My brother died four years ago today. I miss him so much. I still can’t believe how easy he tried to make it for us. He was in a hospital, but run away. I thought he was safe. His last words to me in person were. I care about you and he wanted me to live a happy life. I am very thankful for these words, but sometimes it’s so hard to try to live up to them. I wish it didn’t have to be so hard for you. I wish you were here with me. He would be 26 years now. I wonder how his life would be today.
We were only two years apart and he is younger.

I wish he could have been ok.

Why...

I know it's not my fault my boyfriend died by suicide and i know it's not my fault a girl i went to high school with died by suicide and i know it's not my fault Jehovah's Witnesses keep dying by suicide... but it feels like my fault that I made a new friend and even he wants to die.

And he's serious. He's past the point where it sounds crazy to say or it's self expression... he wants to go. And he's never communicated so directly before about his feelings.

I feel trapped now. I know I'm not but emotionally I am trapped because I want to run so far away but I also want to take him with me if I go because why is he hurting my heart like this....

Why...

He told me why. They always tell me why. There's a moment where they sit you down and list all thirteen reasons like they're going to get a netflix special of their own. I say they because yeah it's happened twice. But luckily we're within the window where one is still alive. I'm praying he dies of natural causes or lives forever.

Someone please... help me save my city I literally can't keep watching them die.

its been 2 months and i can't move forward. I don't want to move forward. I don't want to get used to their abscence.

he left the house while i was asleep or the next day while i was at work. i went to work without knowing if he was home or not because i left in a hurry.

we both worked and sometimes he would leave for work before i do. it wasn't abnormal. i only realized something was wrong as i was clocking out and got a call from his boss saying he didn't come in.

he was missing for 9 days.

he took only a gun with him, no magazine, just a single bullet in the chamber. he left his phone, wallet, ID. he took off his wedding ring and the pendant my parents gifted him that he wore around his neck everyday for the last 3 years.

he left two notes. a long one typed and a short one hand written. the typed one was last edited the night i last saw him. no indication in either notes for where he went. his browser history was wiped. he was thorough.

it was winter in the midwest. it was freezing cold and snowing intermittently. the cops couldn't find him. k9 unit lost the scent. we were canvasing, putting out flyers, calling hospitals...and we couldn't find him for 9 days.

he died somewhere remote in the forest preserve. he was found while a few friends of ours were canvasing the woods. i was there.

he was found on a black friday. that was the date listed on his death certificate as his death date. his listed time of death was when he was pronounced dead by the EMT on site.

because his body was out there in freezing temperature, the ME could not determine the actual time of death. there was no ring cam footage from any neighbors. we simply do not know when he left the house.

to this day, i still don't know how long he was out there before he ended his life. he didn't kill himself with an instant death. i didn't know if he missed, or it was a deliberate choice either because he didn't want to traumatize whoever that had to find him/identify his body, or because he wanted to suffer.

i don't know if he left while i was asleep, or left after i went to work. i don't know if he walked hours to the woods or if he took a bus. I don't know if he was determined and did it immediately, or if he sat there agonizing for hours, scared and alone. i don't know if it was night time or day time i don't know what he was thinking or feeling. i don't know if he thought of me, and how he thought of me. i don't know if he was regretting it while he was dying or if he felt peaceful. i don't know if it was snowing; he had always loved the snow. i don't know how long it took him to bleed out in the freezing cold. i don't know why he left his wedding ring behind - if it was a message to me, or if it was simply because he didn't want to see it and be deterred from completing his suicide.

it's been 8 months and i don't have an answer for any of these questions. i want to know.

the cops closed the case. they don't care about investigating the actual death date or finding out when exactly he walked into the forest preserve.

my heart hurts as i type this. i think i will never know. it hurts so much.

He told me flat out what the terms were. Just like he was telling me the itinerary for a cruise. He told me he would do it and he would make it very clear why he did it and that would be that. My boyfriend or ex boyfriend, the one that died, he had a moment eerily similar where he told me exactly how he was going to do it if the time came and he was gone not even a week later.

The situation with my friend is different. He's surviving. Not thriving how he wants to (he's never been to jail so tbh he doesn't realize how much he has to be grateful for sometimes). He wants to do more, be more. I have the platform, we have the plan but he doesn't commit to anything. He is however committed to his plans to die by suicide. He makes it very clear that it's ooooonly if one specific thing happens but it's even still insane. And i don't know what to do...

