My best friend committed suicide about 2 years ago. To give some context, this guy was one of those friends that I talked to every day and saw pretty much every weekend. We had known each other for years and really had no secrets. At the time, we were both in our late 20s.
I know I shouldn't, but I feel a little responsible for it. He had joked about it in the past, and we had chatted about it and tried to get him some help. He had a dark sense of humor in general though, and we sometimes chatted about philosophical life stuff... so I guess I always didn't take it entirely seriously (which I now know is NOT what I should have done). He was on SSRIs, and towards the end honestly seemed to be on the upswing.
The absolute worst part was that last weekend. He text me late on a Saturday saying he really wanted to hang out and didn't feel like sitting at home alone, but I was feeling sick and kind of blew him off. I still feel so awful for doing that, wondering if maybe I could have changed things if I had gone over there. Monday rolls around and I text him a few times early in the day to no response, which was extremely weird. After work that day I get a phone call from one of our mutual friends, and before he said anything I already knew in my gut what had happened.
Over the next two years, the biggest impact on me was that my entire social life just slowly, completely crumbled away. My friend was the glue that held the circle of our friends together, and most of my college friends were met mutually through him. After he passed, I just didn't see anyone else very often. Most of them moved out of town, started focusing on professional careers, or married and started families, and we've all sort of drifted apart.
Combined with the fact that I'm an introverted person, and the fact that its so much harder to maintain old friendships and make new ones post college, I'm completely friendless and relationship-less now (an entirely different story stemming from a bad relationship before this happened). Before my best friend passed, things were pretty good and it wasn't like this. Life has been a downward spiral ever since, and I suppose his suicide was the trigger that kicked it off. It's tough losing such a very good friend to something so stupid.