Gerry Temple
New Member
- May 8, 2023
- 2
I was 15 years old. He was 17. He drove me to school that morning. He seemed a bit off, said he was sick, but he didn't appear to be showing any signs of illness. He was unusually quiet that morning, with a cold, emotionless demeanor.
I went throughout my day. We had a class scheduled together that morning, that he was absent for. I remember some sort of group project being assigned, and I texted him asking if he wanted to work together on it, which portion he would be interested in. No response, and I didn't call to follow through.
We would stay after school to play games with friends for about an hour after classes ended, and it was just me that day, with our mutual friends. A few minutes before I would have called my parents to ask about when they would arrive to pick me up, my dad called me. He had a frantic tone, mentioning the suicide note left on the counter. I was astonished, emotions stirring between some state of disbelief and recalling a premonition of this moment, as if I were suspended in time. I was alarmed and visibly distraught. A friend of mine noticed and asked what the issue was, and obviously I declined to mention anything.
I got a ride home from a different friend. His parents knew little English, and they did not pry, even though my mood was obviously overcome with fear and distress. I told them to drop me off at a nearby gas station, for me to walk the rest of the way home. I called several mutual friends of ours, asking if they had seen him. There were helicopters flying around searching, and I remember this friend, a neighbor, asking me on the phone "are those helicopters looking for him??" I ended up spending most of the evening at their place, where they served me a dinner I couldn't eat.
I returned home later. I remember speaking to an investigator, at that point still in complete shock and disbelief, assuring her and myself that he was not gone, that the search party would find him. I was smiling and laughing about our memories, mentioning some odd signs and behavior that is now difficult to recall. When I went to bed that night, he still was not found, and there still was a search crew looking for him. I remember my dad waking up in a fit near midnight, ready to burst out the door to find him, but myself and my mother convinced him otherwise, worrying for the worst, what kind of scar it would leave him to find him dead.
I had nightmares that night, some strange imagery of him coming back home, only to return to the back yard and cover himself with stacked logs as if it were a tombstone. The following morning, we woke up to a crew of officers who told us that they found him, and he was confirmed dead.
He took a pistol from the house, drove our car to the end of the street, left it running, and took his life in a shallow pond in the woods. It was a single bullet to the head, whereupon he fell beneath the pond.
That was more than 11 years ago now. I have grown older, moved away from home, and established myself. I was his only sibling. My parents are still alive, too, and they are now both retired.
Not a day goes by where he does not cross my mind. My life changed so drastically after we lost him. I began to take life very seriously, focusing incredibly hard on school, with hopes and dreams to apply myself fully, to make a meaningful future for myself. Such a focus on academics was the best coping mechanism. I lost 50 pounds that year, from a rather overweight child to someone who was fit, running every day and waking up early to work-out in my backyard. I applied myself, found a girlfriend my senior year, and applied to college to move across the country.
My parents got a legal settlement from a medication he was taking - Accutane. This medication has been linked to numerous suicides. This settlement was the only reason I could afford to go to the prestigious college I was admitted to. I've since graduated from that college, and now I have recently finished a graduate degree at an Ivy League university. I would have never conceived of accomplishing so much when he was still alive, as neither of our parents even went to college.
I miss him so much, and I wonder frequently what would be of his life and mine if he were still with us. He was incredibly intelligent. He had a good group of friends that he spent time with, though he wrote in the journals that he left behind - that he felt he had a mental illness where he could not connect with others, that the people who surrounded him were not his "friends," and he did not believe that he could actually make meaningful friendships.
I am not suicidal. I have been through periods of depression and severe stress - for myself, that mostly comes to shape as substance abuse, though thankfully I've never taken hard drugs, nothing worse than prescription amphetamines, kratom, alcohol, weed, molly, or psychedelics. I do have a hard time staying sober, though, even if it just takes nicotine or weed or vyvanse to get me through a normal day.
Yet I moved so far from our small town. I have a wonderful community of friends here in a big city thousands of miles away. There is so much life that he never got to experience, so many joys that he never witnessed, of traveling to breathtaking state parks, of seeing world famous musicians at festivals, of finding your own niche in a city with people who can actually understand who you are, of learning a new language and immersing yourself in a foreign culture. He could have done all of this and more, and I know he would have loved it, just as any other human does.
I wish that I could go back and tell him how much I loved him. How much I still miss him. How much I wish he had opened up to me, to our family, to our friends, to find the love and support that he had around him all along. To go to a psychologist, get off the fucking acne meds if that's really what killed him, to learn to see the light within him and discover the joy that we all have within us. He deserved so much more. Our family was not perfect, and our town was a depressing, isolated place. There was so much more that he never got to see, that he never could have seen in this life he ended so so early.
I discovered this website recently, alongside all of the negative press portraying it as some sort of 'cult' where people encourage each other to take their lives. I think I understand the community here a bit more thoroughly due to my firsthand experience. People can not talk about these things out in the open. I do not tell anyone but my closest friends about my brother, nor go into detail with anyone but a few select people that I deeply trust. This is a community that is born out of the crippling censorship surrounding the topic of suicide, and I think that if people felt more comfortable to express themselves openly without fear of being institutionalized or met with disbelief, so many thousands of lives could be saved.
But if this story resonates with you, and you are struggling with suicidal ideation, please - just tell one person that you love them. I don't expect you to put yourself into danger, and I know well that most people do not know how to respond appropriately. One of my closest friends now, I met him a few months after he had attempted suicide and was institutionalized himself. We have been incredibly close and supportive of each other for years now. You deserve love, and you deserve a life worth living. I hope that is something you keep close to heart.
