Lost one of my boys a little over a year ago. Still get crippled with grief from time to time - maybe every other day now instead of multiple times a day. It gets easier, but never easy. In the process of getting a ring with some of his ashes built into them and I think that’ll be pretty special to get to bring him everywhere I go.
Not looking for condolences, just wanted to put this perspective out there in a sea of folks who seemed to have bad relationships with their parents. To those: I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.
Thank you for sharing your experience. As someone who doesn’t have kids to begin with I can’t even begin to imagine
Sending love your way <3
Thank you for sharing. My coworker just lost her daughter to suicide and she has been understandably inconsolable. She’s had an outpouring of sympathy, but I wanted to give her something more than just words from a childless adult who could never possibly relate to what she is going through. I will suggest the ring made with some ashes. I think that will help bring her some comfort.
My dad was a drunk and made sure I learned every racist term in the book before I was 12. I’m sure he’d be devastated if I managed to kill myself, without ever realizing how much he contributed to the desire in the first place.
My life has only gotten better since he died. Rest in piss old man, I’m glad you’re dead.
Edits: also, single moms rule — I’d fight a T-Rex for my mom. I’d lose, but god damnit I’d try.
I’d be willing to help you train to fight the T-Rex. You don’t have to lose.
My parents are crazy too but they’re drug free, which has always confused me. The problem is their personality, not an addiction. But I have thought about how they’d react - my mom would play the victim and my dad would play pickleball/tennis. That’s just what they’ve always done. I look forward to the day they die. When all of my grandparents died my parents became slightly more tolerable. I imagine my baseline will also rise….
As an old and retired paramedic myself, there are definitely parts of me, as a human being, that will never grow back. And I worked in a rural area where you work on neighbors, family, and friends mostly. It was never easy to explain to the family that might be present that not me or god could fix what was wrong. I also did a few suicides over the years. Never easy and they leave a mark that won’t grow back by morning.
The worst thing about any of it, was meeting a family member in a cafe or store in our small town. And they would invariably come up to me and give me a hug and tell me how grateful they were that I was there for them. Despite the fact I couldn’t do shit for the dead person beyond calling dispatch and telling them to send law enforcement to come and do their paperwork and secure the scene until the funeral home got there to haul the body away.
I think often just being there makes a big difference, even if there’s nothing that can be done.
I’m sorry, that sounds so hard. Handling logistics in a traumatic situation is such a hugely important task. Definitely don’t sell yourself short. Even is you didn’t do anything you’re “holding space”
I think its what i fear the most with my son. He’s a toddler, but life goes by fast and one day he’ll be grown with his own problems to solve. I just give him everything i can, from love to time to entertainment, and i wish i’ll do a good enough job for him to come seek refuge to me rather than with the tool to end his life.
I love him so much, just sharing because this anon shook me with this story.
I don’t have kids. But in pondering questions like this, I would take some solace that people have always been having children. ALWAYS. Pick the most horrific events and eras in history; there were people having kids and trying to find the most happiness they could for them and their children. The Black Death? The Bronze Age Collapse? The sacking of entire cities by Mongol hoards? People living in literal death camps in the Holocaust? There were people there having children. And when they did, they did their best to give their children as good a life as they could, same as you do now.
A large part of my younger self wanted to be a paramedic. But I quickly realized I didn’t have the emotional resilience to be one.
I remember watching Nic Cage in “Bringing out the Dead” (Excellent film by the way) and that movie putting the big ol’ nope on that plan once and for all in the early 2000’s.
My uncle was a paramedic. It really messed him up.
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A similar experience I had was when I saw my mom cry and pay respects to my grandpa for the last time as he was sent to be cremated.
I respected my grandfather but as we lived half way across the world, I wasn’t emotionally attached to him and didn’t feel very sad. But seeing my mom, usually a very silly lady and a very strong, loving grandma herself, turn into a daughter saying goodbye to her dad in tears for that split second broke my heart.