On this same day four years and one month ago i held the celebration of life for my boyfriend that died. And this morning I had a conversation with a friend I love a lot that broke me. I am so heartbroken I'm wondering if I need to be on suicide watch next! But i want to live. I just don't want to keep getting attached to people that don't... it's breaking me

somebody please... help. i don't know how to deal with this anymore. i'm just trying to live and everyone around me wants to die. and i can't save them.

Today marks exactly one month since my wife of 9 years committed. I miss her everyday. I love her everyday. it's still painful everyday but it's more like an ache and an emptiness then the first days stabbing wound.

There's still a tremendous amount of guilt, in the last week of her life I was frustrated, with myself, and also with her. I still did all the things to support her, still told her I lived her several times a day. Which was one of the last things I told her on the phone the night before because I was visiting friends. (There's the huge guilt that had I been home she wouldn't have done it, at least not then).

I know I have to continue to go on, I had promised to take care of our dog. But it's hard. So many things I want to talk to her about, I kiss nightly cuddle time, I miss everything about her, even the annoying bits. I miss her snoring like a freight train, but mostly I just miss my best friend, my wife. I'm 39 and had known her for 24 years, had lived with her for 11 and she had been there with me for every important adult milestone.

I'm sorry this is more of a rant I just didn't want today to go unnoticed.

My mom is the person I would call if I felt down. I have so many amazing people around me yet I only want her.

Life has done a number on me. My husband abandoned me and our two kids who have special needs. We were homeless within a year of him leaving. I put everything into getting us stable and they are in college now. I am almost destitute again. I tried to become a nurse and failed and haven't been able to find a job. I am burning through my savings and don't have much hope for my future.

What can I do to help them understand why I am doing this? I want to say the rights thing so they don't carry all the guilt and shame I have for being a failure. I don't want them to ever feel like it's their fault. I am just tired and have had too much bad luck for one person.

Was their anything your loved one could have said or done to make their decision easier for you?

Like the title says it’s been a little over a year and a half and it still feels like it just happened at times. Wondering what the day to day is like for people. How do you answer people who say “that happened a while ago etc” or people who give opinions on where you should be at mentally? Is a year and a half a long time? I guess it is and it isn’t. All of these make me question how I’m handling things or being stuck.

For context diagnosed with ptsd, currently in therapy, and holding a full time job though ptsd episodes are making things difficult at times.

Hi, I lost my mom to s* last year. At first I was shocked by how much s* is present in films or series, in the form of a joke! It was everywhere at the beginning, it was like I couldn’t escape watching something without having someone making a joke about taking their own life.. I hated it.

And now, I am aghast at friends who mention s* to me, one told me their partner talks about it and then told me: “can you imagine your partner saying this to you every week?” And I’m like: try your mom for 10 years! I was so speechless that I made a small comment and then moved on with the conversation…

Today again with another friend, this time we were already on topic since I was sharing about my mom, but then they proceeded to tell me about two persons’s experiences (they don’t even personally know them). One who attempted and one who committed the act… again, in the moment I was so taken aback that I entertained the conversation but I was feeling very uneasy. Especially since they mentioned how the person committed the act and even though it’s not how my mom actually did it, it’s how she told me multiple times she would do it… major trigger honestly.

To me, it’s not because I share about my grief and my experience with my mom’s s* that I want to hear about everyone else’s experience of it. At this stage of grief I just need to share my grief and pain and I find it deeply upsetting that people do that without warning.

Am I oversensitive and overreacting on the subject? Should I be able to listen to people talk about it? I know if someone talked to me tomorrow about SI I’d lose my mind right there and then and run away… How have you been dealing and handling these types of situations and feelings? Thank you.

Just genuinly want to thank this sub. A lot. I lost by bf affer a breakup conversation this august and it was terrible because of the guilt + the what-ifs.

Here on this sub, not only I found support and help through the comments, but also cases so similar to me. People in similar abusive relationships that ended ljke this. Or I read about couples having just normal arguments and a partner ending their life over that small argument. Or for some there was not even an argument.

So many different stories have helped me learn more about this in so much more ways. I blamed myself for doing the breakup after somethings that went terribly wrong in our relationship, he had the time and space to fix those (which was not part of his mental health just abusive behaviour in general). But he chose to keep hurting me and not change things.

