I had 2 friends in middle school and then high school kill themselves, then 1 in the army while I was in Iraq right before I went on leave, then another back home in Texas the day before I went on leave (so both about 2 weeks apart,) then another right before I got out of the army (with the same shotgun as the friend right before I went home on leave.) Oh, and when I was like 4 or 5 my aunt's girlfriend killed herself, but I didn't find out about that until many years later.
I had trouble understanding or even trying to understand the first one (that I knew about) and never really thought about it very deeply. Several years later I went through depression (unrelated) and attempted suicide myself. I saw his suicide as an escape and I wanted to pursue that option. Afterwords I felt very stupid for almost putting my own family through that and putting my friends through it again. When my other friend in high school killed himself, I was numb to it.
When my friend in Iraq killed himself, it was gut-wrenching. I didn't like the guy at all before we deployed, but about 3 months into deployment we were put in the same vehicle (my unit did convoy security) and we started to get along really well. Right before I went on leave, we were out on a mission and when we got back we found out that he had shot himself through the heart. Our deployment had been very uneventful up to that point (several IED blasts but no deaths.)
I didn't have much time to process it, and the next time I called my family (the last time before I would be getting on a plane to come home for a couple weeks) they informed me that yet another of my middle school/high school buddies had shot himself while over at another friend's house. The combination of the two in such a short timeframe, combined with the stress of deployment, threatened to really pull me back into depression. However, I got married during that leave, and then had to get back to mission ready status when I got back to Iraq, so I didn't give myself any time to process either suicide too deply.
Right before I got out of the army, the friend (whose house the previous friend had shot himself in) shot himself with the same shotgun. This guy had been sort of an on-again off-again friend for our entire group for like a decade. When he was our friend, he was one of our best friends; when he wasn't, we absolutely hated him. He was a bit of a compulsive liar, a thief, and generally just kind of an asshole, but we'd known him for so long that we always ended up putting up with him again when we saw him again after cutting contact for long enough. At this point, his suicide didn't even affect me. I just hoped that he found the peace he sought.
And now I'm super fucking depressed.