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Northern Ireland26499 Posts
Pure vent post, 3 weeks ago, an old friend from school took his own he was 29, as I am for another week until I hit the big 30.
Yesterday another friend did the same, he was 27. A fan of Starcraft and an enthusiastic participant in our local tournaments and banter.
A person who struggled with demons and alcohol, who I fucking failed. I exiled him from our community, correctly at the time but I can’t help feel he just wanted a place in the earth to fit in and I denied him that. For something that in the greater scheme of things didn’t fucking matter at all.
He posted some posts that get like warning signs on Facebook that I completely misread amongst the sea of general attention seeking and I thought he was just venting, I didn’t reach out despite it triggering my concerns.
I was institutionalised, I’m more au fait with mental health issues than anyone I know, not from choice. How did I fucking miss this?
My friend, who was studying medicine at Cambridge half a decade ago, died from an overdose in a fucking halfway house, he’d picked himself up recently and found a partner who seemed to raise his spirits, she broke up with him after 2 years, unbeknownst to me and it seemed that was the straw.
Perhaps nothing I could have said would have made any difference whatsoever, but I’ll forever carry a guilt on this issue.
Within our small, avowedly amateur and some 450 people strong Irish Starcraft collective, 2 young men have killed themselves in the last 5 years, the last one was only 19.
This is a fucking disgrace, for all my guilt I’m merely a guy with his own mental health issues, and no actual expertise outside the experiential.
Our suicide rate amongst young men in Northern Ireland is catastrophic, it’s a fucking disgrace and it’s a blight on our people. It’s the single biggest cause of death amongst young males in our province, although I can’t recall the exact statistics I believe it’s for men under 30.
It’s horrendous, fuck this. I cancelled having my kid visiting today as I am a complete emotional mess, couldn’t face seeing my son feeling I let a man die. Thank you TL for listening to my venting (if indeed you did).
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I'm sorry to hear that man. I'm not an expert by any means but as I was reading this Jordan Peterson video came to mind. Maybe it can help you in some way - + Show Spoiler +
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My dude there is no reality in which any of this is even remotely your fault. You just can't take personal responsibility for other people's actions; doing so amounts to treating/viewing them as children at best, non-persons at worst. Shit happens and our only course of action is to keep moving forward.
Stay strong. <3
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Sorry for your loss. Whenever I underestimated the value of life, I found the variety of animals to give me proof that it's always a gift and not a burden. Whether it was my now passed away dogs, or the porcupine family that made my garden their home lately (with me expecting them have a hard time dodging the cars around here  ), or the birds nesting in the elder tree. Learning to be compassionate is to appreciate life in my opinion.
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Don't blame yourself. you too are a victim of these suicides. You are not the person to rehabilitate suicide risks.
If you truly knew beforehand you would have acted. It's all just really sad.
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Northern Ireland22212 Posts
I wouldn't blame yourself for this. Our "politicians" have a lot of blood on their hands. Everytime I see that photo of Foster and O'Neill acting all buddy buddy laughing and hugging, it just reinforces the point that it's all political games for them, while people are suffering and dying.
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Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On October 14 2019 19:57 ahswtini wrote:
I wouldn't blame yourself for this. Our "politicians" have a lot of blood on their hands. Everytime I see that photo of Foster and O'Neill acting all buddy buddy laughing and hugging, it just reinforces the point that it's all political games for them, while people are suffering and dying.
Indeed. Some politicians and folks in the health/charity sectors do care about this issue and are trying, they’re getting fuck all help from those who hold the purse strings.
I don’t want to hear another platitude from politicians about how tragic it is when homelessness is an increasing problem and mental health and addiction services have funding cuts. What the fuck do you think is going to happen when you’re presiding over cutbacks in the three areas that are the biggest preventable risk factors for suicide?
