Story My sister died and I suspect it was a suicide

[QuietNightSky42]

Hello, I'm going to preface everything that follows here by saying that whilst I haven't made up my mind on whether what is on this site I agree with in principle, I respect that if my sister did choose to ctb(had to look this meaning up and assume it's better forum etiquette to use the phrase instead of alternatives) then that was her choice even if I am sad that she is no longer in my life in the same way she was.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the correct place for this thread either so feel free to move it but I felt like maybe my views and thoughts would be better suited in here than in the main forum.

Neither myself nor my family know the exact way my sister died but for context she was a relatively healthy 18 year old girl as far as I know. I lived in a different city at the time of her death when I got a call from my brother saying that my mum had found her dead in her bed. The reason I suspect that she chose to ctb rather just some other physical cause is that she had no known health conditions and had youth on her side along with the fact that an autopsy and the final coroner's report that followed lead to an 'Open Conclusion', in other words no one knows.

I don't know if I personally, am looking for some sort of closure by coming here, possibly I am if I have to be honest with myself but I think I am looking more for answers for my mum as I think of all the members of my family she still grieves the most and I don't know if she will ever be able to really deal with my sister's loss without maybe knowing why she passed away.

I am also a little conflicted about if I really want find the answers to some of the questions that I have here, but I'm going to ask anyway. You may find it a little bit distasteful the way I came across this site and why I suspect my sister chose to ctb. I found this site after looking through my sister's laptop trying to find clues to her passing, which you may consider a breach of her privacy but I think my defense is that dealing with the possessions of the dead is the burden of those that stay living. Before I went looking I had a conversation with a friend about whether either of us would want our family/friends to look through our things if either of us died. My friend said that she would be horrified if anyone went through her things which made me think, and also posited the question of did I think my sister would want me to do so. After giving it some thought I decided that I didn't have enough information to answer and that I didn't think I'd ever be able to answer without my sister telling me directly which leads me to here.

I knew that my sister had been struggling for a long time, at least a year before her passing but probably for much longer. As the previous summer she had been hospitalised due to an OD attempt. A few weeks before she passed away I had gotten a call from her where she talked about how she felt like she wanted to ctb and that she was "too weak for this world", I managed to calm her down and try to give her some advice. I want to mention that I have had suicidal thoughts in the past and have also in the time after my sister's passing, I know that there might be some people here that might frown at me trying to talk her down but I will counter with that she came to me, asking for help.

For context I am the eldest of 3 siblings, I'm currently 25 years old with my younger brother at 23 and my sister had roughly a 6 year age gap between myself and her. She knew that I struggle(present tense) with depression and I think at heart she wanted to know what my 'secret' was to keep going on in life. I think that all 3 of my siblings and myself struggle/struggled with depression and depressive thoughts for most if not all of our lives to some extent.

My reply to my sister most of the time and the last time I properly spoke to her when she came to me for help was that I don't have a secret answer to life, that I struggle as much as anyone else and that a lot of the time things and people do suck. What I tried to express to her was that sometimes, a lot of the time, I'm not 'ok' and that the way she was feeling I've felt as well. For a long time a thought that had been growing in my head was that if I could 'feel' my sister's personality as a physical item then it felt like to me she was holding her breath in constantly and didn't know how to breathe out. A little bit about my family is that our parents come from a Chinese mentality and culture, our parents are first generation Chinese living in the UK. You may have already guessed but you can maybe imagine a little of the 'pressures' myself and my siblings felt/still feel from the stereotypes that exist.

I think to my sister I might have seemed a little odd in her eyes as although I was the eldest I fought against our parents will a lot and I think seemed to pave a way for whatever I wanted whereas I think she felt like she couldn't do that and felt boxed in. I went to an Arts University, along with my brother and my sister had just been accepted into the same university that I went to and we had spoken a little about maybe living together when she moved to the city I had been living in. A little about myself is that my time at university was some of the worst times in my life so far and when I felt the most suicidal. So for her to want to follow in my footsteps made me raise my eyebrows in surprise a little. I think if I had to guess she wanted the freedom to decide things for herself and maybe to taste a little of what I'm still trying to figure out; how to be happier and find things in life to keep me going.

As I already mentioned a week or 2 before she passed away she had just been accepted into my university which she seemed very happy and excited about. For a little more context to this story about a month before she was accepted, she had given me the phone call I already mentioned. So for her to go from feeling very suicidal to almost ecstatic from being accepted into university, led me to maybe a little naively into thinking that things would be 'ok'.

I know that from my own experiences that feelings like that can 'come and go' and that works equally for either direction.

I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it here in this subforum, I couldn't find anything in the rules about it. Whilst I can't be 100% sure as to how my sister passed, after looking through her laptop and from what my brother and I found in her room I suspect that she possibly used SN(I'm assuming abbreviating words is a form of censorship?), as we found some in her room and I found an invoice for some bought online dated 3 weeks before her passing. Whilst I don't think I'll ever know if that was how she passed I can only assume so as that's how I came across this site in the first place, from a bookmark she had saved inside a folder I didn't think to look in initially.

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but I assume the method I'm talking about is intended to be painless, I assume most methods generally are, but my initial searching online when I found the SN didn't lead to anything substantiating it's use to ctb, rather the opposite actually as I could only find things linking to how you'd need an absurd amount. But that was before I found this site in my sister's bookmarks and now I know better, based on the page that she had saved and further reading my sister either passed from natural causes or SN. The main reason I'm suspecting it was the latter is based on her health and her state of mind before she passed, maybe someone can point me to more details that would maybe help me figure it out. I don't know if SN is a common way to ctb in my country or in general so I don't know if it's something they test for during an autopsy or if it would even come up as some sort of abnormality if found in someone so I can't be certain of natural causes or otherwise.

For anyone curious, to my knowledge she was found in her bed around early morning/midday and I assume she passed in her sleep from what I understand, I believe it was my mum that found her and called an ambulance but by that point it was too late. I imagine that she died peacefully or as peacefully as you can in your sleep, from the conversation I had with my brother(he saw her body before she was taken away), she didn't seem to be in discomfort. He told me that she looked like she could be asleep if it wasn't for the lack of warmth and paleness and that her arms were folded on her chest/too her sides.

I'm going to talk a bit about what happened for myself and my family afterwards aswell as events leading up to my sister's death, whilst I'm not trying to actively dissuade anyone from choosing to ctb I am merely offering information and a story based on my experiences of what happens/happened after you may make that choice, in the same vein that people here do to support such choices.

I'm happy to expand on anything I've talked about or if anyone would like to know more about something I might've missed out, but I would like to maybe start a wider discussion on a maybe more positive note with what I'm writing here.

I hold a lot of blame towards my dad if my sister made the choice to ctb, having 3 of your children's personalitys and character 'flaws' be very similar is probably not a coincidence and more learned behaviour. This is coming from several past and current conversations with my siblings about our upbringing and our parent's influence on us both from a cultural standpoint as well as their personal choices in how they raised us.

We were raised above a Chinese Take-away,something not too uncommon for 2nd generation kids from such backgrounds. Having had conversations with friends and people in similar age ranges to myself that come from such backgrounds, a few things I've found are common across the board, lots of repressed emotions which lead to various forms of depression and depressive behaviour followed by an inability for our family to understand why we can't just be 'happy'. Add in a constant pressure to be better if not the best in whatever it is we do and you have a recipe for individuals with some unhappy emotions and struggle to deal with them.

