On this date seven years ago, a friend of mine from high school committed suicide. It still affects me today, and does so like no one else's death or, in fact, anything else does
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I've never had anyone that close to me commit suicide, but it always seems invariable that those people I've know who have had to go through losing a friend like that always seem to blame themselves for the death. I think if Michael had been any kind of a friend, he wouldn't want you to go through the rest of your life thinking that. I'd even venture as far as to say that I doubt there's anything you personally could have done to keep him from doing what he did, especially if he was depressed enough to have made up his mind to do something so final; that's not so much a cry for help as a decision that he didn't want to be alive anymore, and just being his friend wouldn't have convinced him otherwise - he needed psychiatric help. There was a period of time in junior high when I thought about suicide, and I was worried I would actually get it in my mind to do it, but that was much more of an inward thing, about depression more than anything else, not about wanting a friend; part of it also has to do with growing up, I think, because a lot of young people either attempt it or think about it. Maybe it's just because they think they're invincible, and don't consider the consequences or ramifications.
As to your thought about whether he might have been the type of friend you needed, I think you're just wishing that something could have happened between you two that didn't happen. It's easy to look back on your life and think how things could have been different, how you wish you could have improved things. I can sympathize, because I do that all the time with things in high school. There was this one girl I had a crush on when I was twelve, and one time she actually asked me to "go with her," and I was too shy to say anything so nothing ever came of it. There's this other girl I wish I had asked out my sophomore year, because I think she might have liked me, and I certainly liked her, but while a group of us were goofing around backstage during a drama performance I did something that made me come off gay, and I think she thought I was gay, and she left school the next year and I never saw her again. (Don't laugh, because that actually happened. I'm not gay.) Now that I'm 23 and could never get any girl in the world to notice me, I spend an idiotic amount of time wishing I could go back to high school or middle school and just talk to those girls, just to let them know how I felt. It's a stupid thing to do, because even if I had talked to them, that wouldn't mean that we would have gone steady, gotten married, had sex or done any of the other myriad of things I could imagine us doing. Just like I desperately want a girlfriend, you've got this hole in your life that you want filled and you look back at your friend, and in your mind you mold "what might have happened" to fill that hole. And just like me, you think about all the times you could have said something, but didn't.
Even so, what happened has happened, and whatever the circumstances, it's not your fault. The only way you could have been responsible if you'd known what was going to happen and could have told somebody, but you didn't know. And unless he left a note or told you it was because of you, then it wasn't because of you.
I just thought you should know somebody cares and understands.
I've never had anyone that close to me commit suicide, but it always seems invariable that those people I've know who have had to go through losing a friend like that always seem to blame themselves for the death. I think if Michael had been any kind of a friend, he wouldn't want you to go through the rest of your life thinking that. I'd even venture as far as to say that I doubt there's anything you personally could have done to keep him from doing what he did, especially if he was depressed enough to have made up his mind to do something so final; that's not so much a cry for help as a decision that he didn't want to be alive anymore, and just being his friend wouldn't have convinced him otherwise - he needed psychiatric help. There was a period of time in junior high when I thought about suicide, and I was worried I would actually get it in my mind to do it, but that was much more of an inward thing, about depression more than anything else, not about wanting a friend; part of it also has to do with growing up, I think, because a lot of young people either attempt it or think about it. Maybe it's just because they think they're invincible, and don't consider the consequences or ramifications.
As to your thought about whether he might have been the type of friend you needed, I think you're just wishing that something could have happened between you two that didn't happen. It's easy to look back on your life and think how things could have been different, how you wish you could have improved things. I can sympathize, because I do that all the time with things in high school. There was this one girl I had a crush on when I was twelve, and one time she actually asked me to "go with her," and I was too shy to say anything so nothing ever came of it. There's this other girl I wish I had asked out my sophomore year, because I think she might have liked me, and I certainly liked her, but while a group of us were goofing around backstage during a drama performance I did something that made me come off gay, and I think she thought I was gay, and she left school the next year and I never saw her again. (Don't laugh, because that actually happened. I'm not gay.) Now that I'm 23 and could never get any girl in the world to notice me, I spend an idiotic amount of time wishing I could go back to high school or middle school and just talk to those girls, just to let them know how I felt. It's a stupid thing to do, because even if I had talked to them, that wouldn't mean that we would have gone steady, gotten married, had sex or done any of the other myriad of things I could imagine us doing. Just like I desperately want a girlfriend, you've got this hole in your life that you want filled and you look back at your friend, and in your mind you mold "what might have happened" to fill that hole. And just like me, you think about all the times you could have said something, but didn't.
Even so, what happened has happened, and whatever the circumstances, it's not your fault. The only way you could have been responsible if you'd known what was going to happen and could have told somebody, but you didn't know. And unless he left a note or told you it was because of you, then it wasn't because of you.
I just thought you should know somebody cares and understands.
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