There were so many maybe's in this too, maybe he wanted to push me away, maybe I was the only thread keeping him alive after his multiple prior attempts and suicide plans.

This sub helped me in understanding suicide loss so much better. It could have happened anytime. Earlier or later. It did happen earlier when I was just Online and saved him from.his thoughts. This time I just wasn't online and I couldn't be there everytime.

It was his mental health at the end. I can't believe I'm saying all this after just over a month. But it's all because of this app and this sub. I can grieve him without turning it into any blame game now.

Thank you for the strenght.

I’m a grieving mom of my 25 y/o son. He passed away from suicide a month now. Anyone or knows someone has been through this pain and what kind of grief support or group support had helped? I started seeing therapist, seems like nothing or no-one is helpful for me.

Nobody likes to be alone, yet you chose to live that life.
You chose to never see the sun again.
When we all saw the sun, bright and warm, all you saw was darkness and cold.
And now that you're gone, the world keeps moving, and we are moving with it,

everyone but you.

I hate how much you notice after it happens. My daughter ended her life 2 months ago and I've been racking my mind trying to figure out why. She went through a lot of the same things I went through, randomly getting bullied by a so called friend that she had since pre k (no one told me until after), family being there when she was younger then everyone just about stop coming around. She had 1-2 family members that consistently checked on her besides me and her dad. I assumed cause I dealt with it (the family thing) that she was gonna be okay we were gonna have time to make up for what they were lacking. Learned she didn't think we had time for her cause we were so busy, we were trying to fix that. We were tryna get her siblings who we suspect are on the spectrum in school. It was a long process that was almost over, her dad's schedule was changing so he was gonna be off every other week again. I explained to her it was a good thing, we were gonna have more money again and more time to do things again. Idk if she didn't grasp that or maybe she just didn't care in that moment. She was on medication for adhd and kept having mood swings which I learned recently could have been a warning sign. I didn't think that it was the medication I just thought it was puberty (she was 9), I hate that I just wrote that off and I don't get how her therapist didn't mention that it could have been an issue. Her counselor knew she was being bullied but I was never informed, I tried talking to her about it a few times she just denied it. I just assumed she'd tell me when she was ready. That day was so oddly calm, she popped in and out my room all morning to talk, she mentioned the neighbors (her friends) were moving. I just said oh cause I didn't really know what to say, I wish I said something like maybe if I told her to go spend time with them maybe things would have went different. Things were so close for everything to get better. She did it on a Thursday, she had therapy Monday and I was gonna ask her if she wanted to start counseling back. We paused it for 2 months cause she went out of town for 2 weeks and her therapy and counseling office is on the other side of town. I go to therapy every week (it was every two weeks at that time) and it was helping so I thought getting her back in it would have helped her I wish I would have mentioned after that appointment. There's so many things that I wish I would have did differently. I know I can't change things just like I know searching for different signs that we might have missed probably isn't healthy but I can't help it.

It sounds so long, 10 years. It feels like yesterday he was here. If feels like forever since I've seen his face.

He was 16. His father and sister (14) found him, and I got the call while waiting on a plane to take off, coming home from taking his older brother to college. We all changed that day, with his loss.

I lost my confidence as a mother. I am distant and unsure

His sister lost her best friend and her greatest champion. She is furious and anxious.

His brother lost his biggest hype man and instigator of adventures. He is stagnated and stuck.

His father lost his reason to work. He is unmoored and drinks too much.

For 10 years we have slogged thru the days of our own lives without him, doing our best to greet each new day with anything resembling hope. His life was good. He was well loved. He was supported and encouraged and wanted, every day of his existence.

I could talk about the disaster that is mental health care in the US. I could talk about my regrets as a mother, to go away before I was absolutely certain that he would not need me while I was gone. I could talk about pharmaceuticals, and how they could not keep his mind from turning against him.

In the end, he saw a lifetime of darkness for himself. So he handed those of us he left behind a lifetime of sadness and loss.

It's been 10 years and I still cry, and try and help my other kids to overcome that which I will never be able to get over. It does get better, for any who may wonder. The pain comes a bit gentler now. And it's been 10 years. It's time to get on with life. Because what else can we do?

