He killed himself

[shutterbug]

A friend of my family who i've known since childhood was found dead today.

He shot himself Thursday or Friday....in the head with a shotgun.....as he'd talked about doing for years - explaining how he'd actually make it possible to do with a shotgun.

He was schizophrenic and rarely stayed on his meds.
My dad, his other friends and his ex-fiance's and girlfriends would always try to get him to stay on his meds, but he never would for long. He'd been off them for years.

He'd gotten so bad that he'd recently sent death threats in the mail to my father.....the scary kind where he cut words out of magazines....like in the movies. My father finally had to go to the police out of real fear for his own safety. Neither he, or this man's other best guy friend could ever figure out why. They are in the same line of work, which is how they've known each other so well for so many years and my dad has hired him to come and live with us many times when i was a child to have help in his own shop while helping out his friend.

Luckily, he'd sent my dad a several page appology letter...trying to explain the death threats to him and why.

He was always odd....often "high" and giggly....often extremely angry for no reason....and would often switch in the middle of a sentence. My sister remembers the later part quite well as she was closer to him than i ever was....and several times he would take out his rages on her to the point our father had to step in.

The worst i remember was the day i found out of his illness because he was freaking out in an hallucination that he had ants crawling all over his body and biting him.

It's a bit odd, the timing of it i suppose......as i hadn't thought of this man in a couple years until last week when we needed a photo only my dad could provide us on short notice. The photo was beautiful and featured both this man and another of their friends on a hunting trip together......[i]this man with a shotgun in his hand[i]. It appeared on the front page or our paper.

Last weekend, i took 3 copies of the paper to my father. He asked for 3, so he could have a copy of his photo published and send one to the other guy and mail one to this man. He will never get to see it now.

I'm a bit sad b/c it is a sad thing, but so many people have fought so hard to help this man for most of my life, decades, and he refused the help. What i am more sad for is his talents lost to the world and for the hurt my dad and my dad's friends will now have to go through (the one closest to him is taking it pretty hard)......all which could have been avoided.

Jenna

[Toomutch]

May he rest in peace.

[best]

Originally Posted by shutterbug

......all which could have been avoided.

Jenna

Jenna


My prayers are with you and if I may...

Such things are not avoidable. There are many If's but when a person is wanting to do such a thing, they will find a way no matter what we try to do to stop it.
What adds to the sadness will be all the people who will question and blame themselves. We don't cause it. We can't control it and we sure can't stop it...if we could, it would never happen to anyone.
I lost two friends and with both I questioned myself as well. It is a natural response when such happens. We only see the outside of a person. The inner thoughts, even if we could see them...we still couldn't stop such. At most we could do would be to help put it off for a time if we could see the inner thoughts of another but we can't ever stop it when a person is wanting to do such to themself.

[nandm]

Mental illness can be so devastating.

I think of all the times I could have wound up dead from a suicide attempt or of all the times I could have followed through with my thoughts of suicide. Although there are still times when I have the thought of suicide, at least right now, the thoughts are not consuming like they have been in the past. I can actually see suicide for what it is today, it is a permanent solution for a short term problem. I am so grateful that I am able to listen to the people around me and know that I need to stay on my meds for my depression, PTSD, and anxiety disorder. There have been times in my life when I would not allow myself to trust anyone else enough to listen to them when they felt I needed to have changes in my meds or that I am not someone who needs to try and go med free. I think back to the first time I actually connected my drinking to suicide and realized that my drinking was just a slow suicide that was not only killing me but everyone around me who cared about me. It was at that point that I realized I either needed to find a way to live without drinking or go ahead a put a gun to my head. Thank God, I was given an alternative and AA was put in my life.

It is too bad that in our society there is still such a stigma attached to mental illness. Too many people fear what they don't understand, think that one should just "get over it" when they are depressed, think (like I did at one time) that anxiety disorders are just for attention, or think that mental illness is not a disease. It is sad that many times I feel I have to hide the fact that I have a mental illness because I feel like people will think or treat me differently and not want me in their life if they knew. Unfortunately for many people this is true. It is the same for my alcoholism. We live in such a judgemental society.

Time for me to get off my

I do have to laugh sometimes at the thought of how people would react if I had to introduce myself with all the things that have stigmas attached to them. I would have to say "hello, my name is Judith I am an alcoholic, lesbian, with PTSD, depression, and an anxiety disorder. Do you want to be my friend?" :rof I can see them running for their lives......... Oh well, such is life, the people that matter in my life know all that about me and still love me. Guess that is what truly matters. I love this saying I found the other day, found it to be so true:
"God determines who walks into your life....it's up to you to decide who you let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let go."

