Processing a Sudden and Unexpected Loss
Trying to process the loss of a friend. More questions than answers.
WARNING: This blog talks about suicide. If you find the topic confronting or uncomfortable, feel free to skip this one. Alternatively, please get in touch with any of the amazing organisations listed at the bottom of the page.
Last Thursday night, an old friend of mine died by suicide.
Like a few of my recent blogs, this one might ask more questions than it answers. But I’m still processing what happened, and I feel this will likely be the most beneficial way.
I found out on Saturday morning as we prepared to head away for a quiet family weekend after a pretty busy month. It rocked me. So much so that among the mayhem of rushing around trying to get things packed in the car, I stood there, frozen.
My partner, who was also rushing around trying to get organised, could tell something was up. She asked me what was wrong. I struggled through tears to explain to her that I had just read a message from my mum telling me that a friend I’d grown up with had taken his own life.
Our families had grown up together. I went to school with him, played sports with him, and hung around in the same group as this friend. One of my siblings went to school with and played sports with one of his siblings. Our parents were friends and were heavily involved in one of the local sports clubs we played for.
Admittedly, my friend and I drifted apart after school, and I struggle to recall the last time I saw or spoke to him. But somehow, that didn’t make the news any easier to bear. If anything, that distance has only filled my head with a thousand questions that I’ll probably never find the answer to any questions that ultimately don’t need to be answered.
My friend was tough. I remember when he first joined our football team as a ten-year-old. He had this incredible explosive energy. He’d come to play with us because we were friends with him already. The team he’d played in previously were a better team, but he didn’t like how seriously they took things and just wanted to play with his friends. Still, I remember to this day the first run he had. Off an almost standing start, he just exploded forward into the opposition defence and just seemed to have something more than most kids our age. It was like he could flick a switch and access this tremendous energy when he wanted to. He wasn’t the biggest kid, but he was just so strong yet explosively fast.
As we got older and spent more time together, naturally, we became better friends. All of us did. I started to realise that there were two sides to this friend. The side he wanted people to see and the real him. When I spoke with his brother recently, I told him that there was an extremely caring, funny, loyal person inside of him and that it saddened me that he didn’t allow many people to see that.
He was the kind of guy that would always be in trouble at school, but all the teachers liked him because they saw the good in him. Ultimately, I think he just had too much energy for school, and traditional education systems couldn’t channel that energy into something more productive.
As we set off on our separate paths after school, I occasionally heard stories about him through my parents, who still, to this day, catch up with him. I know he, like so many others, struggled pretty severely with the transition from being a schoolgoing teenager to early adulthood. I think the combination of someone having so much energy, the autonomy being an adult provides, and a lack of direction was a bit much for him at times.
However, most recently, he seemed to have turned a corner. I caught up with his brother a little over two years ago, and we spent a reasonable amount of time talking about him. Between that conversation and the occasional updates my mum took from catching up with his mum and what I’d seen on social media, things seemed to have settled down for him.
As I said to my mum just the other day, if I had heard this news ten or 15 years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t have been as shocked as I was. I think that might be why I was shocked and saddened by it all. From what information I’d gathered, I thought he’d done it. I thought he’d worked his way through the shit and was no longer at risk of something like this happening.
Then, I realised how naive I was to make such assumptions. Me of all people. I should have, and do know better. These demons that follow us around, that live in our head, can be tamed, temporarily silenced, but they never, ever die.
Mum mentioned to me that in more recent years, when catching up with his mum, they would trade stories about him and me. The things that we were struggling with, the things we were doing to cope with what we were struggling with, both good and bad. When she told me this, my first thought was that I wish I knew these conversations were happening. Particularly over the last 19 months since I’ve been sober.
I don’t know what I would have done with this information, and I’m certainly not suggesting that I would have made a difference in the outcome. Still, until I got this news on Saturday, I was completely oblivious to what was going on, and I’d like to think if I’d known he was struggling, I would’ve at least gotten in touch.
The thing I’m struggling with the most is how nobody knew. I know that when people struggle this badly, they become experts at hiding it. They’re the best actors the world has ever seen. But how does a guy who has been through so much shit slip through the cracks and go unnoticed?
How does someone who has been through documented mental health and addiction issues and seemingly come out the other side get to a point where he believes this is the only or best option? He was surrounded by people who love and care for him. He is a father, son, and brother; now he’s gone, and they’re left brokenhearted.