Or the ‘trauma of the Troubles’ angle being used to explain our shameful suicide rates amongst young men. No, it may be a factor sure, but it frames this as some unique problem that is difficult to fix, to the detriment of looking at the obvious things that can be improved here. The former Yugoslavia had a civil war within my lifetime far more brutal in ways than the Troubles, albeit a different form of conflict and those countries don’t have abnormally high suicide rates last I checked.
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My condolences man. It sucks when people are in pain choose to hide it and try to carry on. We all need help sometimes.
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I know you may know this right now: You can't blame yourself for his death.
I'm not going to proscribe action or intent on you, and instead talk about my own experience and see if it rings true for you.
4 years ago, someone I knew in a online community I frequented, killed themselves. Last time we had spoken we had argued over some dumb shit. I knew some of her struggles and I had similar ones too, some of which I had bested.
I felt guilty for years, that I should have done something: that if we didn't argue things would have been different, If I had known, I would have taken her away from her awful family, that I would have done something anything! She was in my sphere of influence, I could have got to know her better, listened more...
I was sad, angry that the universe could do this, I remember the little things: bonding over a love for XCOM and how it absolutely destroyed me that she didn't live to see the sequel that she was looking forward to.
Upon reflection, we weren't super close: but that didn't help the guilt, the anger I felt.
I was angry at the lack of justice, I blamed myself because I couldn't get the universe or society to take the blame.
There was no magical solution, I carried the anger and sadness for at least two years, I've got better at dealing with it: letting myself not carry the burdens of others as my own, just because I know what the burden is like from prior experience.
I want you to think I'm a fucking preachy idiot who didn't experience any real loss and/or doesn't know shit, because I think that's natural and healthy even. If you can take the suicide of someone close to you like its nothing; you might have a problem. I don't want suicide to be a thing that just happens and yadada, this too shall pass.
I want change, and having some anger is a good motivator.
But to steal a line from The Wire: there ain't no shame in holding on to grief, as long as you make room for other things too.
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This may be too cutting, but there's no point in taking responsibility only after there's nothing you can do anymore. Even while the person was living, it makes no sense to be a bleeding heart for someone you didn't like or talk to much. Even with people we like, we can't destroy ourselves trying to help them, we can't ask people to destroy themselves to help us.
If you feel so bad about it, how are you going to behave differently in the future? Who are you going to help that's still alive and could use a little more support?
I guess I'm asking for you to have a concrete idea of what needs to change about you, and if nothing needs to change, then to please stop seeking attention for someone's suicide.
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On October 15 2019 07:41 Chef wrote:
I guess I'm asking for you to have a concrete idea of what needs to change about you, and if nothing needs to change, then to please stop seeking attention for someone's suicide.
you should be ashamed of yourself and immediately apologize to the OP for this childish and ignorant statement. opening up about an emotional reaction to another person's suicide is not "attention seeking" and if it is then it's attention seeking in the same way as any normal human social interaction. you are in a blog section. what are you expecting to see here if not people's musings about their own emotions?
after you apologize to OP you should seek out the person who taught you that seeking emotional support from the public is shameful and you should request an apology from that person for stunting and misleading you
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Northern Ireland26499 Posts
Thanks for the responses folks, I shall reply in due time but they did help.
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Northern Ireland22212 Posts
On October 15 2019 08:30 Wombat_NI wrote:
Thanks for the responses folks, I shall reply in due time but they did help.
hit me up if you ever wanna chat. i miss when all the boys would get on discord or teamspeak for a good REAL AISC TALK
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Don't blame yourself, you didn't know. I know it's not as easy as that but I know you wouldn't go out of your way to cause another person's suicide.
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There's probably -- or hopefully -- an organization near you that deals with people whose close ones have committed suicide. You mention that you're an emotional mess, so maybe give them a call if thats something that keeps up.
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4713 Posts
Hi Wombat,
I'm really sorry to hear about your loss. I can't know what you're going through but I can emphasize. I've been going through a situation of my own and, one advice I can give is, make yourself busy.
As others have said, don't blame yourself, while that can be common sense, its a lot harder in practice. That's why I say find ways to make yourself busy, work, play, family or whatever can get your mind of this will be of help.