Thank you to all of you who have chosen to let me stay in your life right now.

[best]

Originally Posted by nandm

Thank you to all of you who have chosen to let me stay in your life right now.

*HUG*

[shutterbug]

Originally Posted by Best

...and if I may...

Such things are not avoidable. There are many If's but when a person is wanting to do such a thing, they will find a way no matter what we try to do to stop it...

Thanks Best....I know what you mean, but that's not what i meant by the statement. What i meant was that It would have been an avoidable thing IF HE would have taken responsibility for his illness and taken his meds. This was no one's fault but his own. That i know well.

I also understand it all more than most since I'm also one with a lot of suicidal tendencies myself....which is even possibly for why i'm not as upset as i might should be. I know all too well what he will no longer have to live through.

:ghug

Jenna

P.s. Sorry to hear about your losses as well. so sad.

[best]

Originally Posted by shutterbug

This was no one's fault but his own. That i know well.

The nature of the illness for some has them not take their meds. It can be part of the inner battle of the illness for some.
I can't put the blame on him either.

[TiredMama]

I am so sorry shutter.

[shutterbug]

Originally Posted by nandm

It is too bad that in our society there is still such a stigma attached to mental illness. Too many people fear what they don't understand, think that one should just "get over it

so true.

my girlfriend called me the other day....she's about to a place where she needs to be back in day treatment (where i met her...she too is bipolar). He chief complaint was her husband never helping with her 3 un-ruley children....one of which is 8 and was just suspended for telling kids he was going to kill them and then saying he was going to kill himself.

She said depression is NEVER talked about in her family because it is seen as shameful.
I asked if her husband would go to a therapist with her once or twice and she said absolutely not b/c he thinks it's all a gimic and she just needs to "get over it" because that's what he does.

That's why i wish they would come up with a TOTALLY new word for clinical depression....so that the general public will stop associating it with the typical times of stress and sadness that every human goes thru periodically.

Originally Posted by nandm

I do have to laugh sometimes at the thought of how people would react if I had to introduce myself with all the things that have stigmas attached to them. I would have to say "hello, my name is Judith I am an alcoholic, lesbian, with PTSD, depression, and an anxiety disorder. Do you want to be my friend?"

girl, i'd be like.....COOL!!!! Because we'd already know so much about each other and have so much in common! (except for the lesbian part i have expierence with all those things....but with my track record with men i've definetly thought about crossing over many times! lol)

[zoolu58]

There are times when I still think of suicide. I hate feeling the way I do. I want someone in my life and I pray for it but it doesn't come.

[historyteach]

(((Jenna))))

I'm so sorry for your loss...

Shalom!

[nandm]

Originally Posted by shutterbug

Girl I'd be like.....COOL!!!! Because we'd already know so much about each other and have so much in common! (except for the lesbian part i have expierence with all those things....but with my track record with men i've definetly thought about crossing over many times! lol)

LOL.....actually even more in common, I forgot to say bi-polar also.

I can understand poor track records with men. I was married twice but my reasons were not because I wanted to be with them it was because I thought that I was doing what was expected of me. Spent way to many years trying to be what I thought others wanted me to be. Finally learned that I have much more peace when I just allow me to be me. I have always known that I was different even from a young age. In fact my kindergarten teacher wrote a note on my report card telling my parents that if they did not make me start wearing dresses, stop playing with the boys and the boy toys then I would wind up being "one of those people." I still laugh when I read it because she had me pegged but little did she know that it had nothing to do with not wearing dresses or playing with the boys. It took me 20 years longer than her to figure it out about myself. I ran across a friend I had not seen since gradeschool and she was not surprised when she found out I was gay. Her comment was "I knew then that you were." Some things are so obvious to others but we ourselves have blinders on.... I don't regret my marriages though. I have 3 wonderful daughters as the result and they love me despite the fact that I am a bipolar, depressed, anxious, alcoholic, lesbian with PTSD.....:rof :rof

[shutterbug]

Originally Posted by zoolu58

There are times when I still think of suicide. I hate feeling the way I do. I want someone in my life and I pray for it but it doesn't come.

ditto.

I think that's why i'm such a work-a-holic.
It often helps me be too busy to think about how lonely i am and how unloved i feel. But....i have faith it won't be like this forever.....

just know you are definetly not alone...
not at all....
4 years without a date or a kiss and i finally meet someone...
and they empty my checking account and steal my car
(turns out they are a crack addict)

Now.....now....
i have a person wanting to be with me...
saying he loves me and wants to get married and have a child....
and that he's getting help and changing (and actually is going thru some of those motions of getting help)
and yet....i have to push him out of my life.
The one person who acts like he wants to be with me and loves me more than any other person....and i have to drive him away and erase him from my daily thoughts and heart.

hard to do.
so, so hard to do.