Generally in Chinese culture boys are preferred and a male firstborn especially so, this didn't really apply to my dad who doted on my sister, you may think this was a good thing but he did it in a way that was suffocatingly so. You may say that a lot of what I'm going to say about my dad is simply my opinion skewing things, and I'd be inclined to maybe agree with you if I was a stranger reading this but such thoughts were not only my own but also my sister's and my brother's. I mentioned earlier but my sister tried to OD a year or so before her passing, at the time I put my job on pause for about a month. The reason I did this is because when I got the call from my brother that she had tried to OD, I remember my brother and I both expressing that we weren't surprised that something like this had happened and we expressed the same thing to each other after her death. I realised that I needed to do something if I wanted to try and help her as I realised she needed somebody that understood how she felt and that she wanted someone that could empathise with her even if I couldn't necessarily help her directly.

I knew she was unhappy and after I spoke to her after the first attempt I knew that she was unhappy for a lot of very similar reasons as I was when I was around her age. I could see her struggling to find an answer that could keep her going, again, I think she saw that I had found some semblance of answer for myself and I think she wanted to feel the same way. I think one of the biggest things that differed between myself and my siblings is the friends and people that I met as well as the spaces I spent my time in as I was growing up. All 3 of us turned out to be very introverted and struggled/still struggle with social awkwardness and crippling anxiety.

Since our parents rarely had time for us as I got older I became a father figure of sorts for my 2 siblings, I on the other hand had to muddle through things blindly trying to figure out life and the world at large. In my early years I spent most of my time reading books and as I got older this divolved into games and the rest of the internet. I still somewhat satirically think to myself that I was raised by the internet, I mean this in the sense of the things I learnt from the people I met online as well as the physical amount of time I spent online with these people. For better or worse my siblings followed in this behaviour and all 3 of us developed similar interests. We all chose to go to art schools which probably didn't dissappoint our parents as much as stereotypes would probably have you believe and my love of books and reading grew into one for anime and games(among other things).

As I mentioned I think the one thing that separated myself from my siblings is the fact that I was the first to experience a lot of things in life that would be coming their way along with that instead of having an older version of myself to turn to I found myself turning to strangers online(ironic I know, that I'm posting here). I think this led me to have a slightly easier time making friends as well as heavily informing the kind of people I wanted to have around me as well as the kind of person I found myself wanting to be. I think what it really boiled down to was that the questions my sister had and the questions my brother currently is trying to answer I had to try and find an answer to at a much earlier stage of my life. I often try and say this to my friends and especially after my sister passed away that my life would have ended up very different if I hadn't met them and that I might not still be here if I hadn't met them. These friends gave me a space for me to try and find myself and at the same time allowed them to do the same.

Before my sister passed, I had continued to live in the same city that I went to University in, I struggled the entire time I was at university and had to take a years intermission after my first time trying to do my 3rd year. At the same time I was in a pretty toxic relationship that ended badly. When I tried to redo my 3rd year I felt probably the worst I've ever felt and was the closest I've ever come to ctb, my friends had graduated a year before me and almost all of them had left the city to find work elsewhere. I felt so isolated and alone, that I couldn't finish my 3rd year and ended up dropping out halfway through university altogether.

I had/have a big fear about taking medication to treat depression or mental disorders. My fear is that they'll make me feel 'like someone else' and that the person I was will cease to exist and to me this is worse than dying in some senses, as to me the idea of ceasing to exist in a different form that isn't 'me' terrifies me compared to simply not being alive anymore. A conversation with one of my best friends about the subject of medicating for anything was that to them they were happy to take it if it made life easier in the current moment, as I mentioned to them I couldn't see medicating being a longterm/lifelong solution for myself and that I believe if I'm ever to be 'truly' happy then I need to find a solution for my own problems myself as I believe if I am the creator of my own problems then I can also be the solver of them. But this is much easier said than done and at that low point as I was trying to complete my 3rd year again I started taking medication to try and cope with my suicidal thoughts. After a short time I decided that I wanted to stop taking them as I can only really describe them as making me feel like I was living in a bubble. I couldn't feel any extreme emotional response to anything, happy, sad or otherwise. Whilst this helped limit the extremes of my emotions it felt like there was a quiet rational part of my consciousness that knew that I wouldn't find a permanent solution this way as it didn't think that I could solve an emotional problem without being able to actively deal and handle with those emotions.

Despite how I was feeling at the time I knew that I would've felt even worse if I returned home, I don't think I can overstate enough how much I couldn't stand my dad at the time and I still stand by the fact that I know I would've been worse if I did. I know that if my sister did choose to ctb that it was ultimately her choice but I think it's fair to say that if someone ties your shoelaces together and tells you to run from a wolf that you've definitely got less choices about how you do it.

After my sister's passing I had a hard time coping with work and my relationship at the time was also slowly deteriorating. Around this time last year I quit my job and earlier this year I finally decided to come home. I now live with my family, read as my brother and mum as my dad is rarely ever here, above a different Chinese takeaway to the one we grew up in. I'm currently in my sister's old room as there isn't room for me anywhere else, I sleep in the same bed that I grew up in and the same one that she passed away in. I know that it's probably a little unsettling to hear that but my parents, my dad especially grew up in a war zone and they rarely if ever throw out anything that still 'works'. A lot of her things are still in the room and in the drawers as I think my parents, especially my mum can't bare to throw them away. I'll be honest and say that it does make me more than a little sad sometimes when I stop and think about how much of 'her' is still in this room but I'm reluctant to have a conversation with my mum about it as I know that it will upset her if I do(she still lights a candle everyday for her), so I mostly just try not to think about it. And I feel weird about if it's her room still or my room now, sometimes I wonder if some part of her ever watches me ambling about in her room and what she might think. I'm not religious in any sense and neither are my parents that I know of although they did try to have a strange hybrid western/buddhist funeral so I don't exactly believe in ghosts or spirits or anything like that but I will admit it is a little uneery to be living in the same room that someone you know passed away in with so much of her stuff still visibly around and not think about them.

I know that most of the people on here that are looking to find ways to ctb probably won't care to read this wall of text but I hope this might also make people stop and think a little more and make more of an informed choice. Again I respect my sister if that was the choice she made but I can't lie that when I think about her I am sad and that I won't get the chance to talk to her again or see her create anymore artwork or just to simply get excited over the small joys that life can sometimes offer inbetween everything else.

There's a lot here that I've missed or skipped out, mainly because I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in reading/discussing it but if there's something someone would like to ask or discuss that they would like to know more about then I'm happy to discuss it.

 

[Deleted member 22624]

I'm sorry for your loss. I empathize with you and your sister, I hope she's in a better place. I'm sure she'd be glad that even now you try to sit on the fence. Thanks for sharing your story. Those little joys in life for many just don't compare to the constant threats and challenges this world presents, and the resulting unbearable, unrelenting pressure.

You remind me why I'm still here, unfortunately, my passing would cause too much pain to others right now. But knowing what I leave behind, I would want family to be able to look through whatever of mine they wanted. I would owe them that.

 

[paroxyical]

Hello, I'm going to preface everything that follows here by saying that whilst I haven't made up my mind on whether what is on this site I agree with in principle, I respect that if my sister did choose to ctb(had to look this meaning up and assume it's better forum etiquette to use the phrase instead of alternatives) then that was her choice even if I am sad that she is no longer in my life in the same way she was.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the correct place for this thread either so feel free to move it but I felt like maybe my views and thoughts would be better suited in here than in the main forum.