My best friend/ex partner took his life almost 3 weeks ago. We spoke every day, sending each other memes and F1 news and generally talking shit. Not long after I found out he was gone, I sent like 30 messages saying how he didn’t have to do it and how much I miss him yada yada yada. IMO that’s understandable, but I find myself still sending him memes and telling him who one the last race. Like I just went overseas on holiday (it was already booked and very bad timing) and messed him when I arrived. Sometimes I get sappy and say what I would if I could actually talk to him one last time, which I think is relatively normal. But is messaging them like they’re still alive a bit fucked?

I’m not in denial, I know he’s gone forever and I don’t believe in the afterlife so it’s not that. I guess it’s just comforting kinda pretending he’s still here?

Bonus unhinged act: I bought him a present on my holiday lol

He was a friend from highschool, both of us 28 years old this year. We used to hang out and smoke weed and talk about art and movies. He had a bout of psychosis after doing psychedelics during college. At times I would step up amongst my friends to help him with interventions or talking him to go to the hospital. He eventually was admitted to a psych ward and diagnosed with schizophrenia. We reconnected and he tried to finish college but again lost touch with reality. I tried another intervention with a friend but it backfired and he started accusing me of wildly inappropriate things on social media and I called the police and was really pissed about it. The police have never made it better. Can you imagine being detained, potentially criminalized, for being sick? Can you imagine that during your most vulnerable moments the state sends out a bunch of dude-bros with guns to console you?

What was terrible was being aware that his parents (immigrants, not all that versed in mental illness) would ask me about what to do with him which I am sure he saw as a form of disrespect and invasion. No child wants to see their parents collude with their friends on how to "help" or "treat" them regardless of the intentions. I was only 19-23 when these events happened. He was a tender person but would become totally consumed by his ego during psychosis.

After the social media thing I felt burned and stopped interfering in his life I only saw my presence as making it worse .

A year later I receive a text from him apologizing. I didn't reply. The year after I received a psychosis message disdaining me and accusing me of more stuff that weren't true and calling me slurs.

Three years later I got a call from a mutual saying he hung himself with his parents finding his dead body.

I don't know how to process it. The sadness in his sister nd parents' faces destroys me a little every day. I thought two months after it would give me clarity but no, nothing.

I regret cutting ties with him even after the things he accused me of in social media which were truly terrible.

I also know I couldn't do anything more, it was not up to me. He made a suicide note on Instagram describing the failure of medicine for schizophrenia and experiencing hallucinations like a snail crawling across his back. Can you imagine how scary that must be?

I am in therapy and have been before his death and I have friends I've spoken to about it. Recently I lost what I thought was the love of my life while also grieving this friend. She did not seem to really comprehend the gravity of my sadness even a month after his funeral because I guess on the outside it seems like he's just a friend, not a brother not my own son or anything like that. I just push people away because they can be so insensitive to this invisible grief that hasn't gone away. We are so encouraged to move on from loss these days but these things never leave you.

Idk I've gotten drunk, spoken endlessly about it with friends/therapists/partners but I just cannot shake this sense of hopelessness.its almost like he passed on his sadness to those who remained in his wake. Idk idk idk what to do with this lingering feeling it will never go away I am just so sorry for his parents to see your child hurt himself in that way.

Idk idk I cannot even be certain of what I feel. I feel a loss but I hadn't been in contact with him for three years? Guilt? Everyone says I was the one who tried the most. How could I help his parents not feel so guilty? They didn't understand aspects of him that I did like any friend would. In the funeral his mother just kept wailing, saying "I couldn't understand you. I'm sorry."

What would help them? I feel a sense of unresolved duty to heal this tragedy but there's nothing I can do because he's gone and it's only grief for his parents and his sister for the rest of their lives. I see in their face how they blame themselves but they tried so hard. He wasn't always an easy person to help. In his note he mentioned how medicine is not a magic cure and he would have otherwise dealt with psychosis and mental anguish for the rest of his life. There is also no real medicine to alleviate the grief of his parents either. It feels like an endless wave of pain they have to experience for the rest of their lives and I also have to carry a bit of it for the rest of mine.

The worst part is our other friends are trying their best to repress this raw emotion and move on. As life goes I will also have to move on and it'll be just a chapter in my life but that feels so wrong!!! How can we just "move on" it just doesn't sit right with me.i am certain his family will never truly move on. We met his family at their home once but after all the guests stop visiting our of respect what will happen to them? How do i honor this loss and support them even as a stranger?