I’m not pointing fingers. No good can come from that. But I do think it’s essential that, eventually, we ask these questions and find what answers we need to prevent as many suicides as possible.
It’s essential to look inward, too. Are we doing enough? All of us? Why did I assume everything was okay? I know what social media is like. I know people are very selective in what they share. Why did I assume he was doing okay because of a few posts I saw on Facebook?
Maybe it’s because it’s easier for me. If I hear a second or third-hand story from someone that he’s doing okay and then see a post on Facebook that suggests he’s okay, it’s convenient for me to assume that everything is fine. I don’t need to worry about it then. “Oh, he was laughing in a photo on the internet, so he must be fine, and that suits me because I don’t have the energy to worry about someone else right now”.
Maybe my friend was just tired. Tired of pretending everything was okay because he didn’t want to bother anyone else. Perhaps he never really turned the corner.
Maybe turning the corner looks different for some people than others. Perhaps we see someone quit a bad habit, get healthier, get a job, or a better job, their own house, and because they’ve ticked all the boxes that WE wanted to see ticked, we assume because they’ve done all these things, they must be feeling better. But maybe he just went through the motions, doing all the things people told him would make him feel better, hoping they would work, then arrive at a place where you’ve put in all this hard work, but deep down, you feel the same way. I almost feel ripped off. The things people told you would help haven’t helped.
Yet we don’t bother to check in because we’ve told ourselves they’re fine based on them hitting specific targets that we associate with well-being. It’s convenient. It suits us. It’s fucking taxing being there for someone who needs our help. The harder they find things, the more of other people’s time and energy they need.
We can say all we like that we will always have time for someone when they need it, but do we really? No one can be on call 24/7. I think people who are struggling understand this, and I think this is where a lot of the “I don’t want to bother anyone else with my problems” comes from.
But I think it can be inconvenient to give people support. It can be frustrating. The timing is almost always terrible. Maybe it’s okay to admit that going out of your way to support someone in their time of need is a pain in the arse, but you still do it. Because honestly, what matters more?
I’m not seeking answers to these questions right now. They’re probably best viewed as rhetorical and something for people to consider thinking about. I think the more people out there considering such questions, the more solutions we are likely to come up with as a whole.
I know that my friend wouldn’t have done what he did if he didn’t genuinely believe it was the best thing to do for himself and those who cared about him. That’s how twisted this mental illness can be. It makes me so sad to think about how much pain he would have been in for such a long period of time to arrive at a place where he believed this was the best option.
When I reflect on times spent with my friend, as kids, as teenagers and on a couple of occasions, as young adults, I feel like, more than anything, my friend was misunderstood. He sold the world a story of a tough, strong guy who wasn’t to be messed with. He was all of those things. But he was so much more. If someone asked me to describe him as best I could in three words, the first three would be caring, loyal and very fucking funny.
It hurts me that my friend was so selective about who he allowed to meet his true self. I can’t help but think he felt uncomfortable letting people in, like he was scared of letting people know the real him. I can’t help but wonder why he felt like the real him wasn’t someone to share and someone to be proud of because, for me, at least, those were the things I loved about him the most.
I’m grateful that I was lucky to meet my friend and that our paths crossed all those years ago. I’m thankful I was lucky enough for him to feel comfortable letting me know the real him. He added value to my life, and I’m better for having known him. I hope I did the same for him.
I hope you’ve finally found the peace you’ve sought for so long, mate.
RIP.
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Sending hugs your way Sam. Suicide is tough, but it's even tougher when it's someone you know.
I think the media not being able to publish suicide is doing all the suicide prevention measures a disservice. People genuinely don't realise how often it happens. We see the numbers but we don't see the daily report or the families that are affected.
I really like that you mention the tick boxes and appearing to turn a corner. I think often in life we move through the motions and tick boxes and do the things that we are told we should do to help us feel better when deep down it's not working but what happens if you tell someone that what's supposed to work isn't working? We are all different and there is no one size fits all approach to anything. But I think sometimes we end up feeling like if it worked for all these people, it should work for me, so I'm not going to speak up that it's not or we make excuses and say maybe I just need more time? Maybe more time is needed or maybe another intervention needs to be tried? Or maybe we just need to sit in these deep feelings in the company of someone so we feel less alone?
I think nothing hurts more than knowing that people were struggling in silence. <3 <3 We will always be left wondering if we could have done more. x