I was pretty bummed out, I cried a bit, and gave my condolences to his family members I knew.
He committed suicide and I was really taken a back. We were together in college and I wasn’t aware of any deep depressions. He learned a few years after we’d broken up that he was on the autism
Spectrum. This answered a lot of questions for me but I wouldn’t say attributed to depression.
We ended up breaking up because Long distance wasn’t what he was looking for after I graduated and he still had a year left for undergrad and was going to get his masters.
I loved him so much. I consider him to be one of the most beautifully interesting people I’d ever known. So handsome and so funny. It kills me to know he didn’t feel that way, or that he felt not being here anymore was the right decision. It was a big loss to those that loved him, and so many people loved him. I hate to know that he was suffering like he did. He never showed it to me. I hope that means he didn’t suffer too many years.
When I was 18, I married my high school sweetheart in the garden of a beautiful victorian cottage. We were very much in love, but really struggled over the next few years and he grew into a bitter, angry, abusive alcoholic who flatly refused any help. At 21 I left and he moved to the west coast, where he wrote me sweet, apologetic letters. We talked about maybe getting back together but it never felt right, and a few years later he got addicted to meth and coke. The last time I saw him, he was delusional and paranoid about invasion from other planets. We talked by phone once in our mid-30s and he said he’d email me, but never did. About ten years later, I was curious so I googled him and found his social security death notice – he’d died the previous month due to alcoholism-related illness, at the age of 50.
The grief I felt surprised me; I wasn’t exactly widowed. He treated me really badly while we were married. We’d been apart for much longer than we were ever together, and hadn’t seen each other in years. I was happily remarried, and still am. But before he turned into a violent asshole, he was my first love and first husband, and we went through a lot together, both bad and good. Some part of me still remembers and honors that, and hopes he is at peace now.
Not mine, but I was a part of this story…
I worked for a local real estate agency for about 5 years as an IT guy. I knew all the agents by the time I left. A year after I left I made friends with a woman who dated one of the agents at the company I worked for. Turns out, for years her and I were showing up at the same events but never ran into each other. It was a very big small world coincidence.
Well, after two years of hanging out with this woman and becoming close friends, I get a call out of the blue from a former Co-worker that I knew at the real estate agency. She called to tell me that Shane, the man that my friend I shared a connection over, had committed suicide in front of his whole family right before sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner the day before.
Due to the nature of the breakup between my friend and Shane, she was kept out of the loop surrounding his death and I was the one that had to break the news to her. She took it pretty well, but I had to convince her to attend the funeral.
It was tough, but she got it through it, and in the end, she was able to reconnect with some friends she left behind.
We ended up getting more then a bit day drunk after the funeral, and I got to see a side of her I never knew exisited. A much softer side. It didn’t stay there for long, but it stayed up long enough for her to tell me the entire story of her and Shane and why they had separated, and why the friends of Shane’s were the way they were when it came to her.
She made me promise not to tell anyone, including her then boyfriend, and now husband and father to their child… And so I haven’t. For almost 15 years now.
We never spoke about it after that day, but a few years ago on Thanksgiving, she called me and thanked me for making her to to the funeral and face her past. She said Shane had been an open wound for years before his death. It’s something she regretted not facing when he was alive, but that she was thankful she got a bit closure.
Surprisingly, the whole ordeal took a toll on both of our beliefs. Once hardcore atheists, we became a little more open to faith. We both still despise organized religion, and the belief in God, or a single God… But the idea that the universe put us together as friends? That’s hard to debate.
Yes. I dated someone fairly briefly that I worked with over a decade ago. We were pretty, I dunno, “hot and heavy” I’d say for a lack of a better word. When he broke up with me I was pretty devastated. Anyways, Christmas 2019, I got a phone call from a mutual friend of ours telling me he had killed himself. I was so shocked. Seemed like such a happy dude all the time. I was at work and felt kinda in a daze all day. I never went to the funeral but I still think of our time together and smile. It was a fun time in my life and he was definitely part of it.
CW: Suicide
This January my ex boyfriend died by suicide. I met him because he’s my best friend’s brother, so not only were there a lot of weird and difficult feelings around him dying, but my best friend and her family, who I love so much, were (and still are) in a lot of pain. I spent the weekend of his funeral at her family’s house and it was truly the worst few days of my life. Seeing all of them in so much pain and feeling so helpless was a waking nightmare.
Our relationship didn’t end well and I didn’t talk to him. But I have a lot of moments still where I remember something good from our relationship and then I remember he’s dead and it’s really, really sad. And I know my best friend is struggling and it’s really hard to see.
Honestly, I don’t feel like I’ve healed from it. My depression and anxiety in general have been much worse since he died and a few other awful things happened around the same time, and with this lockdown I feel like I haven’t had the chance to try to get back to my normal life. I’m always in a state of heightened anxiety and when I think about him dying the way he did, and how much he had to have been suffering, it just hurts.