I saw my dad lose his best friend to suicide in my teens. I’ve struggled with suicidal ideation since before even that. I’m not close to my dad, I have lots of issues with the man, but I can never put him through that again, no matter what.
I’ve lost several people to suicide. The hardest was a good friend I’d known for years and who had been my roommate one summer.
That one was 25 years ago and it still hurts.
Meta comment, but I like that Lemmy can have these threads, and it’s probably mostly real.
It’s some human 4chan anon, whether they’re making it up or not.
Maybe the majority of comments here are legit.
Meanwhile, when I stumble into a Reddit thread like this (mostly when I miss old.reddit.com and get bombarded with weird engagement bait), it’s… mostly bots?
It’s either obvious, or very suspicious and likely engagement bait.
And if it’s a Tweet OP is referencing, well, that’s probably fake or bait too.
I’m sure this place will get flooded with bots, eventually, so we remake it again. The cycle continues.
So do it after Dad dies is what I’m reading.
Dad, Mom, sibs, close friends, person who’s nice to you at the bus stop, and of course the person you hate most in the world
Mom is already dead so that’s one name off the list.
Be careful keeping a list with names ticked off or crossed out, that may raise suspicion.
Especially when you only cross them off after they’re dead.
I have suffered from suicidal thoughts and depression for longer than I can remember, my life has been sad and my family keep making it worse. Honestly I don’t want to think about how much they would miss me when my own mother has told me she would consider me dead if I became non religious.
I am alive because I am simply too angry to die and I will keep living on even if the pain keeps tearing me down
My grandparents both lost children. It sounds weird to specify, but they were children from different marriages. They shared this coincidence. My grandmother had this sort of incident with the body; I think my grandfather only received the news. Both developed illnesses now suspected to be caused or worsened by stress: cancer and Alzheimer’s. They were sad people after their losses, very sad people. I do believe it slowly killed them. Just anecdotal evidence of the damage of losing a child…
For years I lived right by the sea. I had plenty of alcohol and medications. the prevailing currents would’ve swept my body across the border into a hostile country, where no one who found it would’ve cared. I don’t live to spare anyone else’s feelings, not least those who would mourn me as dead for living the life I want to live. I live because I deserve it, I deserve my family’s respect and care while we’re both here, and I don’t need anyone else’s shame.
To live on solely for obligation and guilt isn’t living at all, and anyone who wishes that on someone else just so they can remain a half-dead trophy they can congratulate themselves for “saving” can eat shit. If you’re reading this and you need to hear something, keep going. Keep trying. We live in an insane world; sometimes you have to try the same thing over and over so you can get different results. Live another day and see what happens. Not for anyone else, but because it’s a shame to miss out on this wild a ride.
This post honestly just pisses me off. Your life is worth living. Not your parents’ child’s life. Yours.
I survived suicide. As a side effect, the action showed me who my real friends were. People started to finally pay the fuck attention to me and my struggles. Turns out I had a rare physical disease that was making it very difficult to participate in society not just as dude, but as a whole. As many have said, don’t do it, I still have stomach issues from the wombo combo of meds I took to do the deed. I was lucky. If you ever feel like no one loves ya or that your are nothing. Just poof for a week to somewhere they can’t reach you and where you are safe. Don’t hurt yourself. Check to see how many reach out to you. If the number is low or zero, instead of saying: “see, no one loves me.” Go “damn, these fucks don’t give a damn about me, let’s find someone who will!”
It’s insane, but: you don’t die, you learn who loves you, and you have your health.
Go forth and fight the demons. As long as you are fighting them others will assit.
That is certainly some experience, and a good life lesson. I just want to remark, if my best friends disappeared for a week, I would assume they just wanted to disappear for a week, and had their reasons to not tell me. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about them.
I think this is less about guilting the victim and more about reminding them that people care about them. The assumption is that those who take their own lives feel like no one cares for/loves them.
Unfortunately, this take often reads like conservative pundits that only “care” about fetuses until they’re born, at which point they’re considered a drain on society.
