I’ve personally known 4 people who have taken their own lives for one reason or another. That works out to about 1 person for every 10 years I’ve been alive. How many people have you known personally? Like not just went to your school, but you did homework with or dated a friend of yours. Someone who would help you move would be an example of someone you’ve known personally, as well as family members. You may have lost touch with them over time, but for one period of time, you were familiar with them.
Zero. I’ve known people who had friends or relatives who committed suicide, but I’m at least once removed from the actual decedents.
I’m over 60, and have only known two people who committed suicide… although one was a drug overdose and so problematic.
I have known OF others, such as a friend’s daughter-in-law’s father, but I didn’t know the person personally, so I don’t think that would count.
I grew up in a small town and know lots of people so it has happened a lot. I would have to think about the total number of people that I knew on a first name basis that committed suicide but there have been several or more. The only family member to commit suicide was my mother’s younger brother. I voted one every 5 years or so but it may be more. Oddly, I know more murderers and murder victims I think.
If you count autoerotic asphyxiation, then 6. Otherwise 5, 3 during my/their college years.
Oddly enough, I would recruit anybody to help me move. Bums, people who happened to be walking down the street, a friend of a friend of a friend who had a truck. That’s no qualification!
I’m 30 and I’ve known 2. I know one more who tries but doesn’t succeed.
I’ve known two people who committed suicide. One I didn’t know very closely, as he was a friend of my mom’s, but the other had been a good friend of mine in high school. (He committed suicide when I was in college, and no one bothered to tell me about it until several months after the funeral.)
A very good friend of mine attempted suicide twice the summer between our sophomore and junior years of high school. I visited her in the hospital after the first attempt (she ODed) and it was a surreal experience. She was totally upbeat and cheerful. Naively, I thought she must be better, but then she tried again a couple weeks later, and spent the remainder of the summer institutionalized. She switched high schools for our senior year and essentially refused to speak to any of us ever again. I mean, if I called her, she would be cheerful and sound happy to hear from me, but she’d very quickly made an excuse to get off the phone. I got the message pretty quickly. It was hurtful, but I always figured she was trying to make a fresh start.
I can think of three off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting one or two people (as awful as that may seem). Still, I’m 35, so 1 per every 10 years is the closest to my answer.
One only.
I went to high school with a guy that was an absolute asshole, made my life a living hell. When I was in my mid-20s, I found out that he committed suicide. My response was “Good riddance”.
I’ve known two. Weirdly enough, they were both my lab partner in my sophomore year of college (we had to be in a threesome as there were an odd number of classmates). Both were dead before I graduated.
My boss of four years succeeded on Friday. Best boss I’ve ever had. He has 2 kids under 12.
He’s the only one in my 43 years.
I know depression is a disease, etc. But I still feel it was an incredibly selfish thing to do. Tough to get over that.
My elementary school librarian shot herself. It was years after I was in that school, but she was a friend of the family, so I’m still counting it. That’s the only one I know. Some attempts among friends in high school, but thankfully no successes.
2 - one was a cousin who I don’t really remember (When my dad told me the news my first reaction was “I have a cousin Steve on your side?” So I counted the cousins as I knew there were 6, and I got to 5. I guess number 6 must have been Steve). He went to my aunt and uncle’s house when they weren’t home, let himself in, went down to the basement, and shot himself. He was 38 at the time.
The other was a kid I was friends with in junior high and high school. At the end of 8th grade a group of us went to an amusement park, and I had to borrow $2 from him to pay for a soda. All through high school I either didn’t have the cash on me, or I forgot, or he forgot. Finally, when I was heading off to our 10 year reunion, I remembered and stuck two $1 bills in my pocket and figured we’d have a good laugh. When I asked his best friend where was, the friend gave me a look like I’d punched him in the gut. Someone else pulled me away and hissed “Shut up! Didn’t you hear? D. killed himself 2 years ago”. Apparently I was one of the few who knew him that hadn’t heard.
None that I know of.