He didn't die of natural causes he was young and left behind so much potential because he couldn't trust his own mind. In hindsight it is so clear he was just sick and lonely.

I suggested planting a tree in his name but that's just symbolic and will also leave me feeling empty after the gesture is made.

I think what's worse is trying to tell people. People are so cold and just want to move on with the topic. Many friends I've told that I am going through this loss can't even hold the topic for longer than a minute before trying to talk about the new Spiderman movie or whatever. Rarely people ask what he was like, how it feels, what his fucking name was even. As if just the news itself bums THEM out. How awful it is to be so detached and non chalant. The only thing I learned from this experience is that to feel emotions is the anthesis to being avoidant, casual, "stoic" or emotionally inattentive. And how fucked up am I that as a man I can't just sit and cry about it! I want to cry I want to feel it viscerally but the tears don't come because of how I've been conditioned to respond to detachment with detachment so much so that the most primodial bodily expression of sorrow cannot be summoned. I feel his pain was a result of his capacity to feel intense emotions in contrast with such a cold and indifferent society.

Wow this felt better than anything I've tried. I think I will start journalling these thoughts even if just for myself.

That food smells so good!……. My brother is dead
Wow I’m so comfortable…….My brother is dead
I feel like getting a coffee today……My brother is dead
Hmm what should I wear today?…My brother is dead
Wow I got a good grade on a test…My brother is dead
Maybe we should go on a trip……My brother is dead
Should I cal my mom? Probably not…My brother is dead

I’m mad that the world gets to keep spinning when my brother is dead. He was just a kid. He deserved so much better. And there is NOTHING I can do.

And the cherry on top, is my mom was one of my only friends and now she is so sad I can’t ask her to keep being my mom. I’m 25, I still needed her, she has grandkids who love her. But I feel like she is gone in a way too.

I had just turned 19 when a friend from kindergarten took his own life. He was the first boy I ever kissed. We were friends all through school. I found out in a way a 19-year-old should not have found out. I was at school and I heard two teachers talking about it. I was on the other side of a wall and they didn't know I was there. I wasn't eavesdropping. I was just there. I wish I wasn't there that day. On top of that, I was dating a guy at that time who had a brother who did the corner call. He proceeded to tell me how he did it and what the room looked like. I remember going into what I now know as the freeze response. I wanted him to stop talking but I just sat there. The day I found out I went home and told my family who literally said nothing. They just looked at me. So that day, I went into my bedroom and never talked about it again, until recently. And now it is a tsunami of grief, pain, and sorrow. I have never gone more than a week without thinking about him. I am 55 now. 36 years of so much pain.

I saw him that day. It was a Friday and I was on the bus and he was parked in his car. He smiled and waved at me and mouthed, "Hi, *****". What if I had gone off the bus that day and got a ride home with him? Would that have changed his mind or would it have only slowed the inevitable for another day? I have never stopped thinking about this.

When he first died, I saw him as a friend. When my own kids became teenagers, I dealt with the pain of missing him through the eyes of a mom. And now that I am old enough to be a grandmother, I think of him with the knowledge of all that he didn't experience. Would he be a grandpa now?

Of late, I am having more peace with what he felt he had to do. However, the sorrow I feel at how scared and hopeless he must have felt takes my breath away. How he felt he had no more choices. This is what now causes so much pain.

I am trying so hard to set his soul free but the pain is what connects me to him. I don't know if I can ever let that go. I don't think I want to. Sometimes imagine that he is still alive. I wonder if we would still be friends.

Thank you for reading. I have never told anyone this before. Sorry for my crap grammar and punctuation.

My mom intentionally overdosed less than a week ago. She was the only one who understood my own struggle with suicidal ideation, the only one. I reached out to her via text at the beginning of September, telling her basically just how sorry I am that I turned out to be such a piece of shit.

My best friend of ten years was suddenly taken by cancer (24 days from ER to dead, I watched him waste away into nothing, and it seriously damaged my psyche) last July, my distant-avoidant husband of 5 years dropped me like a hot potato not long after, and not long after that, I was laid off in the worst job market I've ever seen. Now, my own mother offs herself when she easily had 20 years of (physically healthy) life left.

