It's completely destroyed me.
I lost my best friend less than 5 months ago. He hung himself in a barn on his SOs property. He was supposed to come over to my place that day and hang out. I texted him all day never getting a response. For some reason, something felt wrong. In the back of my mind I knew something was off. But I brushed it off, assuming he was busy or that his boyfriend was being an ass and wouldn't let him leave the house.
Now a little background. We'll call my friend S. I've known S since my junior year at high school. We were extremely close friends out of nowhere. If you asked either of us how we became friends we really had no answer. Out of the blue we started hanging out at each other's houses, spending weeks practically living together. It got to the point where if we went anywhere alone people would immediately wonder where the other person was. After we graduated S moved in with me and my mom and we shared a room for about a year.
S was gay. and though he was very attractive and people constantly complimented him when we out, he had low self esteem and never really dated the nicest guys. So he started going on dating sites and meeting up with people. He started meeting one guy in particular and they eventually started a relationship. S was 20 and this new guy was almost 40. Creepy, but whatever I wanted my friend to be happy.
Long story short this man turned out to be the most selfish, childish, abusive, and lazy human being I've ever known. The relationship became very controlling and abusive. Both of them would come to my house with bruises and blood on their faces. I didn't know what to do, I wanted to kill this man for touching my best friend. I wanted him gone. But S said he loved him. The few chances we ever had alone I urged him to see this wasn't love, this wasn't okay, that he deserved so much more and so much better. My words fell on deaf ears.
I hate myself every day for letting that man live.
So back to the day S is supposed to come to my house. I heard no response from him all day. At this point in my life I'm living in my own place with my SO who I've been with a little over a year and who has been around almost the entire time the relationship between S and his BF was going on. Me and my SO are hanging out at home at around 10 p.m. I then finally get a text from S. But it's his mom using his phone.
"S is in the hospital. It's bad. He might not make it"
Everything in my brain stops. I knew it. I knew something was wrong. I text her back trying to get more information but she won't go into details. I quickly text my mother and we all rush to the hospital.
We get to the ER and a doctor comes down looking for me. He takes me upstairs to the room my best friend, my whole world, is in. I see him lying in a bed, around his neck is a massive purple line from the rope. He hung himself. He hung himself and I wasn't there to help him, to save him.
I sat by his bed for hours as he came in and out of being somewhat awake. His brain activity was all over the place, they couldn't get an accurate reading. And so he stayed in the hospital on life support for about a week, if that. I would go there every single day after work and sit with him and his family. I would talk to him. Tell him I love him and I miss him and that he needs to get better so we can do all the fun stuff we used to do together. It was so hard to keep it together in front of him. Every time I left the hospital I broke down in tears, begging the universe to give him back to me.
After a week the doctors told us he wasn't getting any better. His brain showed less and less activity. He could either stay a vegetable forever or we take him off life support. We all knew he would never have wanted to be stuck in a bed the rest of his life, and so his family made the decision to take him off life support.
That was the only day I didn't go to the hospital. I couldn't do it, I couldn't watch him die.
The night before his funeral I had a complete breakdown. I woke up in the middle of the night screaming and crying that I didn't want to go to my best friend's funeral. I didn't want to bury him, I wanted him back, please just let him come back.
I cried for hours, I begged and begged to have him back, begged that it was just a big joke and he was okay.
I felt and still feel so much guilt. I should have stopped that relationship, I should have saved him, it's all my fault.
I have not been the same since then. I have always struggled with anxiety, stress, depression, paranoia, but with lots of work i was slowly getting much better mentally. After his death, I feel like my mind is unraveling. I feel like everything I worked so hard for is gone, I feel like I've regressed back to being a teenager. Every day I feel like a different person. My moods are out of control and I have panic attacks almost daily.
Without my SO, I don't know if I would still be alive today. He has helped me immensely through all of this, talking me down from panic and dealing with my often very intense mood swings.
I've recently started taking some vitamins to help my mood and they have helped me feel more normal than I have in months. I have also been drinking just about every day, and until his death I barely touched alcohol.
There is so much more I could say and explain, but I'm on mobile at work right now and fighting tears.
The death of my best friend has fucked me up. It has been the hardest thing I've ever gone through and I miss him so fucking much. I walk out of my house every day hoping he'll be there. I'm still in denial. I want him back so bad.