Neither myself nor my family know the exact way my sister died but for context she was a relatively healthy 18 year old girl as far as I know. I lived in a different city at the time of her death when I got a call from my brother saying that my mum had found her dead in her bed. The reason I suspect that she chose to ctb rather just some other physical cause is that she had no known health conditions and had youth on her side along with the fact that an autopsy and the final coroner's report that followed lead to an 'Open Conclusion', in other words no one knows.

I don't know if I personally, am looking for some sort of closure by coming here, possibly I am if I have to be honest with myself but I think I am looking more for answers for my mum as I think of all the members of my family she still grieves the most and I don't know if she will ever be able to really deal with my sister's loss without maybe knowing why she passed away.

I am also a little conflicted about if I really want find the answers to some of the questions that I have here, but I'm going to ask anyway. You may find it a little bit distasteful the way I came across this site and why I suspect my sister chose to ctb. I found this site after looking through my sister's laptop trying to find clues to her passing, which you may consider a breach of her privacy but I think my defense is that dealing with the possessions of the dead is the burden of those that stay living. Before I went looking I had a conversation with a friend about whether either of us would want our family/friends to look through our things if either of us died. My friend said that she would be horrified if anyone went through her things which made me think, and also posited the question of did I think my sister would want me to do so. After giving it some thought I decided that I didn't have enough information to answer and that I didn't think I'd ever be able to answer without my sister telling me directly which leads me to here.

I knew that my sister had been struggling for a long time, at least a year before her passing but probably for much longer. As the previous summer she had been hospitalised due to an OD attempt. A few weeks before she passed away I had gotten a call from her where she talked about how she felt like she wanted to ctb and that she was "too weak for this world", I managed to calm her down and try to give her some advice. I want to mention that I have had suicidal thoughts in the past and have also in the time after my sister's passing, I know that there might be some people here that might frown at me trying to talk her down but I will counter with that she came to me, asking for help.

For context I am the eldest of 3 siblings, I'm currently 25 years old with my younger brother at 23 and my sister had roughly a 6 year age gap between myself and her. She knew that I struggle(present tense) with depression and I think at heart she wanted to know what my 'secret' was to keep going on in life. I think that all 3 of my siblings and myself struggle/struggled with depression and depressive thoughts for most if not all of our lives to some extent.

My reply to my sister most of the time and the last time I properly spoke to her when she came to me for help was that I don't have a secret answer to life, that I struggle as much as anyone else and that a lot of the time things and people do suck. What I tried to express to her was that sometimes, a lot of the time, I'm not 'ok' and that the way she was feeling I've felt as well. For a long time a thought that had been growing in my head was that if I could 'feel' my sister's personality as a physical item then it felt like to me she was holding her breath in constantly and didn't know how to breathe out. A little bit about my family is that our parents come from a Chinese mentality and culture, our parents are first generation Chinese living in the UK. You may have already guessed but you can maybe imagine a little of the 'pressures' myself and my siblings felt/still feel from the stereotypes that exist.

I think to my sister I might have seemed a little odd in her eyes as although I was the eldest I fought against our parents will a lot and I think seemed to pave a way for whatever I wanted whereas I think she felt like she couldn't do that and felt boxed in. I went to an Arts University, along with my brother and my sister had just been accepted into the same university that I went to and we had spoken a little about maybe living together when she moved to the city I had been living in. A little about myself is that my time at university was some of the worst times in my life so far and when I felt the most suicidal. So for her to want to follow in my footsteps made me raise my eyebrows in surprise a little. I think if I had to guess she wanted the freedom to decide things for herself and maybe to taste a little of what I'm still trying to figure out; how to be happier and find things in life to keep me going.

As I already mentioned a week or 2 before she passed away she had just been accepted into my university which she seemed very happy and excited about. For a little more context to this story about a month before she was accepted, she had given me the phone call I already mentioned. So for her to go from feeling very suicidal to almost ecstatic from being accepted into university, led me to maybe a little naively into thinking that things would be 'ok'.

I know that from my own experiences that feelings like that can 'come and go' and that works equally for either direction.

I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it here in this subforum, I couldn't find anything in the rules about it. Whilst I can't be 100% sure as to how my sister passed, after looking through her laptop and from what my brother and I found in her room I suspect that she possibly used SN(I'm assuming abbreviating words is a form of censorship?), as we found some in her room and I found an invoice for some bought online dated 3 weeks before her passing. Whilst I don't think I'll ever know if that was how she passed I can only assume so as that's how I came across this site in the first place, from a bookmark she had saved inside a folder I didn't think to look in initially.

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but I assume the method I'm talking about is intended to be painless, I assume most methods generally are, but my initial searching online when I found the SN didn't lead to anything substantiating it's use to ctb, rather the opposite actually as I could only find things linking to how you'd need an absurd amount. But that was before I found this site in my sister's bookmarks and now I know better, based on the page that she had saved and further reading my sister either passed from natural causes or SN. The main reason I'm suspecting it was the latter is based on her health and her state of mind before she passed, maybe someone can point me to more details that would maybe help me figure it out. I don't know if SN is a common way to ctb in my country or in general so I don't know if it's something they test for during an autopsy or if it would even come up as some sort of abnormality if found in someone so I can't be certain of natural causes or otherwise.

For anyone curious, to my knowledge she was found in her bed around early morning/midday and I assume she passed in her sleep from what I understand, I believe it was my mum that found her and called an ambulance but by that point it was too late. I imagine that she died peacefully or as peacefully as you can in your sleep, from the conversation I had with my brother(he saw her body before she was taken away), she didn't seem to be in discomfort. He told me that she looked like she could be asleep if it wasn't for the lack of warmth and paleness and that her arms were folded on her chest/too her sides.

I'm going to talk a bit about what happened for myself and my family afterwards aswell as events leading up to my sister's death, whilst I'm not trying to actively dissuade anyone from choosing to ctb I am merely offering information and a story based on my experiences of what happens/happened after you may make that choice, in the same vein that people here do to support such choices.

I'm happy to expand on anything I've talked about or if anyone would like to know more about something I might've missed out, but I would like to maybe start a wider discussion on a maybe more positive note with what I'm writing here.

I hold a lot of blame towards my dad if my sister made the choice to ctb, having 3 of your children's personalitys and character 'flaws' be very similar is probably not a coincidence and more learned behaviour. This is coming from several past and current conversations with my siblings about our upbringing and our parent's influence on us both from a cultural standpoint as well as their personal choices in how they raised us.

We were raised above a Chinese Take-away,something not too uncommon for 2nd generation kids from such backgrounds. Having had conversations with friends and people in similar age ranges to myself that come from such backgrounds, a few things I've found are common across the board, lots of repressed emotions which lead to various forms of depression and depressive behaviour followed by an inability for our family to understand why we can't just be 'happy'. Add in a constant pressure to be better if not the best in whatever it is we do and you have a recipe for individuals with some unhappy emotions and struggle to deal with them.

Generally in Chinese culture boys are preferred and a male firstborn especially so, this didn't really apply to my dad who doted on my sister, you may think this was a good thing but he did it in a way that was suffocatingly so. You may say that a lot of what I'm going to say about my dad is simply my opinion skewing things, and I'd be inclined to maybe agree with you if I was a stranger reading this but such thoughts were not only my own but also my sister's and my brother's. I mentioned earlier but my sister tried to OD a year or so before her passing, at the time I put my job on pause for about a month. The reason I did this is because when I got the call from my brother that she had tried to OD, I remember my brother and I both expressing that we weren't surprised that something like this had happened and we expressed the same thing to each other after her death. I realised that I needed to do something if I wanted to try and help her as I realised she needed somebody that understood how she felt and that she wanted someone that could empathise with her even if I couldn't necessarily help her directly.