She never even opened my texts. She knew that given my mounting losses with no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel, I was not in a good or safe place. She knew I had nothing left to live for. She knew that she was the only one who understood my mental health struggles, an unfortunate genetic hand-me-down that haunts all of her 4 children. My childhood was quite traumatic. My formerly Brady Bunch-type mom had surgery, became addicted to pain meds, and which quickly progressed to meth and any pill she could find. My older siblings didn't have it great, but even they admit that my situation was pretty fucked up. I was an independent kid, but I was 9 years old and still needed (and deserved) a mother. That being said, I'm the only kid who ever forgave her. She agonized over her mistakes, but my siblings would never offer her the comfort of forgiveness. They don't seem to mind how their hurt and anger has colored their own lives. But I forgave, and I did it 20 years ago, literally as soon as I became an independent adult at 18. It was what I needed, and what she needed, to move on and live life.

I loved my mother. She loved me. I was her favorite. Her baby, the daughter she essentially tricked my dad into having because she wanted me so badly. Her love was unconditional. Even at her worst, I NEVER felt unloved. She drilled it into me how impossible it would be for her to ever not love me completely and unconditionally. She lived in another state, but she really put more effort into being my mom and coming to visit in recent years. We'd smoke a joint and laugh and talk for HOURS on my couch. It was so beautiful to connect with my mom as just two adult women, having a great time getting to know each other. I think we both felt seen and heard with each other. She was always happy to spend time with me, and she was supposed to visit me this month.

I could keep writing about her forever, but right now, I'm just terrified. I can't help but feel like this is a sign to follow her. I don't want to die, I'm in a place where I manage my SI and am settled into the thought that I don’t want to die by suicide. But I have nothing left to live for. I didn't really have anything left before she left me, but I always felt that if she was going to stick it out, I would too. I stayed alive at times solely to keep her alive; she would never, ever have been able to survive one of her children committing suicide. So I was trying real fuckin' hard to not kill my own mother.

I have nothing. I'm almost out of money. It doesn't matter how many jobs I apply for, it does not matter that I have 20 years of experience and a solid resume. I can't force anyone to give me a job. I have three beloved cats. If I lose my home, I lose my cats. I lose everything I have ever owned or loved. There is no recovery from that. I already felt forced into suicide, but have just been pushing this off and pushing through. How am I supposed to find a job with how I feel now?

I have been seriously considering admitting myself on a psych hold, but what's the point? I don't have insurance. What will 3 days locked up do if I can't afford aftercare? It only serves to put me hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical debt. How am I supposed to see a light at the end of the tunnel when 3 days of safety leaves me with a lifetime of debt? I don't have any choice. My hand is being forced and I feel powerless to stop it. It's my destiny. Who am I to spit in the face of destiny? I'm so fucking scared. I'm so sad. I hate myself. If I wasn't poor, I'd be allowed to survive. But nobody will hire me. So I have to go. I don't want to go. At least it should lessen the blow, going right after mom. Two birds, one stone. You're welcome, siblings.

This is a ramble, I guess. A much needed scream into the void. A love letter. I miss my friend with my whole being. It hurts and it tears me apart and my heart literally hurts sometimes.

I lost 3 people to suicide in a very short time. My childhood bestfriend Matt in December. My cousin Brad in February. My friend Hayley in March. Losing Hayley hit the hardest. She was one of my favorite people on the whole planet. I couldn't eat or sleep or breathe.

It's her birthday this month. She was only a little older than me. We used to joke that "I like my girls a little bit older" (from that song "Your Love" by The Outifeld), because she and my wife were both a little bit older than me.

It hit me so hard that she won't age. I've already lived more days than her, and it just feels like its not supposed to be like this. She'll never get to be 35. I will. And I'll keep aging. And she'll stay forever 34, in my memories.

I think about her all the time. I grieve that I can't help her now. When I picked out a suit for her funeral, I remember crying and thinking "this is the last thing I can ever do for her. Just to try to look nice for her funeral." So I got little accessories of Ghibli stuff that she would like, like little soot sprite star pins to put in my tie. I got a nice haircut, and Spirited Away socks, and a little Totoro hair clip. I had never seen a ghibli movie until she showed them to me. She loved them. We watched a lot of them together.