[shutterbug]

Nan....isn't that odd how things work out like that?
I wish people could sometimes just tell us!
I actually wonder about myself sometimes if i'm bi b/c i do find women so attractive, but if i were....what kind of life is that??!! Doesn't make sense so i just chose to ignore it and actually this is the first time i've EVER said anything to anyone at all about it. oh well. I don't think i could live the alternative lifestyle even if i ever did decide i had the...i think i'd be too much of a shock to my system. But who knows? Maybe there is a reason why i never get asked out by anyone. dunno. i try not to think about it b/c it makes me too sad.

anyway....love....or lack there of rather.....kils.

From what we know....it's also the reason our family friend killed himself. Is there really any other reason?

[Easeful]

I'm so sorry to hear your friend's death. It's just now dawning on me how often a piece I hear on the news probably has an underlying story that never gets told. Sad.

[Doug]

I'm sorry Shutter. Thoughts and prayers for him and all of you near him.

[hippyhippy]

I am so sorry to hear of your friends death Jenna. I pray that he will find peace in death that he did not in life.

Hippy
xxx

[splendra]

(((SB))))

Sorry to come in late on this one. I am sorry for your loss.

I have said this before about the meds for schizophrenia make the person taking them feel bad you can't blame them for not wanting to take them. Some people can tolerate the meds more than others.

I too feel like giving up sometimes. I feel isolated and lonely at times. I remember feeling like I needed someone to complete me. I am now with that person but hey it ain't all it is cracked up to be. It's about crack alright lol...now I still feel like giving up and I feel lonely and isolated.

Originally Posted by zoolu58

I want someone in my life and I pray for it but it doesn't come.

What I wish is that when I met him I had given myself time lot's of time instead of buying his load of crap. I wish I had known that the someone I was praying and hoping for to come and be in my life was really myself...

[shutterbug]

Originally Posted by best

The nature of the illness for some has them not take their meds. It can be part of the inner battle of the illness for some.
I can't put the blame on him either.

you are right.

I should know better. Sometimes, I guess i just have the whole "superman" idea of myself and sometimes others who are like me. But even tho i work my butt off to do as much as i possibly can to stay mentally healthy.....my depressions and mood swings and life stresses.....often get the best of me too. I honestly can't even say for certain that i won't ever take my own life just to be able to have an end to it all. I definetly know i don't want to live forever and making it to 100 just seems cruel....so no, you are right.....sometimes, no matter even how hard we might try, our illnesses just get the best of us.

May he rest in peace....lots and lots of sweet, relaxing peace.

Jenna

[zoolu58]

I don't know about anyone else, but over the last 5 years it's gotten progressively worse. The ups and downs are so much more intense.

[KELS1961]

A horrible horrible illiness.
May he rest in peace now.
I am so sorry for your lodd.
Kelli...

[shutterbug]

Thanks Kels.

BEST....

In re-reading this thread (which I had totally forgot about) I can't believe myself! I can't believe I thought his suicide was his own fault!

In fact, I've been talking recently about how suicide is rarely a person's own fault! I mean, I know from my own fantasies of ending it all....that a person's often just can't imagine taking the torture inside anymore! Or the torture of the outside either!

Recently, I've often had thoughts of my life as the very picture of hell. There's sooooo many times that I can't imagine ANY torture being worse or more ever-lasting than major depression! I start thinking...."bring on the fire and brimstone...just as long as it means it'll all be over sooner or later! Because this feels like FOREVER."

It really is hard to imagine, during those major depressive moments, that life can ever be more good than bad. Even in my 'status quo' moods....it feels like work to live. And what for? For a few moments of quickly fading joy/happiness?

Anyway, At the moment (and over the past few months) I've come to see all the reasons and hopelessness behind the act of suicide. In some cases, I now can even see it as a kind of 'humaine' act for ones-self (for lack of a better way to describe it).

------
On a side note: I think when initially writting this thread... I was a bit angry at this family friend for doing something I have often thought of, but never have. I guess I was feeling that if I could survive through everything I have...then why couldn't he.

What I realize now is that....his taking of his own life...then brought the act closer to me and made me think more about taking my own. The worse things got in my mind and life...the more the possibility grew in my mind that I really could end it all and be done with the torture...that regardless of how powerless I'd become in my life, I COULD become powerful in the end. Like him, I knew I had the power to at least control one part of my life - my death.