I knew she was unhappy and after I spoke to her after the first attempt I knew that she was unhappy for a lot of very similar reasons as I was when I was around her age. I could see her struggling to find an answer that could keep her going, again, I think she saw that I had found some semblance of answer for myself and I think she wanted to feel the same way. I think one of the biggest things that differed between myself and my siblings is the friends and people that I met as well as the spaces I spent my time in as I was growing up. All 3 of us turned out to be very introverted and struggled/still struggle with social awkwardness and crippling anxiety.

Since our parents rarely had time for us as I got older I became a father figure of sorts for my 2 siblings, I on the other hand had to muddle through things blindly trying to figure out life and the world at large. In my early years I spent most of my time reading books and as I got older this divolved into games and the rest of the internet. I still somewhat satirically think to myself that I was raised by the internet, I mean this in the sense of the things I learnt from the people I met online as well as the physical amount of time I spent online with these people. For better or worse my siblings followed in this behaviour and all 3 of us developed similar interests. We all chose to go to art schools which probably didn't dissappoint our parents as much as stereotypes would probably have you believe and my love of books and reading grew into one for anime and games(among other things).

As I mentioned I think the one thing that separated myself from my siblings is the fact that I was the first to experience a lot of things in life that would be coming their way along with that instead of having an older version of myself to turn to I found myself turning to strangers online(ironic I know, that I'm posting here). I think this led me to have a slightly easier time making friends as well as heavily informing the kind of people I wanted to have around me as well as the kind of person I found myself wanting to be. I think what it really boiled down to was that the questions my sister had and the questions my brother currently is trying to answer I had to try and find an answer to at a much earlier stage of my life. I often try and say this to my friends and especially after my sister passed away that my life would have ended up very different if I hadn't met them and that I might not still be here if I hadn't met them. These friends gave me a space for me to try and find myself and at the same time allowed them to do the same.

Before my sister passed, I had continued to live in the same city that I went to University in, I struggled the entire time I was at university and had to take a years intermission after my first time trying to do my 3rd year. At the same time I was in a pretty toxic relationship that ended badly. When I tried to redo my 3rd year I felt probably the worst I've ever felt and was the closest I've ever come to ctb, my friends had graduated a year before me and almost all of them had left the city to find work elsewhere. I felt so isolated and alone, that I couldn't finish my 3rd year and ended up dropping out halfway through university altogether.

I had/have a big fear about taking medication to treat depression or mental disorders. My fear is that they'll make me feel 'like someone else' and that the person I was will cease to exist and to me this is worse than dying in some senses, as to me the idea of ceasing to exist in a different form that isn't 'me' terrifies me compared to simply not being alive anymore. A conversation with one of my best friends about the subject of medicating for anything was that to them they were happy to take it if it made life easier in the current moment, as I mentioned to them I couldn't see medicating being a longterm/lifelong solution for myself and that I believe if I'm ever to be 'truly' happy then I need to find a solution for my own problems myself as I believe if I am the creator of my own problems then I can also be the solver of them. But this is much easier said than done and at that low point as I was trying to complete my 3rd year again I started taking medication to try and cope with my suicidal thoughts. After a short time I decided that I wanted to stop taking them as I can only really describe them as making me feel like I was living in a bubble. I couldn't feel any extreme emotional response to anything, happy, sad or otherwise. Whilst this helped limit the extremes of my emotions it felt like there was a quiet rational part of my consciousness that knew that I wouldn't find a permanent solution this way as it didn't think that I could solve an emotional problem without being able to actively deal and handle with those emotions.

Despite how I was feeling at the time I knew that I would've felt even worse if I returned home, I don't think I can overstate enough how much I couldn't stand my dad at the time and I still stand by the fact that I know I would've been worse if I did. I know that if my sister did choose to ctb that it was ultimately her choice but I think it's fair to say that if someone ties your shoelaces together and tells you to run from a wolf that you've definitely got less choices about how you do it.

After my sister's passing I had a hard time coping with work and my relationship at the time was also slowly deteriorating. Around this time last year I quit my job and earlier this year I finally decided to come home. I now live with my family, read as my brother and mum as my dad is rarely ever here, above a different Chinese takeaway to the one we grew up in. I'm currently in my sister's old room as there isn't room for me anywhere else, I sleep in the same bed that I grew up in and the same one that she passed away in. I know that it's probably a little unsettling to hear that but my parents, my dad especially grew up in a war zone and they rarely if ever throw out anything that still 'works'. A lot of her things are still in the room and in the drawers as I think my parents, especially my mum can't bare to throw them away. I'll be honest and say that it does make me more than a little sad sometimes when I stop and think about how much of 'her' is still in this room but I'm reluctant to have a conversation with my mum about it as I know that it will upset her if I do(she still lights a candle everyday for her), so I mostly just try not to think about it. And I feel weird about if it's her room still or my room now, sometimes I wonder if some part of her ever watches me ambling about in her room and what she might think. I'm not religious in any sense and neither are my parents that I know of although they did try to have a strange hybrid western/buddhist funeral so I don't exactly believe in ghosts or spirits or anything like that but I will admit it is a little uneery to be living in the same room that someone you know passed away in with so much of her stuff still visibly around and not think about them.

I know that most of the people on here that are looking to find ways to ctb probably won't care to read this wall of text but I hope this might also make people stop and think a little more and make more of an informed choice. Again I respect my sister if that was the choice she made but I can't lie that when I think about her I am sad and that I won't get the chance to talk to her again or see her create anymore artwork or just to simply get excited over the small joys that life can sometimes offer inbetween everything else.

There's a lot here that I've missed or skipped out, mainly because I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in reading/discussing it but if there's something someone would like to ask or discuss that they would like to know more about then I'm happy to discuss it.

im not an expert on this stuff but it was almost certainly SN if you found it in her room. it's an extremely popular method on this forum, because of the success rates and low pain and the fact its more peaceful than, say, shooting yourself. i think it's a lot easier to fight your survival instinct with something like that too, although i might be wrong.
it would've been peaceful. idk if that helps but i hope so

 

[Peachycherry]

My sympathies. I'm really sorry about your sister, and that now you have to deal with the aftermath. If it brings you comfort; SN is indeed a popular way to ctb, mostly because it's peaceful. She most likely fell unconscious pretty quickly and apart from some side effects like nausea, didn't suffer.
With that being said, welcome to SS. It's very legitimate for you to feel confused,sad, and to seek answers here. From your story, I can tell you're also going through some tough times, I know you're focusing on your sister's passing but remember to take care of yourself too. Most people here are very open; we share common struggles so don't hesitate to start another thread or ask for help. Hell, I'm often available and I'll lend a listening ear whenever I can; don't be afraid to message me. Hope you manage to find some peace. Sending lots of positive thoughts your way

 

[QuietNightSky42]

I'm sorry for your loss. I empathize with you and your sister, I hope she's in a better place. I'm sure she'd be glad that even now you try to sit on the fence. Thanks for sharing your story. Those little joys in life for many just don't compare to the constant threats and challenges this world presents, and the resulting unbearable, unrelenting pressure.

You remind me why I'm still here, unfortunately, my passing would cause too much pain to others right now. But knowing what I leave behind, I would want family to be able to look through whatever of mine they wanted. I would owe them that.

Thank you, I don't think it's much of trying to sit on the fence or even thinking that it's what my sister would want, but I've always tried to understand things from other people's perspective, I think it's a by-product of reading so much fiction as a child you end up living lots of other people's lives, makes it hard for me to sit in just my own shoes.