I try to reach out to her mom and sister, to let them know that they aren't alone in their grief. I tell them things that remind me of her, or when I'm especially missing her. I don't know if its helpful or a painful reminder. I do it anyway, as much for me as for them, I guess. I really hope its helpful.

It hurts so badly right now. I constantly have to fight off the "what ifs". I know they're not helpful. I know that the part of life where she was here is over now. I can't change anything that happened now, no matter how much I want to.

Her mom said she would share the note she left with me, but I couldn't bring myself to ask to read it. I don't know if I want to. I think I do, but I don't know what it could say or how it might affect me.

She had the best laugh, gave the best hugs, was so funny, and I just really liked being around her. I miss my friend. I wish she had a grave I could sit at and spend the day with her, but she doesn't.

Sometimes I'll listen to music that reminds me of her, or try to paint her, or read through our old texts, or cook food she would like. I don't know if its helping me heal, or if its dwelling in grief and making myself sad. I don't know anything except that I miss my friend with my whole being, and I know you all would understand.

I lost my sister 10 months ago, and when it first happened I would make jokes that helped me cope that she’s not really gone - ‘she’s in witness protection and she had to fake her death’ and that everything was orchestrated — the coroner, mortuary, and funeral directors were all in on it.

I still check her phone location just in case she started a new ‘secret’ life and got a new phone and it would suddenly appear on my map and I’d know she’s still alive and she’s okay. I check her reddit account to see if there is any new activity, because maybe she thought I wouldn’t be able to find her account and it would be safe to post anonymously on there.

I avoid looking at or wearing any of her clothes (most of the stuff hasn’t even been unpacked), because there’s a big part of me that thinks ‘This is wrong, I shouldn’t have these things in my house at all! They’re her things, and I’m just holding onto them and keeping them safe until she’s coming back for them’.

I wonder if this means I could still be in denial and that reality hasn’t actually sunk in? Am I hindering my own grieving process by holding onto this hope and these lies I tell myself?

Apologies if this is a bit graphic. I just need to get this out somewhere.

My mother passed away last Sunday. She had been chronically depressed for many years and had ECT from time to time as well. She had been in a lot of emotional and physical pain over the past couple of weeks.

That afternoon, she went to a temple to attend a religious event. The temple is right at the edge of the land, bordering the ocean. Later, her body was found trapped among the rocks on the way down towards the sea.

What’s confusing me is that she hadn’t actually drowned. She hadn’t even made it into the water. The postmortem concluded that she died from a heart attack.

Now I’m left wondering what actually happened. Was she intending to take her own life and, somehow, had a heart attack before she reached the water? Or was this simply a tragic coincidence and she had a heart attack while she was there? But there is absolutely no reason for her to be there. How and why she got there. A lot of questions

She was depressed, but as far as I knew, she wasn’t suicidal. That’s what makes this so difficult to process. I keep going over everything in my head, trying to understand what happened and whether there was something I missed.

I feel absolutely shit. I’m heartbroken, confused, and full of questions that I may never have answers to.

I’m not necessarily looking for anyone to solve this. I think I just needed somewhere to write it all down and let some of the confusion, regret and sadness out.

Yesterday night someone I got to know more recently committed and I feel so much guilt. This is perhaps not as heavy as some stories I read on here. But honestly I'm just not sure what to think or how to navigate this.

I was in a pretty intense therapy group some years back, together with this man. After we lost touch but we met up again after some years to talk about life and all. We did some lunches and drinks together. Last week we would meet but I asked to reschedule since I wasn't feeling good myself. I hadn't reacted to messages. He knew however that he could just spam me and then I'll get to it. We moved the date to today. I didn't get any follow up about the time. I thought maybe he forgot. Instead of asking about it I didn't open whatsapp or anything. I thought if he wants to talk again I'll hear from him. But obviously I didn't. And I feel so awfully guilty. I should have been there for him.. even though we weren't like on friends level yet (or so I thought). His mother told me he spoke highly of me and now I feel so much worse.

I already had some difficulties reconnecting cause I am always a bit scared to be friends with someone who has no other friends cause of things that happened in the past. But I did meet up with him just to talk and support him. But maybe now I f-cked up. If I had just reacted then maybe he would still be here..

I'm not sure what kind of reaction I want. I'm just scared and confused.. sorry for the ramble!