My best friend committed suicide at the start of the 5th grade.
He was a very troubled boy. His parents were both killed on impact by a drunk driver when he was 3. He was sent to live with his paternal grandmother (one of our neighbors) but she was elderly, retired, and resented him and, unbeknownst to me (but not to my parents, I learned later on in life that they were trying to adopt him), she was abusing him.
There were hushed whispers amongst the parents in the neighborhood that she may have actually killed him but, as far as I know, it was never officially investigated. She died less than a year later, anyway.
I remember the last time that I saw him. We often spent our entire weekends together, he practically lived at our house from Fridays after school until Sunday evening. I remember the week that followed his death. Every detail. And then my life gets hazy for a couple of years.
But I came out of it around the 7th grade and was doing well academically and in sports.
Then it happened again in the 8th grade.
My friend and his girlfriend were sexually active and thought (incorrectly) that she was pregnant. He couldn't handle the response he got from his parents when he delivered the news and so he stayed home from school on a Monday and shot himself.
I stopped giving a shit about academics at that point but I kept up the sports, mostly in honor of my friend because we were on the same teams, both ran in the 4x400, etc. The sports forced me to keep my GPA above a 2.5 or whatever. That connection to my friend through athletics is probably the only reason I graduated.
In retrospect, I was deeply depressed. Around 14/15, I turned to alcohol and drugs to self medicate. It took me a long time to recover mentally.
My parents tried to get me into therapy but it didn't work for me.
I've never really felt any closure with these events and, while they don't haunt me, they do remain with me 3 decades later.
I had two of my closest childhood friends die when I was young. It was a much different situation to yours, but I just wanted to say I know what that's like. I'm not haunted by it either, but it stuck with me in that it made it really hard for me to make friends again afterwards. I hope you are doing better these days.
He was a very troubled boy. His parents were both killed on impact by a drunk driver when he was 3. He was sent to live with his paternal grandmother (one of our neighbors) but she was elderly, retired, and resented him and, unbeknownst to me (but not to my parents, I learned later on in life that they were trying to adopt him), she was abusing him.
There were hushed whispers amongst the parents in the neighborhood that she may have actually killed him but, as far as I know, it was never officially investigated. She died less than a year later, anyway.
I remember the last time that I saw him. We often spent our entire weekends together, he practically lived at our house from Fridays after school until Sunday evening. I remember the week that followed his death. Every detail. And then my life gets hazy for a couple of years.
But I came out of it around the 7th grade and was doing well academically and in sports.
Then it happened again in the 8th grade.
My friend and his girlfriend were sexually active and thought (incorrectly) that she was pregnant. He couldn't handle the response he got from his parents when he delivered the news and so he stayed home from school on a Monday and shot himself.
I stopped giving a shit about academics at that point but I kept up the sports, mostly in honor of my friend because we were on the same teams, both ran in the 4x400, etc. The sports forced me to keep my GPA above a 2.5 or whatever. That connection to my friend through athletics is probably the only reason I graduated.
In retrospect, I was deeply depressed. Around 14/15, I turned to alcohol and drugs to self medicate. It took me a long time to recover mentally.
My parents tried to get me into therapy but it didn't work for me.
I've never really felt any closure with these events and, while they don't haunt me, they do remain with me 3 decades later.