Two. Both were tragic, but the first one left me practically in tears
One was convinced he wouldn’t get a job out of college. He got his private pilot’s license while in college. One day he rented a Cessna and flew it out to the Pacific–he never was seen again. Called the Sheriff’s department to see if there was some way to help. Was told to basically fuck off and not waste their time by a spokeswoman. Not exactly the way I would have handled it.
The second is more tenuous. My only contact with the victim was a single phone call. She asked for someone who wasn’t there at the time. A few days later, she was found dead by a boyfriend after hanging herself (drugs drove her to despair, according to people who knew her). Only realized, after the fact, that she was calling everyone she cared about to say goodbye.
Only one. But I don’t know a lot of people.
I’m over 50 and I know 3 off the top of my head. There may have been more if I would think longer.
Two that I can recall and know directly.
One was a cousin - well, a cousin’s kid-by-marriage, but she was my age. Her aunt, who raised her from a baby, married my cousin. When this girl was a teenager (maybe college-age, I forget), she was told that the woman she thought was her aunt was actually her mom, who had been ashamed to be an unwed mother. The ‘aunt’ had moved here from Korea with her baby, and made up the story during that process. My first-cousin-once-removed killed herself in med school, and I can’t help but suspect that this kind of bombshell regarding her identity didn’t help matters.
The other was a friend’s wife; I knew her from college as we’d socialize with the two of them, but I was better friends with the guy as I met him via living on the same dorm floor, and taking some of the same classes, etc. She’d fought depression most of her life, and he thought she’d really been doing a good job fighting it lately. They went on an awesome vacation together, their relationship seemed to be rekindled in general. It turns out she’d been hiding a bunch of stuff, including an emotional affair with a guy she was completely lying to about her situation, and basically doing a lot of stuff to completely sabotage her life, her friendships, her marriage, etc. She put an awful lot of work into, apparently, trying to piss off everyone in her life. I tend to have a fair amount of sympathy for people experiencing terrible depression, since I fought it many times in my life, but this wasn’t a desperate act committed in the depths of despair so much as it was a premeditated act planned out over a long period of time, and that bothers me. Plus she called him supposedly just to say hi right before hanging herself in their bedroom; she’d also called her therapist (who she’d also been deceiving) before that as well, and apparently did everything to hide exactly what she was planning, like an intentional act.
One, but it was this year. My parents’ next door neighbor, who also was the pastor of their church and someone I got to know very when when my mom was dying of cancer, took his own life after being kicked out of his church for having an affair with another church member. That was a tough situation.
#1 was the guy I fixed my freshman roommate up with. Autoerotic asphyxia. It didn’t come out until some months later, when she let slip that the death certificate said “unintentional suicide.”
#2 was a good friend from middle school I’d lost touch with. I didn’t find out until years after the fact. She had a lot of smart friends, and learning disabilities, and the combo made her feel inferior, which wasn’t a good combo with depression. Her parents set up a scholarship fund in her name.
#3 was the stepfather of another good HS friend, a bit over a year ago, who was really more my friend’s dad than his stepdad. He’d had 2 heart attacks and been forced into disability retirement, and wasn’t taking it very well. My friend’s mom left to go to brunch with a friend, and came home to a note that basically said “I’m sorry honey, I love you, you can find my body in the backyard.”
#4 was a couple of months after that - a HS friend I’d lost touch with decided to lie down on the Purple Line tracks at 2 a.m., just before the train stopped running for the night. I think I’d always known he had major depression issues. My friends and I found out when one friend happened to see a blurb on the news online. His parents told me at the wake that the @%*@ paper published that blurb before the cops even contacted them - the phone started ringing off the hook while the cops were at their house, because many of their friends, etc. had already seen the story. That was not a nice thing for the news people to do.
#5 was just a few weeks ago - the older brother of a friend of mine from day camp. Hung himself just after he’d been given medical leave from work to treat his depression. He did it in such a way that his parents found him, which I guess is better than having his wife and 3 young daughters find him, but who knows?
Actually, there’s #6: the father of a childhood friend of mine, who killed his wife, and then himself.
Wow, looking back, I’ve sure known a lot of people with depression issues…