-----

Sorry for grim words and thoughts. It's just that suicide has been on my mind off-and-on a lot over the past year as I've been going threw this 3rd major depressive episode of my life. And I feel little reservation about talking openly about the thoughts a person (me) has toward the act and actions possibly leading up to it. I think the worst point for me was just 2 days before I was fired in July (2008). It was actually my birthday, and I returned from work with one small card from a work friend and a ball of tissues as a result of getting 'a talking to' from my bosses. I had no family or friends to even go out to dinner with. That was my entire 31st birthday. That night, at home alone and crying. All I could find was a dull pair of scissors. I had NO plan of an actual suicide attempt....i was simply curious of how much pain against my wrist I might be able to handle in an attempt to draw blood. I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried pushing and dragging the dull scissors across my wrist.

The next day at work, I saw a stick pin that was pushed into a thumb-tack board at my desk. Since around age 11, I've picked at my skin so grabbing the straight pin and taking it with my outside while on a smoking break, I thought little of it. I started slowly using the pin to pick the point of it through the layers of skin above a major vain on my wrist. I was talking to a co-worker while I did such, but hadn't even really connected what exactly it was that I was doing, right in front of her, while we talked. Finally, she asked what I was doing. When I responded that I was seeing how much pain I could handle in order to draw blood, she scolded me for 'acting like a victim' right in front of her and she wasn't going to sit a watch such a thing. She stomped into the office and told our HR boss....who later that night, was waiting at the entrance of a company event I was to cover for the paper...so she could tell me to just go home 'and rest.' I knew it was the end of my career with them after she did that, but I couldn't bring myself to actively let myself think about that.

The next day was our monthly company birthday luncheon. I was SO looking forward to the piece of cake (there was always a large cake to go around). Instead, without even getting to each lunch...I was called back downstairs to the now empty offices....for my firing. I was only allowed to gather a few remaining things (as both bosses stood over - watching) from my desk before being escorted out of the building and to my car.

I suppose that wasn't so bad seeing as how they'd actually called the police to the office over the last recent firing of the advertising director and chased her out of the building b/c she apparently still had possession of a laptop computer (which I'm sure she was planning to return, but had in her car or home since many of us were often pushed/forced to work so much over-time).

------

Anyway....sorry for going into all that. It's just that all of my recent experiences have left me A LOT more empathetic toward anyone who takes their own life (rather actively or passively through substance addictions).

It's a hard world, even when we aren't dealing with severe mental illnesses. And the world just doesn't understand how much, much worse we can make things on a severly ill person when we don't try to look at what THEY might be dealing with.

We all, even myself, truely need to try and have as much compassion for the acts of all those mentally ill....just as most of us automattically have compassion and often huge support for those with other serious and devistating illnesses like cancer, MS, parkinsons, etc. It is none of our faults for the hands in life we are dealth. All we can do is, all we can do. No more. We are human and only capable of handling so much before we break.

Love and hugs...and prayers for anyone and everyone who has ever lost a loved one to any illness or has struggled themselves.

God Bless,
Jenna

[SelfSeeking]

Being the survivor of a loved one's suicide leaves you with a lot of complicated feelings. (This is my experience- not book learnin'.) One, a loved one died. You grieve for them, you miss them, you try to think of how you could have stopped this horrible thing from happening. Two, someone killed your loved one, and for them you have anger, horror, disgust, confusion... Sometimes, hatred. Three, the victim and the murderer are the same person. So you also feel shame for having all those bad feelings for someone you loved and suffered from an illness, just to put the cherry on top.

A good friend of mine killed himself two years ago this October. I have slowly found peace. But there are still times when I think, D@mn you. Why did you hurt me? Why did you take away my friend? Why did you make your parents bury their only son? And you're right, Shutter. Seeing a loved one commit suicide puts it "on the table" in a sick way. When I feel myself veering that way, looking over the edge so to speak, I cling to how I saw my friend's friends and family brought to their knees by his death. I'd rather suffer than put anyone through that hell. I don't blame myself for still feeling anger toward my friend... it is mixed in with love and pain. It's human.

Jenna, do you have anyone to talk to about your feelings and to help you cope with all these changes?

[KELS1961]

I believe many people who commit sucide are not in there right mind at the time.
We really cannot know the amount of pain they are in. The people left behind are the ones that are so hurt"""""! I really donot think if a person is intent on killing themselves you cannot stop it. My second cousin was 22 had everything going for him and he shot himself. Please do not blame yourself it is so heartbreaking and I feel for you.
Sending prayers your way.
Kelli...