I hope feel better soon.
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Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On October 14 2019 23:44 Kerotan wrote:
I know you may know this right now: You can't blame yourself for his death.
I'm not going to proscribe action or intent on you, and instead talk about my own experience and see if it rings true for you.
4 years ago, someone I knew in a online community I frequented, killed themselves. Last time we had spoken we had argued over some dumb shit. I knew some of her struggles and I had similar ones too, some of which I had bested.
I felt guilty for years, that I should have done something: that if we didn't argue things would have been different, If I had known, I would have taken her away from her awful family, that I would have done something anything! She was in my sphere of influence, I could have got to know her better, listened more...
I was sad, angry that the universe could do this, I remember the little things: bonding over a love for XCOM and how it absolutely destroyed me that she didn't live to see the sequel that she was looking forward to.
Upon reflection, we weren't super close: but that didn't help the guilt, the anger I felt.
I was angry at the lack of justice, I blamed myself because I couldn't get the universe or society to take the blame.
There was no magical solution, I carried the anger and sadness for at least two years, I've got better at dealing with it: letting myself not carry the burdens of others as my own, just because I know what the burden is like from prior experience.
I want you to think I'm a fucking preachy idiot who didn't experience any real loss and/or doesn't know shit, because I think that's natural and healthy even. If you can take the suicide of someone close to you like its nothing; you might have a problem. I don't want suicide to be a thing that just happens and yadada, this too shall pass.
I want change, and having some anger is a good motivator.
But to steal a line from The Wire: there ain't no shame in holding on to grief, as long as you make room for other things too.
I wish I could externalise some of my rather conflicted feelings outward into anger at you, but alas I’m not so wired and your post was very much appreciated and considered. The addition of a quote from the Wire, one of my top 3 shows of all time was also appreciated at my end!
As per what you said, I have quite the degree of contemptuous anger on this. Feels like other people can make a ‘this sucks’ post on Facebook and just get on with their lives without a great deal of thought outside of the immediate couple of days.
I’m an extremely emotional person, which has its positives and negatives. I’m bipolar which partly explains this I suppose, on the plus side I’m a rather honest and forthright person if you know me because well, I basically can’t hide my emotional state very well because well, I guess they’re more extreme than other people’s experiences. Which I think is a good thing and I embrace that, on the flipside things can really hit me very hard.
I know logically I can’t help people in certain circumstances, indeed I made a conscious decision to not take all of this on my shoulders. I realised I had to be in a good, solid position myself before I could take on the burdens of others, and I’ve largely stuck to that.
This was rather reinforced once I got discharged from psychiatric care and tried to keep in touch with others, keep an eye and try to keep regular social contact at the very least. I returned to work, education pretty quickly and they largely didn’t. I have a 6 year old kiddo and they don’t.
No amount of grabbing a coffee or playing some pool could really fill the void for them being out of employment, education and many of whom had been largely ostracised from families and friends too. To attempt to fill those demands myself would have just ended up breaking me in the end and I’d have been useful to no one. Schizophrenia is a bit beyond my pay grade tbh, they’re not bad people by any means but they can be hard to deal with at times.
It feels like there’s this conflict between the raw emotion of the experience (this is the second in 3 weeks too, the other was a friend from my school days), and me knowing logically that I cannot help in certain situations, this one included.
Still, there’s a lot of guilt nonetheless. Emotions don’t always play ball and be subservient to logical thinking. Rape survivors, who have been violated by contemptible individuals with no fault on them still report such feelings. I never really understood that, although it’s starting to make more sense to me now.
I guess I got the help I needed and he didn’t ultimately, while the sensible response is to be thankful that I did, angry he didn’t and aspire to a hypothetical where we both got it, emotionally I feel I got that help instead of him and pondering what the fuck made me more worthy of it than him.
Additionally I can’t even really claim that this was some bolt out of the blue that totally surprised me and ‘if only I knew’. That it didn’t surprise me one iota kind of attests to that.
