Johnny, you obviously feel very bad about your friend who took his life.
I'm sorry that happened to you, and to him, and to all others who loved him.
I too lost someone to suicide. He was "married" to my uncle for over 23 years (ja, een homohuwelijk) and they were a fantastic couple, with lots of friends, always kind and warm and in immensely good spirits. They travelled a lot to countries like Kenia, and had contacts with orphanages there whom they brought all kinds of aid. They were stereotypical "levensgenieters". As I said on IW before, he was the person I would LEAST have expected to kill himself of all people I know. And yet he did, leaving my uncle behind devastated. So I understand about anger, I KNOW about anger.
(Someone made a good point saying that the people who will REALLY kill themselves don't talk about it or ask for help, they just do it - it leaves you helpless and disbelieving.)
But I also know what it's like to be on the other side. I don't feel like going into this, as people like Kaz and Jan so bravely have, and I have never seriously attempted to kill myself, but I do know what it's like wanting to destroy yourself. I've had times where my mind blanked out and I became an automaton, so I know that what you do in that state of mind is NOT what you'd do if you could control yourself. Though not all from personal experience, I know that people who become suicidal are often simply ill, suffering from depressions and the like. Do you blame someone with terminal cancer for dying? Of course you don't. It might be hard to put yourself in the place of a suicidal person, but then, you don't HAVE to understand how they feel. You can just accept the fact that when people are suicidally depressed, they may almost have as little choice in dying as a cancer patient has. And yes, that seems cruel and ironical - the cancer patient WANTS to live and dies, while the suicidal person is healthy yet robs him/herself of his/her life. But that's what a mental illness can do to you. If you don't have such an illness yourself, you cannot possibly know what goes on in their minds, whether they have any control over their feelings. It's not just something you can "snap out of".
Maybe most of us have felt "suicidal" at one point in our teens, emotions are often vehement in that time. Some teens have actual depressions at that age, others will grow out of it. But even if you think you have experienced suicidal feelings, weak or strong, you cannot judge what goes on in someone elses mind.
So I hope you realise that your comments can be very hurtful to people. Feeling isolated and misunderstood is a part of being suicidal and by your blatant refusal to try and understand, you are only aggravating things.
Edit:
As for your comment on "trying" to commit suicide, it is true that those who ask for help or talk about their suicidal feelings are less likely to kill themselves - as I said, those who truly wish to die do so without letting anyone know. But that doesn't mean that an attempt can't go wrong. It doesn't mean people who talk about being suicidal just want attention. Be GLAD they talk about it, it shows they have some spark left inside them that says "I don't want to die". But don't ever disparage their very real despair by saying "if you really wanted to kill yourself you wouldn't have failed in the attempts". A cry for help is not necessarily a cry for attention. One part of you, a huge part of you, can wish to die while a small part somewhere still holds on and tries to get better. Fighting that hard against a mental illness that can completely take over your thought is NOT cowardice.
[ 06-02-2003, 07:46 AM: Message edited by: Melusine ]