I like the way you word how the world can be and it reminds me of something I read the other day about how one must "imagine Sisyphus happy". Not sure if this is the right forum for philosophical questions or maybe it's the perfect place but you might find it interesting reading,

I don't know what struggles you're going through but I appreciate your reply and hope you find some peace eventually.

im not an expert on this stuff but it was almost certainly SN if you found it in her room. it's an extremely popular method on this forum, because of the success rates and low pain and the fact its more peaceful than, say, shooting yourself. i think it's a lot easier to fight your survival instinct with something like that too, although i might be wrong.
it would've been peaceful. idk if that helps but i hope so

Thank you for your input, I don't think I'll ever really know but the odds are favourable that was the case when I matched up the dates, it does give me a little peace knowing that it was one of the 'better' ways to do it, but I think it'd give my mum more peace of mind if I ever manage to tell her what I've found.

My sympathies. I'm really sorry about your sister, and that now you have to deal with the aftermath. If it brings you comfort; SN is indeed a popular way to ctb, mostly because it's peaceful. She most likely fell unconscious pretty quickly and apart from some side effects like nausea, didn't suffer.
With that being said, welcome to SS. It's very legitimate for you to feel confused,sad, and to seek answers here. From your story, I can tell you're also going through some tough times, I know you're focusing on your sister's passing but remember to take care of yourself too. Most people here are very open; we share common struggles so don't hesitate to start another thread or ask for help. Hell, I'm often available and I'll lend a listening ear whenever I can; don't be afraid to message me. Hope you manage to find some peace. Sending lots of positive thoughts your way

Thank you, both for your kind words as well as your welcome. I think for myself personally knowing what happened to her changes how I feel about her passing, part of me can't quite rule out it as some random act but the more logical and pragmatic part of me knows better. I think I'd prefer it if it was her choice rather than not but again I'm not sure I'll ever know for sure which leaves me in a sort of limbo.

Something all 3 of my siblings and I struggle(d) all our lives is asking for help and maybe it shows from my story but I'm used to mostly dealing with things on my own, although that's something I've been working on in recent years, so thank you again for your advice and I may take you up on your offer at a later point.

 

[TrailerTrash]

A lot to unpack here, but the time and heart put into writing the post is obvious. Site members can certainly understand the gravity of your sister's choice. At the outset of the post, you ponder this site, which is understandable. Several suicide journals cite the components leading to a suicide and "means" is listed as one key component; therefore, a site that assists with various "means" could be construed as causal in nature. At the same time, I can say that this site provides a non-judgmental venue for many that allows them to vent in ways only understood by those who feel and/or are experiencing similar or same life struggles. It's a mixed bag. This site also gifts members with the ability to better choose the manner and timing of their death - something of tremendous value - even though some observers often cannot fathom why this could be so. I too will leave behind a saddened family in the not-to-distant future, but the internal pain I have endured for years is difficult to shoulder any longer and even harder to describe to another human being - although it appears you've experienced measurable internal pain and can understand to a varying degree. While no one can prove what's on the other side is better, we hope our families can gift us with a modicum of grace and understanding that acknowledges we wish to be free of our respective torments. Wishing you and your family all the best.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I am sorry for your suffering, I empathize. I apologize if talking about myself here seems narcissistic in the face of your pain, but I promise I will relate it to you. My own experience is how I relate to you.

I experienced the loss at fourteen, and I understand the pain, and not having answers. I understand scapegoating someone as being the cause, my father was a homicide detective and I already knew that was common; I also was falsely scapegoated for the suicide by the students of our entire high school and other schools in the school district, and it nearly destroyed me. People generally seek an outside target of blame for the suicide. My boyfriend was sixteen, he did not leave a note, and it made no sense to me that he did not leave me a note. It made no sense to me that he suicided, though there was clear evidence he'd been planning it for at least three or four months, since before I met him. Over thirty years later, I understand that he must have had painful things in his life for quite a while, that he didn't feel he could speak about it to anyone, and that he thought and felt the best solution was to end his life, in spite of all the good things that were happening in his life at that time. I accept I will never know, and that I will never know who or what to blame. I think it's reasonable to assume some kind of abuse played a role.

What you're experiencing is...I won't put a label on it, everyone's experience is different. I survived it, it was a major life experience that will always be a part of me, but I have over the years experienced healing. I myself was adamantly, bullishly pro-life for a very long time, but eventually I became a proponent of people making their own choices. You see, I came from a very abusive family, I was incredibly, suffocatingly controlled, and I became co-dependently controlling. When I healed from that, after years of work, I stopped taking on other people's problems, whether cutting, suicidality, addiction, etc. Whatever someone else's issue, I didn't cause it, I can't cure it, I can't control it. I can lend a caring ear, and then let the other person do whatever they're going to do, because they will do whatever they're going to do anyway. It puts less pressure on them and they don't rebel if I remain compassionate but don't try to push for the outcome I desire. It took a lot of work to get to that point.

I don't know what is best for you, but I empathize with you, I respect you, and I wish for you to have self-determination and the ability to make happen whatever is best for you. I send you a compassionate hug.

You're probably curious about me. There are external things in my life beyond my control, and they are overwhelming. It is a rational choice for me to consider suicide. That's all I think I'll say about it, otherwise I feel like I'll be explaining myself to you, and I don't want or need to. I've shown you respect, and to the degree you're capable, I hope you'll respect that I've got this.

I have a question for you, with no expectation or demand you answer:

What you mean about hoping someone will stop, think a little more and make an informed choice? Would you be willing to explain?

 

[QuietNightSky42]

A lot to unpack here, but the time and heart put into writing the post is obvious. Site members can certainly understand the gravity of your sister's choice. At the outset of the post, you ponder this site, which is understandable. Several suicide journals cite the components leading to a suicide and "means" is listed as one key component; therefore, a site that assists with various "means" could be construed as causal in nature. At the same time, I can say that this site provides a non-judgmental venue for many that allows them to vent in ways only understood by those who feel and/or are experiencing similar or same life struggles. It's a mixed bag. This site also gifts members with the ability to better choose the manner and timing of their death - something of tremendous value - even though some observers often cannot fathom why this could be so. I too will leave behind a saddened family in the not-to-distant future, but the internal pain I have endured for years is difficult to shoulder any longer and even harder to describe to another human being - although it appears you've experienced measurable internal pain and can understand to a varying degree. While no one can prove what's on the other side is better, we hope our families can gift us with a modicum of grace and understanding that acknowledges we wish to be free of our respective torments. Wishing you and your family all the best.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think my current opinion on much of life, the world and the people in it that it's more like an almost impossible myriad of greys compared to the only black and white picture that most people seem to pass it off as, maybe there is some comfort in thinking in absolutes but I think few things are ever that absolute in nature and for me to think of it as such seems a little dishonest to myself. So whilst I did/am pondering about the nature of this site I think it's personally more in the sense that I do with everything else that I experience.

As I think I said in my OP, I respect that my sister probably(cause unknown) made a choice for herself, and I think for her I think she lived most of her life feeling like she couldn't make choices so for myself at least I am a little glad that she was able to make some sort of informed choice if it was her choice at all. As I've mentioned I've spent and still spend a lot of time online since an early age and I suspect that most people my age did and the generations that follow will too, but experiencing sites like this personally is a first for me. I think I've always assumed that places like this likely existed in some form but it's a little bit of a shock to read on what feels like some very intimate moments and thoughts of people that I will probably never meet. I guess I'm still holding forming a final opinion on anything I find here until I know a bit more, ironically maybe, one of the big things that gives me joy in life is the realisation that I will probably never know everything about everything and the idea that there might be something I don't know but can learn, lurking just over the horizon excites me. But as I've gotten older the realisation that knowledge can also be a very heavy burden as you can never really 'unlearn' something.