I went throughout my day. We had a class scheduled together that morning, that he was absent for. I remember some sort of group project being assigned, and I texted him asking if he wanted to work together on it, which portion he would be interested in. No response, and I didn't call to follow through.
We would stay after school to play games with friends for about an hour after classes ended, and it was just me that day, with our mutual friends. A few minutes before I would have called my parents to ask about when they would arrive to pick me up, my dad called me. He had a frantic tone, mentioning the suicide note left on the counter. I was astonished, emotions stirring between some state of disbelief and recalling a premonition of this moment, as if I were suspended in time. I was alarmed and visibly distraught. A friend of mine noticed and asked what the issue was, and obviously I declined to mention anything.
I got a ride home from a different friend. His parents knew little English, and they did not pry, even though my mood was obviously overcome with fear and distress. I told them to drop me off at a nearby gas station, for me to walk the rest of the way home. I called several mutual friends of ours, asking if they had seen him. There were helicopters flying around searching, and I remember this friend, a neighbor, asking me on the phone "are those helicopters looking for him??" I ended up spending most of the evening at their place, where they served me a dinner I couldn't eat.
I returned home later. I remember speaking to an investigator, at that point still in complete shock and disbelief, assuring her and myself that he was not gone, that the search party would find him. I was smiling and laughing about our memories, mentioning some odd signs and behavior that is now difficult to recall. When I went to bed that night, he still was not found, and there still was a search crew looking for him. I remember my dad waking up in a fit near midnight, ready to burst out the door to find him, but myself and my mother convinced him otherwise, worrying for the worst, what kind of scar it would leave him to find him dead.
I had nightmares that night, some strange imagery of him coming back home, only to return to the back yard and cover himself with stacked logs as if it were a tombstone. The following morning, we woke up to a crew of officers who told us that they found him, and he was confirmed dead.
He took a pistol from the house, drove our car to the end of the street, left it running, and took his life in a shallow pond in the woods. It was a single bullet to the head, whereupon he fell beneath the pond.
That was more than 11 years ago now. I have grown older, moved away from home, and established myself. I was his only sibling. My parents are still alive, too, and they are now both retired.
Not a day goes by where he does not cross my mind. My life changed so drastically after we lost him. I began to take life very seriously, focusing incredibly hard on school, with hopes and dreams to apply myself fully, to make a meaningful future for myself. Such a focus on academics was the best coping mechanism. I lost 50 pounds that year, from a rather overweight child to someone who was fit, running every day and waking up early to work-out in my backyard. I applied myself, found a girlfriend my senior year, and applied to college to move across the country.
My parents got a legal settlement from a medication he was taking - Accutane. This medication has been linked to numerous suicides. This settlement was the only reason I could afford to go to the prestigious college I was admitted to. I've since graduated from that college, and now I have recently finished a graduate degree at an Ivy League university. I would have never conceived of accomplishing so much when he was still alive, as neither of our parents even went to college.
I miss him so much, and I wonder frequently what would be of his life and mine if he were still with us. He was incredibly intelligent. He had a good group of friends that he spent time with, though he wrote in the journals that he left behind - that he felt he had a mental illness where he could not connect with others, that the people who surrounded him were not his "friends," and he did not believe that he could actually make meaningful friendships.
I am not suicidal. I have been through periods of depression and severe stress - for myself, that mostly comes to shape as substance abuse, though thankfully I've never taken hard drugs, nothing worse than prescription amphetamines, kratom, alcohol, weed, molly, or psychedelics. I do have a hard time staying sober, though, even if it just takes nicotine or weed or vyvanse to get me through a normal day.
Yet I moved so far from our small town. I have a wonderful community of friends here in a big city thousands of miles away. There is so much life that he never got to experience, so many joys that he never witnessed, of traveling to breathtaking state parks, of seeing world famous musicians at festivals, of finding your own niche in a city with people who can actually understand who you are, of learning a new language and immersing yourself in a foreign culture. He could have done all of this and more, and I know he would have loved it, just as any other human does.
I wish that I could go back and tell him how much I loved him. How much I still miss him. How much I wish he had opened up to me, to our family, to our friends, to find the love and support that he had around him all along. To go to a psychologist, get off the fucking acne meds if that's really what killed him, to learn to see the light within him and discover the joy that we all have within us. He deserved so much more. Our family was not perfect, and our town was a depressing, isolated place. There was so much more that he never got to see, that he never could have seen in this life he ended so so early.
I discovered this website recently, alongside all of the negative press portraying it as some sort of 'cult' where people encourage each other to take their lives. I think I understand the community here a bit more thoroughly due to my firsthand experience. People can not talk about these things out in the open. I do not tell anyone but my closest friends about my brother, nor go into detail with anyone but a few select people that I deeply trust. This is a community that is born out of the crippling censorship surrounding the topic of suicide, and I think that if people felt more comfortable to express themselves openly without fear of being institutionalized or met with disbelief, so many thousands of lives could be saved.
But if this story resonates with you, and you are struggling with suicidal ideation, please - just tell one person that you love them. I don't expect you to put yourself into danger, and I know well that most people do not know how to respond appropriately. One of my closest friends now, I met him a few months after he had attempted suicide and was institutionalized himself. We have been incredibly close and supportive of each other for years now. You deserve love, and you deserve a life worth living. I hope that is something you keep close to heart.
