It isn’t your fault
This is a message to the moms and dads, brothers and sisters, boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends and loved ones of someone who lost their life to suicide.
This is a message from someone who almost lost their life to suicide, someone who has stood on the edge of the cliff, ready to jump.
I want you to know right now, if you lost someone close to you to suicide, it wasn’t your fault.
If you feel like you didn’t know they were going through something, you probably didn’t and that isn’t your fault.
When one of my friends took his life, I remember the apologies and the questions everyone had. I remember his mom crying at the memorial service, saying how sorry she was for not being there more, for not loving him more.
I remember his girlfriend breaking down in tears, asking why this happened, why he didn’t come to her, why she didn’t know he was going through something so dark. And all his friends, all of us, going by his grave and saying we were sorry.
I still do it, every time I go to his grave I apologize. I tell him how sorry I am that I wasn’t there for him the way he always was for me.
The truth is, if you cared, if you tried, even a little bit, you did everything right.
Don’t blame yourself
A misconception is that committing suicide is vengeful, that someone does it to hurt someone else the way they hurt. That’s not true.
Someone who commits suicide isn’t trying to hurt you, and they definitely don’t want you to hurt the way they did. I’ve been there, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
They’re just trying to find peace. They’re battling demons that are impossible to describe and almost as impossible to overcome.
Chances are, there was nothing else you could’ve done.
Support them. Contact them. Talk to them. Be there for them. Show them that you care. That’s all you can do.
All you need to do is be there
That’s the best advice I can give to someone trying to support someone suffering from depression. Be there for them.
The best thing my friends have done, is stood by me. The best thing my mom has done, is never stopped loving me. That’s all anyone could do, and that’s all they needed to do.
So keep loving them. They may be broken, hurt, and lost, but they still need you.
Please, don’t carry this burden any longer. Trust that you did everything you could’ve to keep them here, and have faith that they knew how much you cared about them.
It isn’t your fault, there was nothing you could’ve done better.