I think the idea that children are innocent holds some truth, it may be a little callous to pull an example from this considering the potential serious nature here but I think it holds some relevancy to the topic at hand. Your comments remind me of an anime I've watched where a large group of people are sent to a new world without a choice. At a later point one of the characters muses on how everyone that was sent there and likens it to being born into the world. No one asks to be born into this existence but all the same we find ourselves here, in the anime there are characters that refute the unfair nature of this new world and how everything is meaningless and futile. After this the character is left at a loss, whilst he can understand and empathise to a degree with the characters that think the new world is pointless he thinks on the groups of children that were also sent to this new world and at how they have managed to find some meaning in a world that seems to make as much sense as ours can at times. But I know that not everyone is the same and that ultimately whatever path one chooses for themselves must come down to them.

Sorry if that seemed a little off-topic but I guess I wanted to try and illustrate my next thought with a little more context. I think I'm gaining an increasing appreciation for sites like this one that offer the possibility of an informed choice, something that I personally feel is important with any decision. I think ultimately if what my sister wanted was to ctb then she would've found a means regardless, but if it was a choice she made then I'd rather it was an actual choice and not something akin to being stuck between a rock and a hard place so to speak.

Whilst I can maybe try and empathise a little with what it might feel like to have such pain that it becomes unbearable and what it's like trying to even verbalise that to another person, I think that I will never fully understand exactly what you or anyone else is going through. But personally I think there is great importance in trying to, my personal opinion is that much of the pain that exists in the world that we cause one another in all it's forms is from a lack of empathy and understanding, maybe even an active choice to not understand one another or at least the attempt. I think those of us that choose to stay living for the current time can offer each other moments of peace and comfort until such a time as where the choice to stay living is no longer our own or otherwise.

I agree that I don't think anyone can prove what comes after is better, all I can try to know is what I experience here and how that informs everything else but when I've thought about it before, it brings me a little comfort knowing that my sister came to me for empathy and understanding and whilst I don't think I'll ever truly know whether I was able to give her that I do know without a doubt that if she did make this choice then it was because she wanted to be freed of the burdens that life brings with it and that was more important to her than anything else at the time and I think I should try and respect that.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts, I don't know whether I should as it seems a bit redundant to do so, but I think I'd like to acknowledge that it can take a lot to even talk about things like this and so I appreciate anyone that replies here or reads through what is written. I personally don't have a problem with talking about 'taboo' topics such as this but I think most people that find themselves here probably agree that a lot of people don't like having casual conversations about it and are maybe even condemned for trying to.

 

[Deleted member 22624]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think my current opinion on much of life, the world and the people in it that it's more like an almost impossible myriad of greys compared to the only black and white picture that most people seem to pass it off as, maybe there is some comfort in thinking in absolutes but I think few things are ever that absolute in nature and for me to think of it as such seems a little dishonest to myself. So whilst I did/am pondering about the nature of this site I think it's personally more in the sense that I do with everything else that I experience.

As I think I said in my OP, I respect that my sister probably(cause unknown) made a choice for herself, and I think for her I think she lived most of her life feeling like she couldn't make choices so for myself at least I am a little glad that she was able to make some sort of informed choice if it was her choice at all. As I've mentioned I've spent and still spend a lot of time online since an early age and I suspect that most people my age did and the generations that follow will too, but experiencing sites like this personally is a first for me. I think I've always assumed that places like this likely existed in some form but it's a little bit of a shock to read on what feels like some very intimate moments and thoughts of people that I will probably never meet. I guess I'm still holding forming a final opinion on anything I find here until I know a bit more, ironically maybe, one of the big things that gives me joy in life is the realisation that I will probably never know everything about everything and the idea that there might be something I don't know but can learn, lurking just over the horizon excites me. But as I've gotten older the realisation that knowledge can also be a very heavy burden as you can never really 'unlearn' something.

I think the idea that children are innocent holds some truth, it may be a little callous to pull an example from this considering the potential serious nature here but I think it holds some relevancy to the topic at hand. Your comments remind me of an anime I've watched where a large group of people are sent to a new world without a choice. At a later point one of the characters muses on how everyone that was sent there and likens it to being born into the world. No one asks to be born into this existence but all the same we find ourselves here, in the anime there are characters that refute the unfair nature of this new world and how everything is meaningless and futile. After this the character is left at a loss, whilst he can understand and empathise to a degree with the characters that think the new world is pointless he thinks on the groups of children that were also sent to this new world and at how they have managed to find some meaning in a world that seems to make as much sense as ours can at times. But I know that not everyone is the same and that ultimately whatever path one chooses for themselves must come down to them.

Sorry if that seemed a little off-topic but I guess I wanted to try and illustrate my next thought with a little more context. I think I'm gaining an increasing appreciation for sites like this one that offer the possibility of an informed choice, something that I personally feel is important with any decision. I think ultimately if what my sister wanted was to ctb then she would've found a means regardless, but if it was a choice she made then I'd rather it was an actual choice and not something akin to being stuck between a rock and a hard place so to speak.

Whilst I can maybe try and empathise a little with what it might feel like to have such pain that it becomes unbearable and what it's like trying to even verbalise that to another person, I think that I will never fully understand exactly what you or anyone else is going through. But personally I think there is great importance in trying to, my personal opinion is that much of the pain that exists in the world that we cause one another in all it's forms is from a lack of empathy and understanding, maybe even an active choice to not understand one another or at least the attempt. I think those of us that choose to stay living for the current time can offer each other moments of peace and comfort until such a time as where the choice to stay living is no longer our own or otherwise.

I agree that I don't think anyone can prove what comes after is better, all I can try to know is what I experience here and how that informs everything else but when I've thought about it before, it brings me a little comfort knowing that my sister came to me for empathy and understanding and whilst I don't think I'll ever truly know whether I was able to give her that I do know without a doubt that if she did make this choice then it was because she wanted to be freed of the burdens that life brings with it and that was more important to her than anything else at the time and I think I should try and respect that.

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts, I don't know whether I should as it seems a bit redundant to do so, but I think I'd like to acknowledge that it can take a lot to even talk about things like this and so I appreciate anyone that replies here or reads through what is written. I personally don't have a problem with talking about 'taboo' topics such as this but I think most people that find themselves here probably agree that a lot of people don't like having casual conversations about it and are maybe even condemned for trying to.

Sorry if it's insensitive to ask, but that anime sounds interesting, may I ask where can I find it?

 

[QuietNightSky42]

I am sorry for your suffering, I empathize. I apologize if talking about myself here seems narcissistic in the face of your pain, but I promise I will relate it to you. My own experience is how I relate to you.

I experienced the loss at fourteen, and I understand the pain, and not having answers. I understand scapegoating someone as being the cause, my father was a homicide detective and I already knew that was common; I also was falsely scapegoated for the suicide by the students of our entire high school and other schools in the school district, and it nearly destroyed me. People generally seek an outside target of blame for the suicide. My boyfriend was sixteen, he did not leave a note, and it made no sense to me that he did not leave me a note. It made no sense to me that he suicided, though there was clear evidence he'd been planning it for at least three or four months, since before I met him. Over thirty years later, I understand that he must have had painful things in his life for quite a while, that he didn't feel he could speak about it to anyone, and that he thought and felt the best solution was to end his life, in spite of all the good things that were happening in his life at that time. I accept I will never know, and that I will never know who or what to blame. I think it's reasonable to assume some kind of abuse played a role.

