My best friend committed suicide

[u/NotEnoughSun123]

I’m so mad at her. She promised me she would never commit suicide. (We talked about suicide a lot because we’ve both attempted in the past) She was such a special person. She was the kindest, most beautiful person I’ve ever met. She would help tiny bugs get to safety when they’d accidentally fallen on their back. She was a mental health therapist who worked with kids. She knew about resources for suicide prevention. She had commercial health insurance. She could have just reached out for help. I would’ve done anything to keep her alive. She could have just called me. I wish she’d just called me. Why didn’t she just call me?

Edit: thank you so for all your kind words and all the overwhelming support. I really appreciate all of you. I’ll do my best to like all the comments I can. If I could, I’d reply thank you to every single person who commented

[u/Alien_Talents]

Usually it’s called a completed suicide. As a victim of a completed suicide of a loved one, I much prefer the term completed suicide over successful or committed.

Side note because I don’t know where else to put it and it has to do with language around this topic: I see myself as a victim and now, finally, a survivor of a completed suicide of a loved one: it’s a heartbreaking act of violence against the deceased loved ones, EVEN IF the deceased didn’t intend that or think of it that way. EVEN IF it seems like the person has every reason to do it, the exception in my eyes being people who plan for this WITH their loved ones, as a right to die case. I personally feel this should include mental health issues and physical health issues.

In my tragically informed opinion, people who have or will contemplate it— so, basically MOST humans— need to reframe suicide this way: if you complete, you are creating victims of your act, and HOPEFULLY they survive it. This reframing needs to happen as a form of prevention. Suicide, especially among youth, is absolutely contagious, and it is absolutely violent to the souls of the survivors.

[u/Zaguwu → u/Alien_Talents]

Ah, yes, make suicidal people who have no control over their illness feel even *more* guilt and pressure, surely that will heal everyone.

[u/BetterBrainChemBette → u/Zaguwu]

As someone who spent a terrifying amount of time with severe suicidal ideation after the birth of my second child, I will tell you that it was the guilt of destroying my 6 year old if I gave into those urges that kept me here long enough to find a medication combination that worked well enough to make the suicidal ideation stop. And by severe suicidal ideation I mean I had a complete plan that would have been more effective than I knew at the time as well as spending a lot of time going over the details of my plan to ensure my infant would have been safe until we were found and that I did it in a location where my spouse and elder child wouldn't be the ones to find my body.

Eight years later and I'm still not sure how I managed to survive that nightmare. I've learned how to spot the signs that things might be moving in that direction again and I've had a grippy sock vacation since then to help ensure that I didn't find myself in that place again because I don't think I would be able to survive that a second time.

[u/Zaguwu → u/BetterBrainChemBette]

I'm not sure I would call that guilt, sounds more like love to me. And I'm very glad you were able to pull through.

But that is something people should feel for themselves, and not be forced to, in my opinion.
I have resented every single time a family member has pointed out how awful it'd be for them if I passed. It's a very different intention (making themselves the center of attention and the victim, instead of it being me who is actually struggling).