A lot of the quotes people repeat when trying to help someone ends up backfiring. You can’t just repeat plattitudes. People suffering from mental illness aren’t stupid or deaf, they’ve already heard the lines before. Mimicry doesn’t help.
The only generalized thing I can recommend people to say when trying to help someone with mental issues is to just ask: “What do you need?”. If they need space, give it. If they need to talk, listen. If they need something else, be honest about whether that’s in your ability to help with.
Another important thing to note is to not view them as something that needs to be fixed. And you need to be very honest with yourself about that. Most people will try to “help” because it makes them feel better, not the person they’re trying to help.
there is a difference between someone caring for me as a feeling, and doing it as an activity.
like yes, my parents cared about me, emotionally. but their actions, were hardly ever caring.
and people don’t seem to understand the difference. i have had the same thing in romantic relationships. someone saying they care about you is very different than them actually doing this that show that they care, and sometimes, their feelings of care, lead them to engage in activities that are abusive and make the other person feel like absolute shit about themselves and the relationship.
have you ever been in a relationship with someone who claims to love you, and just systematically does things that show you they don’t love you, or does those things under the guises of love, but is actively harming you?
because that’s what physical/emotional abusers do. they see their abuse of you as them loving/caring for you. or ‘just trying to help’.
i think my favorite example was LTR i was in once, where i had a girlfriend who showed she cared about my studying for cert exames, by buying me pencils… cute. but then she systematically got enraged that i was spending so much time studying and not spending it with her, and that she engaged in active sabotage of me emotionally so that i’d fail the exams. but she ‘was loving and supportive’ by buying me… pencils… least to say i was never able to articulate the problem to her of her actions. She basically just told me I was a awful jerk for ‘neglecting her’ by needing a couple of nights off to study… she was co-dependent and saw those 5-6 hours of me investing in my (and our) future… as ‘theft’ from her need to be with me everyday. i only broke up with her because shortly thereafter she physically assaulted me, again under the guise of ‘correcting’ my ‘abuse’ of her, which she alleged was because I was not ‘doing enough’ to impress her parents…
everyone cares about when you’re dead
because at that point you are nothing but a memory and you can’t ever upset or burden or annoy them. they can just idealize you.
you don’t get to decide that for other people. they do.
we have no control over other people, especially not their inner emotional lives.
So? That’s their problem. There are people who’d dance on my grave if I died tomorrow, too, and what they think has just as little bearing on my decision to keep living. Categorically irrelevant. You can’t show someone the beauty and joy of living by dragging them through shame. Worse still, pegging your self-worth to others’ suffering creates an implicit threshold, a thought stuck in the back of your mind: “What if the suffering I cause now is more than the momentary pain I’d cause by stopping?”
It feels good to tell people things like this. It’s one of the most awful things to hear.
I think they may have meant that you don’t get to decide on how other victims of depression feel about suicide. Nobody else shares your life, experiences, and values so iyou shouldn’t assert what they should do with their lives.
If that’s the case they were trying to make, then they didn’t do the best job explaining themselves. Or I could have completely misunderstood their comment
so if it’s their problem why are you resenting them for not sharing in your views? why do you feel compelled to pass judgement on them for not sharing your philosophy and feelings on life?
I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand. Who are “they,” and what is “that” in your initial reply?
Not to worry, I have no family to lose me.
I have that feeling too somedays. I just tell myself I don’t want to miss out on cool shit.
Even when I am depressed to the point that I honestly don’t believe cool shit can happen again I make a point to remind myself of it.
Take care of yourself. There is cool shit to miss out. Don’t let your brain fuck with you
Don’t do it
We’re right here, bro.
You have people here who care for you, bro
Aye, don’t send innocents to war, not their war, but fuck politic dumbasses. Let ppl gain some living salaries, nothing luxury, but something to live with, throw some respect if they do weirdo decision about themselves… don’t act like an assholes who know better how others should be. Don’t push anons to such stories, to no stories where they pick a shotguns and aim, anyone.
He who wants war, must be sent himself.