What you're experiencing is...I won't put a label on it, everyone's experience is different. I survived it, it was a major life experience that will always be a part of me, but I have over the years experienced healing. I myself was adamantly, bullishly pro-life for a very long time, but eventually I became a proponent of people making their own choices. You see, I came from a very abusive family, I was incredibly, suffocatingly controlled, and I became co-dependently controlling. When I healed from that, after years of work, I stopped taking on other people's problems, whether cutting, suicidality, addiction, etc. Whatever someone else's issue, I didn't cause it, I can't cure it, I can't control it. I can lend a caring ear, and then let the other person do whatever they're going to do, because they will do whatever they're going to do anyway. It puts less pressure on them and they don't rebel if I remain compassionate but don't try to push for the outcome I desire. It took a lot of work to get to that point.

I don't know what is best for you, but I empathize with you, I respect you, and I wish for you to have self-determination and the ability to make happen whatever is best for you. I send you a compassionate hug.

You're probably curious about me. There are external things in my life beyond my control, and they are overwhelming. It is a rational choice for me to consider suicide. That's all I think I'll say about it, otherwise I feel like I'll be explaining myself to you, and I don't want or need to. I've shown you respect, and to the degree you're capable, I hope you'll respect that I've got this.

I have a question for you, with no expectation or demand you answer:

What you mean about hoping someone will stop, think a little more and make an informed choice? Would you be willing to explain?

I think I'll start my reply by saying that I think the sharing of stories and thoughts inherently allows for others to also join in and that includes talking about oneself, so no I don't think you need to apologise for talking about yourself but I think based on what you've written I can maybe imagine why you did.

I'm sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing your story with me. I cannot imagine what the events you've described were like for yourself but I think I can relate at least in part to some of the feelings you experienced because of the things that happened to you. I think that I can echo some of the sentiments you've expressed both in raw emotions as well as any understanding and acceptance of those emotions that have followed.

I can sense that you also have some scars that linger, I don't mean that necessarily in the painful sense but more in that they're there and are visible enough that you can't just forget about them. From what you've written I have a great about of respect for you also and your own self-determination and I find myself with a slight smile on my face to read at how you put that "I've got this". So I would also like to return your compassionate hug that we have some mutual understanding of similar experiences.

I think that a lot of things in life are invariably 'beyond our control' or at least definitely feel that way and that can be an almost soul crushing weight when you think about it in terms of continued existence. I think much like yourself the consideration of suicide seems rational, I respect that's all you wanted to say on the matter but maybe it'd be appropriate for me to talk a little about my own thoughts as I don't think I mind explaining myself on this point as it also ties in a little with your question for me.

When I was at university one of my professors created a piece of work that was an A1 size print with things written on it like "brushed teeth", "went to work", "did laundry". It was a piece created using his diary over the course of what was a year. Everything was laid out in a grid pattern to make it look very uniform, things like "brush teeth" were crossed out neatly in black but occasionally there would be something like "celebrated Joe's 45th birthday" crossed off in red. At the time I was a 1st year student and when me and my friends came across this piece he had made we were a little confused and there was general consensus that it was a 'bad' piece of design. A little later myself and a friend were overheard by one of the Print Technicians talking about the piece and she commented that she actually really liked it and that our professor had quite eloquently expressed that much of life is very much the same repetition of things over and over again with maybe sometimes the odd glimpse of something different before back to more of the same. That piece still sticks with me and when I continued to think about it I realised that my continued existence would mean essentially doing laundry for the rest of my life. And I don't really know how that makes me feel currently, this was knowledge that I already had but the way it was presented to me kind of opened up my eyes a little to the severity of what "doing laundry forever" really meant.

It might seem a little strange to mention this given what you've written but this same professor was also the same one that announced in my first ever critique session to my group that "I personally don't like this" and that I should be mindful not to offend anyone with what I design. To cut a long story short this was one of the key things that made me question the remainder of my time at University, my self worth and lots of other negative things. At the time I felt like things were beyond my control and that I would never be good enough or amount to anything but eventually I came to realise that I had more control over things than I realised.

I'm aware that what I've just written might be a little facetious when talking about things outside of our control as I realise some things truly are and that we truly can't change everything. But I wanted to try and highlight through my own experience how sometimes our perspective of something can change how we feel about something, which leads me to try to fully answer your question.

For myself when I think about life and then death, death signifies the end of being able to make choices as far as this life/existence or whatever you might want to call it. With the story I related to you about my professor and the affect he personally and his work had on me gave me what I feel like is more ability to choose. To me life is full of choices do I brush my teeth today(something I currently struggle with due to depression), should I buy this house, what do I make for dinner.

Whilst I understand that most people that are on here are seeking to free themselves of the burden of choice as well everything choice brings, I guess my goal is stimulate at least a conversation where I'd like to pose if death is the end of choice, is it not then also in your own interests to consider 'all' implications of no longer being able to choose anything in this life. When I consider the option of suicide I also consider it to be the end of possibilities for me and with the gravity of that in mind then follows on the question of is there anything to keep living for. As I've already mentioned the fact that I will probably never know with any certainty anything or everything leads me to keep going to try and find the answer to the second part because if I choose to die now then that's the only certainty I have, the unknown possibilities that come with my continued existence here is honestly one of the few things that keep me going.

This question and way of thinking is something I've found I go through daily either consciously or subconsciously and part of me asks it here in the hopes that I might find more of an answer for myself and maybe allow others to find a similar answer for themselves, I guess this is what I mean by an 'informed choice'. How else can we make an informed choice if we don't think and to stop thinking and talking about it mid-conversation I feel would be a disservice to oneself. And so I find myself currently unable to answer my question because I feel like I don't 'know' enough to answer it and maybe I never will or maybe I'll have found out everything there is to know and still not be satisfied. Maybe I will be robbed of any ability to make such a final choice for myself before I can find an answer, but to me if I choose to end my life I'd like to do so with as full an understanding of everything that led up to that decision in all it's gravity because I feel like when you talk about something as absolute as death that it should be done with an equal absolute seriousness.

This is just my view on it though and I understand that it may not make sense to you or anyone else, I hope I've answered your question but feel free to say if there's something you feel like I didn't explain satisfactorily. Thank you again for sharing your story and thoughts.

 

[Snktag]

Hello, I'm going to preface everything that follows here by saying that whilst I haven't made up my mind on whether what is on this site I agree with in principle, I respect that if my sister did choose to ctb(had to look this meaning up and assume it's better forum etiquette to use the phrase instead of alternatives) then that was her choice even if I am sad that she is no longer in my life in the same way she was.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the correct place for this thread either so feel free to move it but I felt like maybe my views and thoughts would be better suited in here than in the main forum.

Neither myself nor my family know the exact way my sister died but for context she was a relatively healthy 18 year old girl as far as I know. I lived in a different city at the time of her death when I got a call from my brother saying that my mum had found her dead in her bed. The reason I suspect that she chose to ctb rather just some other physical cause is that she had no known health conditions and had youth on her side along with the fact that an autopsy and the final coroner's report that followed lead to an 'Open Conclusion', in other words no one knows.

I don't know if I personally, am looking for some sort of closure by coming here, possibly I am if I have to be honest with myself but I think I am looking more for answers for my mum as I think of all the members of my family she still grieves the most and I don't know if she will ever be able to really deal with my sister's loss without maybe knowing why she passed away.

