blendermassacre said:
Just saying that I feel ill equipped to handle the full force of what he's going through. I have a lot of guilt today. I saw him the night before, and he was drunk and crying out in our bar district, drunk and crying, and wouldn't talk to me.. then 3 hours later tried to kill himself. It's a lot. I'm back at work today, but want nothing more than to go home.
The last thing you need to be doing is blaming yourself or feeling guilty about something you had no possible way of knowing or even controlling if you had known.
I remember when my uncle committed suicide he sat at Hooters with my older brother and I and acted fine, he even laughed and joked around with us and flirted with the waitress and had a great time.
After his death I remember reflecting heavily on that moment because it was right before and was the last time I actually saw him.
I now realize it was his final moment with us and I know that now. But for a very long time I felt very angry with myself like I should have picked up on the signs.
And looking back in 20/20 I know there were several things said at that table that were obviously hints to his soon to be ultimate decision.
I remember he even showed us the email from the man that was threatening him and let us read it and see that this man was threatening his life and antagonizing him to no end about taking his kids and teaching them that he was gonna be their new father and how much he enjoyed sleeping with my uncles wife.
And saying things like "only one of us will be laying on the ground when I'm through with you"
And "This is my family now" and calling my cousins "his" kids and just basically saying that he was going to take over my uncles family and physically threatening to cause bodily harm to him when he sees him.
Well my brother and I both got pretty pissed off naturally and told my uncle that we'd help "Take care" of this guy.
He could very easily be dealt with and he could just sit back and keep his hands clean.
With a very simple look between my brother and I I knew what he was thinking and I made a point to remember the guys information, my brother tried to copy it, we weren't going to kill this guy or anything but we were thinking maybe we'd make his life such a crappy situation he'd move away or at least leave my uncles family the hell alone.
He told both of us to calm down and not get involved because we both had young kids, and both of us let out macho male side shine through, and said no F That this guy has gone to far, you don't mess with another mans wife and you definitely don't EVER mess with his kids. This guy needs to catch a beating in the worst way and were gonna be the ones to deliver it to him, blah blah blah and some more liquored up tough guy talk.
We were serious but I'm sure the liquid courage we were pounding down wasn't hurting our toughness either.
Anyway long story short he killed him very soon after that dinner and killed himself shortly after and I always blamed myself for sending him over the edge.
I always felt like maybe we put those thoughts into his head, and got him to take the whole thing on a more serious level.
Also thought that maybe we pushed him to it because he knew that given enough time my brother and I would absolutely have gotten involved and I thought maybe he was trying to avoid that.
I don't know and I never will, what I do know is that he bought the gun way before that dinner, he went target shooting a week before the dinner, he rented the rental car to pull it all off long before that dinner, and wrote his note long before that dinner.
Basically his mind was made up way before we said anything.
I had to eventually just accept that all you can do is love your loved ones, no more no less, you can't blame yourself for their actions.
Unless they flat out come out and say something to you and you totally ignore it. There's really nothing you can do.
Your NOT in any way responsible for your friends decision that night, don't go down that path of blaming yourself or regretting things you did or said. You had no way of knowing he'd actually do anything like this.
Don't over think it, just tell him you wished he'd have come to you and spoken to you. BEFORE THE DRINKING when the both of you could have spoken about issues clear headed and logically.
Make sure he knows that in the future he can come to you ALWAYS and should never feel the need to get to this point again.
Okay I hope that made sense I typed that on my phone and rushed through it, I'll try and proof read it later from an actual computer. Sorry if it's full of run on sentences and horrible punctuation.
