There are few worse things when a close friend confesses that they are suicidal.
Forgive me for the bluntness of my opening sentence, but I am stressed. Worried. Exhausted. I've been in tears on and off.
When my friend told me that he had been having suicidal thoughts, I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.
In the past, he'd hinted at bouts of depression.
I hadn't known that they had become this bad. He's become crippled from them. I know exactly how he feels, since I myself know what its like to emotionally circle the drain.
He's recently had an attempt that, mercifully, wasn't successful.
He's moving back to his home in California in three days, to be near his sister.
I'm trying to find the emotional strength to reach out to him, so I can encourage him to seek help. He was in the Navy, so since he was in the military, he can seek the resources he needs at the VA. Thank God for my mother for giving me the idea to point him to that resource. I strongly suspect he has serious clinical depression, and would benefit from being on an anti-depressant, and maybe some counseling.
I feel like it's at least one lifeline I can offer him. I pray that he takes it, because if he were to attempt suicide and were to succeed, I don't think I could live with that weight on my conscience. I know that suicide is a person's choice, but I hope he doesn't make that choice. He's like family to me, and it would....just....it would hurt beyond words if he did that. I don't want him to become a memory.
Tomorrow. I will tell him tomorrow.
I just.....hope he makes the choice to seek help, and to choose to live. He's struggling to hang on.