we will always be forced into isolation before ending it. It just sucks.

 

[SpareWheel]

No, but I've lost a few due to my poor behaviour, which wouldn't have happened had I not been so intent on self-destruction. I don't actually talk to friends about my feelings. I listen to others problems sure enough, but me, I'm a closed book.

 

[Wellokthen]

Yes I've lost a friend, she was everything to me, I loved her. She ghosted me, she stopped talking to me, it was so painful. I still can't stop thinking about her.

 

[Deleted member 1496]

...suicide prevention campaigns always tell people to open up to others...

I recognized someone I knew on reddit who had been in psych wards voluntarily. She always said I could talk to her, so I PM'ed her, asked if it was okay to ask her some questions and not to tell our mutual friend. She agreed, so I wrote. It didn't take two hours before someone else asked about what I wrote her. I played it off, deleted my reddit account, and went dark. If she said she had to tell a mutual friend, then she shouldn't have agreed to keep things confidential. Yet another reinforcement of trust issues.

Because I don't want to be held involuntarily in my county's psych ward, don't want my N taken away from me, don't want to answer a whole bunch of questions by opening up a can of worms, I'll never open up to anyone again. Although I wanted a CTB partner, I will probably die alone because I don't know whether the other person will intentionally or accidentally (e.g., thinking incognito mode makes you undetectable or untraceable) reveal information that will get me caught. Another reinforcement that I have to be on my own. Thank goodness this forum exists.

 

[BabyYoda]

Almost did. Some friend of mine threatened to leave me if I didn't improve in managing my situation. I don't open up to him anymore.

 

[RileyTanaka]

No, but I've lost a few due to my poor behaviour, which wouldn't have happened had I not been so intent on self-destruction. I don't actually talk to friends about my feelings. I listen to others problems sure enough, but me, I'm a closed book.

You were probably struggling, right? How do you feel about losing them?

I recognized someone I knew on reddit who had been in psych wards voluntarily. She always said I could talk to her, so I PM'ed her, asked if it was okay to ask her some questions and not to tell our mutual friend. She agreed, so I wrote. It didn't take two hours before someone else asked about what I wrote her. I played it off, deleted my reddit account, and went dark. If she said she had to tell a mutual friend, then she shouldn't have agreed to keep things confidential. Yet another reinforcement of trust issues.

Because I don't want to be held involuntarily in my county's psych ward, don't want my N taken away from me, don't want to answer a whole bunch of questions by opening up a can of worms, I'll never open up to anyone again. Although I wanted a CTB partner, I will probably die alone because I don't know whether the other person will intentionally or accidentally (e.g., thinking incognito mode makes you undetectable or untraceable) reveal information that will get me caught. Another reinforcement that I have to be on my own. Thank goodness this forum exists.

I'm sorry this happened to you. It's definitely better to be cautious even on a forum like this. You just never know who you're really talking to and their feelings/intentions re: suicide.

 

[StillWaiting]

I have lost all?
It is probably my attitude though but I think people tend to avoid people who are way too negative.

 

[GoBack]

I have lost all, because I let them go. Which was stupid because they were good friends

 

[RileyTanaka]

I have lost all, because I let them go. Which was stupid because they were good friends

Well if you let them go, there must have been a good reason at the time.

 

[Nem]

At least a couple of friends stopped talking to me after I had made a plan to die and one called the cops. There is no such thing as reducing the stigma on talking about suicide...never
Peace/hugs

 

[GoBack]

Well if you let them go, there must have been a good reason at the time.

There was lots of reasons, but nothing that couldn't have been sorted out. I got a psychosis and no one knew. It was complicated and still is but mainly because I've made it so.

A

Well if you let them go, there must have been a good reason at the time.

There was lots of reasons, but nothing that couldn't have been sorted out. I got a psychosis and no one knew. It was complicated and still is but mainly because I've made it so.
Editing is hard
This is hard ,to explain, I let them go but they didn't know I was suicidal, they thought I just fucked off because of some stuff

 

[Fizz]

This is one that created the storm I'm in now. I was in a job that hollowed me out; the role changed the week I started, and because I am in a niche industry it's hard to move to a new role. Day after day was emotionally exhausting and demeaning, and I was reduced to nothing. Despite this I did all the things I was supposed to do. I saw counsellors, psychiatrists, went on meds, and I job hunted every night, all the while fantasising about walking out in front of traffic.

I told people. I begged for help. I took all the things about opening up at face value and did it. They knew who I was seeing, what I was doing, why it happened. A couple of people said some stock platitudes, most ignored me. I stopped going out. I used to be the organiser of events, but now I wasn't organising them so they were arranged by someone else and I wasn't invited.

A close friend of mine was going through delayed onset grief after the death of her mother. We didn't speak much last year, but she transferred that pain into anger at me to save her from turning it into herself. Things had been starting to look up - I had found a job and I had left the old one so I was vulnerable, but optimistic for the future. She came back to the flat we shared one day drunk and just laid into me for not trying hard enough to fix my depression. She used everything I had said in confidence against me, and destroyed the fragile shards of self-esteem I was only beginning to put back together. There's a lot more to this but in the end, even though I tried to reach out to her with understanding while holding some personal boundaries, she claimed to mutual friends that I was an abuser who blamed her for my depression. I lost a lot of friends over that lie. I don't trust people anymore to help, because talking about it made it worse. The good keeps being drawn from my well but no one is coming to replenish it and I don't have any left to hold on to. I don't want to live a life where I have to concoct a personality that is not me just to have friends.

 

[Gromit-CTB]

Lost friends who have ctb and also lost friends because I want to ctb.