I sure as hell didn’t.
That’s the tragedy about stories like mine: nobody saw it coming. Nobody saw how deeply and utterly lost and saddened my brother really was, how lonely and abandoned he felt, how angry he was at the world for leaving him and disappointing him.
Not his teachers, who saw him in school every day. They saw how he hated being there, how he was disgusted by how they treated the kids because the “teacher is always right”. How the principle was so unfair to everyone, the only way was their way. But they didn’t think much of it, because that’s just how teenagers act, right?
Not his friends, who heard him complain and spew on about how fucked up living is. Those who saw him deteriorate and get involved with drugs and acting more and more reckless towards the end of his life. They didn’t think much of it, none of them. Not even the one friend who he asked what was the best way to kill yourself. She answered to jump in front of a train and that is the method he chose. Not even she thought it was kinda disturbing someone so young asked how to kill himself most effectively. She told him how to.
Not his girlfriend, who he was probably closest to. She was too busy with her own feelings, she wanted space or something. She told him he shouldn’t let his happiness depend on whether or not he was in a relationship with her. But she was his last light in this world. And when she broke up with him, only a week or two prior to him dying, she broke him completely.
Not even us, his sister and mum and dad. We didn’t see. We knew he was doing bad, but not that bad that he would want to kill himself, or actually do it. I will forever mourn the fact I didn’t see.
And I will forever hate everyone else who didn’t.
We’re all too busy, in this world where everything moves so fast. Our evolution makes us go in overdrive, we work and eat and work and study and socialize and work some more and go on every day. But we feel, throughout every day, we feel so much and all the emotions move in our body and make things more complicated. We tend to overthink things. We worry, we fear, we cry. We lose ourselves and lose those around us. We are not in touch with anything or anyone.
6 comments
Hi snader. Im so sorry for ur loss and the pain u feel.
Things these days are so interconnected and attached and watched and viewed and they say “stay connected- and stay alive.” Its as if we see all too much of our phones and TVs and computers and in stores and everything materialistic. And thats what they want. But who is “they” you ask? something mankind has created that grew into a monster more powerful then all of us now. We have become more interested in the uninteresting and it seems to be getting easier to be superficial and unaware of things around us. The more connected we get- the more we are disconnecting ourselves from each other. and we are being born and made into forgetting how to care and nurture and pay attention. The things around us are impacting who we are, and yet we still surround ourselves with our own devices and it is slowly changing all of us- training us to become; one of them. An emotionless body with meaningless lives. Lives that cannot translate the word ‘help’. Don’t be afraid.
Hi snader, I remember you from years ago when you first posted. I was deeply affected then, and I’m deeply affected now, especially due to the passing of time and the confirmation of what I’ve always felt: time does not heal all wounds.
Reading some of your old posts, I realized that you & I have 2 unusual things in common. And unfortunately these 2 things make us statistically 310x more likely to commit suicide. Go team. Also (are you sitting down?) you have a 3rd factor which multiplies it by an additional 2.1x, making you a whopping 651x more likely to kill yourself than the average human. So let’s just say, from where I’m standing, you set off every suicide alert this side of the Mississippi, and that’s why I had to reach out to you.
I don’t want to get into your/my personal details in public, but if you read this and feel so inclined, you can email me at the address that shows up next to my username on the comments for this post.
To address the subject of your post “who knew?” I think the answer is not many people. Even though the signs are all there, very few people see it. It’s not necessarily that people don’t care, but sometimes they just don’t recognize the warnings & risk factors.
Last thing I wanted to throw out to you: believe it or not, you have a rare characteristic that’s working very strongly in your favor, and it may mitigate some of that 651x risk, maybe enough to make you a normal human being haha. Well, maybe statistics & CDC reports are hogwash, but if nothing else they help us know what we’re truly up against.
I would really like to email you, but I’m not seeing your email-adress anywhere?
Hiya. This site can be sorta confusing. After logging in, go to “Dashboard”, then click on “326,587 Comments” and then hunt through all of them in reverse chronological order until you find it. Haha or try this link because I found it on page 8
http://suicideproject.org/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?paged=8
So sorry for your loss, I can empathize with you. I lost my husband to suicide and never saw it coming. No one did.
And though I know it was no one’s fault, not even my husband’s, I have a lot of hate inside that rears its ugly head at times. Toward him, myself, our family, our friends. Each day is a little better, though. Each time I feel overwhelmed by my anger over no one seeing it, the feeling lasts a little less than the time before.
It will get better… Be sure not to allow the hatred and anger consume you. More good is brought into the world with a loving heart, and we survivors need positivity more than anything ?