I’d seen some stuff online that made me ponder reaching out more forcefully, and I decided against it. My first instinct was correct ultimately but, I just rationalised it as being standard Facebook venting that I see a lot of and dismiss on that basis.
I’m pretty angry that people do vacuously post attention-seeking nonsense to such a prevalent degree that I failed to distinguish between the background noise and a real cry for help.
I’m pretty angry that our official services and indeed wider society are failing to such a degree that someone in my position feels it’s his job to fill in the cracks they’ve left people to fall through, and is beating himself up for not being able to spin all those plates.
My friend informed me earlier that in his capacity as a paramedic he’s been called out to 8 suicides of men in the 18-24 in the last week alone.
This is a horrendous issue here, the extent of which is hidden by families not wishing to publicise the manner of their son’s deaths. I do not blame them whatsoever for wanting the privacy in such a time, but it does contribute to this issue being downplayed to a degree.
Within the last 3 weeks two of my friends from my alma mater have taken their lives. One of the prestige schools in our rather small country, they didn’t end up in any newspaper, for whatever reason that tends to be the preserve of people from more humble backgrounds. Perhaps the vulture media makes it worth the while of the families, who knows?
I have yet to make a friend in this life who has passed away by any method other than suicide, and I’m not 30 until next week.
That is, fucked. Can people from other areas of the globe say that?
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Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On October 15 2019 07:41 Chef wrote:
This may be too cutting, but there's no point in taking responsibility only after there's nothing you can do anymore. Even while the person was living, it makes no sense to be a bleeding heart for someone you didn't like or talk to much. Even with people we like, we can't destroy ourselves trying to help them, we can't ask people to destroy themselves to help us.
If you feel so bad about it, how are you going to behave differently in the future? Who are you going to help that's still alive and could use a little more support?
I guess I'm asking for you to have a concrete idea of what needs to change about you, and if nothing needs to change, then to please stop seeking attention for someone's suicide.
Thank you for the ratter blunt honesty, it’s appreciated, although unpopular.
Your assertation that I’m seeking attention is, deeply hurtful to me, I took it to TL because people either knew me m,’or knew the individual in question. I’m privy to certain details of his last days I’d rather his other friends don’t hear about, and of any internet venting forum in the world I trust TL and TLers.
Myself and a friend are working on some stuff, maybe it helps maybe it doesn’t.
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Northern Ireland26499 Posts
In terms of other responses, thank you. They’re all quite similar in ways, and come from folks I’ve grown accustomed to seeing on these hallowed forums over the many years I’ve been here, and part of the reason I stay here on TL spamming.
Thank you all, I can’t really think of a more expanded response outside of that, that’s basically it. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to engage with my current grim reality and it genuinely helped.
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Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On October 15 2019 07:45 brickrd wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2019 07:41 Chef wrote:
I guess I'm asking for you to have a concrete idea of what needs to change about you, and if nothing needs to change, then to please stop seeking attention for someone's suicide. you should be ashamed of yourself and immediately apologize to the OP for this childish and ignorant statement. opening up about an emotional reaction to another person's suicide is not "attention seeking" and if it is then it's attention seeking in the same way as any normal human social interaction. you are in a blog section. what are you expecting to see here if not people's musings about their own emotions? after you apologize to OP you should seek out the person who taught you that seeking emotional support from the public is shameful and you should request an apology from that person for stunting and misleading you
Frankly I don’t particularly care for a prompted apology for someone who would say such a thing in the first place, although I appreciate your post a lot nonetheless.
I posted on TL as I don’t use other forums, and either people in my real life either knew me, the afflicted or both of us and couldn’t really fully open up without people finding out things.
I really would prefer other people think that he had a ‘bit of a hard time that he couldn’t cope with’ than find out he was sleeping under bridges and halfway houses for the latter periods of his life, and quite a long period of time.
I’d rather not expose my own feelings to those I know on this, nor spoil the memories others had of a good and kind guy, despite his foibles.
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EPT
