Has anyone here ever been the reason for another persons suicide? I almost was.
Back in October of 2014, My girlfriend and I were helping my friend shop for food in a local target. My friend let's call him Harry, is someone who has issues with depression. He was buying food that could be considered unhealthy like bagel bites and icecream, I made a remark about how unhealthy that stuff is as a joke which which caused a downward spiral for him. I didn't know, but apparently Harry was bullied in grade school for being chubby, he's a normal weight now, but back then he wasn't. Harry started to put all the food items he picked out back and I got on his case about it. I started making the most over exaggerated jokes I could make like, "so what if it makes you fat, well have hover boards by the time you can't move around, we can get fat together and have rascal races." Stuff like that. After awhile I noticed Harry was getting seriously depressed, he wasn't talking, started moping around, and I got pissed, I told him he should know me better than that, Everything I said was sarcasm and that I actually think you're a very healthy person. Harry told me he understood and we drove him home.
About a month later Harry calls me up and says he wanted to talk, he tells me that the night that we dropped him off he tried to kill himself by asphyxiation with a belt, but he blacked out and the belt loosened enough to save his life.
I kept my cool, I listened to what he had to say, Harry said it wasn't my fault, that it was the fat shaming from his childhood. I never once told him how I felt, but I'll tell you how it feels, it's fucking infuriating, to think someone in your life that you trust would try and do that to you. The fact that Harry would give a shit about something an ignorant children said, that he would actually value the opinions of kids calling him fat as a kid. I still can't imagination the pain he almost cause me, the damage he almost did to my life, my feelings, over nothing. I could have woken up to a phone call from a friend telling me the news, that he killed himself, and I would spend the rest of my life thinking it was my fault.
When I comes to Suicide I agree with Albert Camus," Killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or you do not understand it". I view Harry as a Ignorant and Weak person, he's still my friend, but I don't think I can ever risk getting so close again.