I am also a little conflicted about if I really want find the answers to some of the questions that I have here, but I'm going to ask anyway. You may find it a little bit distasteful the way I came across this site and why I suspect my sister chose to ctb. I found this site after looking through my sister's laptop trying to find clues to her passing, which you may consider a breach of her privacy but I think my defense is that dealing with the possessions of the dead is the burden of those that stay living. Before I went looking I had a conversation with a friend about whether either of us would want our family/friends to look through our things if either of us died. My friend said that she would be horrified if anyone went through her things which made me think, and also posited the question of did I think my sister would want me to do so. After giving it some thought I decided that I didn't have enough information to answer and that I didn't think I'd ever be able to answer without my sister telling me directly which leads me to here.

I knew that my sister had been struggling for a long time, at least a year before her passing but probably for much longer. As the previous summer she had been hospitalised due to an OD attempt. A few weeks before she passed away I had gotten a call from her where she talked about how she felt like she wanted to ctb and that she was "too weak for this world", I managed to calm her down and try to give her some advice. I want to mention that I have had suicidal thoughts in the past and have also in the time after my sister's passing, I know that there might be some people here that might frown at me trying to talk her down but I will counter with that she came to me, asking for help.

For context I am the eldest of 3 siblings, I'm currently 25 years old with my younger brother at 23 and my sister had roughly a 6 year age gap between myself and her. She knew that I struggle(present tense) with depression and I think at heart she wanted to know what my 'secret' was to keep going on in life. I think that all 3 of my siblings and myself struggle/struggled with depression and depressive thoughts for most if not all of our lives to some extent.

My reply to my sister most of the time and the last time I properly spoke to her when she came to me for help was that I don't have a secret answer to life, that I struggle as much as anyone else and that a lot of the time things and people do suck. What I tried to express to her was that sometimes, a lot of the time, I'm not 'ok' and that the way she was feeling I've felt as well. For a long time a thought that had been growing in my head was that if I could 'feel' my sister's personality as a physical item then it felt like to me she was holding her breath in constantly and didn't know how to breathe out. A little bit about my family is that our parents come from a Chinese mentality and culture, our parents are first generation Chinese living in the UK. You may have already guessed but you can maybe imagine a little of the 'pressures' myself and my siblings felt/still feel from the stereotypes that exist.

I think to my sister I might have seemed a little odd in her eyes as although I was the eldest I fought against our parents will a lot and I think seemed to pave a way for whatever I wanted whereas I think she felt like she couldn't do that and felt boxed in. I went to an Arts University, along with my brother and my sister had just been accepted into the same university that I went to and we had spoken a little about maybe living together when she moved to the city I had been living in. A little about myself is that my time at university was some of the worst times in my life so far and when I felt the most suicidal. So for her to want to follow in my footsteps made me raise my eyebrows in surprise a little. I think if I had to guess she wanted the freedom to decide things for herself and maybe to taste a little of what I'm still trying to figure out; how to be happier and find things in life to keep me going.

As I already mentioned a week or 2 before she passed away she had just been accepted into my university which she seemed very happy and excited about. For a little more context to this story about a month before she was accepted, she had given me the phone call I already mentioned. So for her to go from feeling very suicidal to almost ecstatic from being accepted into university, led me to maybe a little naively into thinking that things would be 'ok'.

I know that from my own experiences that feelings like that can 'come and go' and that works equally for either direction.

I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it here in this subforum, I couldn't find anything in the rules about it. Whilst I can't be 100% sure as to how my sister passed, after looking through her laptop and from what my brother and I found in her room I suspect that she possibly used SN(I'm assuming abbreviating words is a form of censorship?), as we found some in her room and I found an invoice for some bought online dated 3 weeks before her passing. Whilst I don't think I'll ever know if that was how she passed I can only assume so as that's how I came across this site in the first place, from a bookmark she had saved inside a folder I didn't think to look in initially.

Maybe someone can enlighten me, but I assume the method I'm talking about is intended to be painless, I assume most methods generally are, but my initial searching online when I found the SN didn't lead to anything substantiating it's use to ctb, rather the opposite actually as I could only find things linking to how you'd need an absurd amount. But that was before I found this site in my sister's bookmarks and now I know better, based on the page that she had saved and further reading my sister either passed from natural causes or SN. The main reason I'm suspecting it was the latter is based on her health and her state of mind before she passed, maybe someone can point me to more details that would maybe help me figure it out. I don't know if SN is a common way to ctb in my country or in general so I don't know if it's something they test for during an autopsy or if it would even come up as some sort of abnormality if found in someone so I can't be certain of natural causes or otherwise.

For anyone curious, to my knowledge she was found in her bed around early morning/midday and I assume she passed in her sleep from what I understand, I believe it was my mum that found her and called an ambulance but by that point it was too late. I imagine that she died peacefully or as peacefully as you can in your sleep, from the conversation I had with my brother(he saw her body before she was taken away), she didn't seem to be in discomfort. He told me that she looked like she could be asleep if it wasn't for the lack of warmth and paleness and that her arms were folded on her chest/too her sides.

I'm going to talk a bit about what happened for myself and my family afterwards aswell as events leading up to my sister's death, whilst I'm not trying to actively dissuade anyone from choosing to ctb I am merely offering information and a story based on my experiences of what happens/happened after you may make that choice, in the same vein that people here do to support such choices.

I'm happy to expand on anything I've talked about or if anyone would like to know more about something I might've missed out, but I would like to maybe start a wider discussion on a maybe more positive note with what I'm writing here.

I hold a lot of blame towards my dad if my sister made the choice to ctb, having 3 of your children's personalitys and character 'flaws' be very similar is probably not a coincidence and more learned behaviour. This is coming from several past and current conversations with my siblings about our upbringing and our parent's influence on us both from a cultural standpoint as well as their personal choices in how they raised us.

We were raised above a Chinese Take-away,something not too uncommon for 2nd generation kids from such backgrounds. Having had conversations with friends and people in similar age ranges to myself that come from such backgrounds, a few things I've found are common across the board, lots of repressed emotions which lead to various forms of depression and depressive behaviour followed by an inability for our family to understand why we can't just be 'happy'. Add in a constant pressure to be better if not the best in whatever it is we do and you have a recipe for individuals with some unhappy emotions and struggle to deal with them.

Generally in Chinese culture boys are preferred and a male firstborn especially so, this didn't really apply to my dad who doted on my sister, you may think this was a good thing but he did it in a way that was suffocatingly so. You may say that a lot of what I'm going to say about my dad is simply my opinion skewing things, and I'd be inclined to maybe agree with you if I was a stranger reading this but such thoughts were not only my own but also my sister's and my brother's. I mentioned earlier but my sister tried to OD a year or so before her passing, at the time I put my job on pause for about a month. The reason I did this is because when I got the call from my brother that she had tried to OD, I remember my brother and I both expressing that we weren't surprised that something like this had happened and we expressed the same thing to each other after her death. I realised that I needed to do something if I wanted to try and help her as I realised she needed somebody that understood how she felt and that she wanted someone that could empathise with her even if I couldn't necessarily help her directly.

I knew she was unhappy and after I spoke to her after the first attempt I knew that she was unhappy for a lot of very similar reasons as I was when I was around her age. I could see her struggling to find an answer that could keep her going, again, I think she saw that I had found some semblance of answer for myself and I think she wanted to feel the same way. I think one of the biggest things that differed between myself and my siblings is the friends and people that I met as well as the spaces I spent my time in as I was growing up. All 3 of us turned out to be very introverted and struggled/still struggle with social awkwardness and crippling anxiety.

Since our parents rarely had time for us as I got older I became a father figure of sorts for my 2 siblings, I on the other hand had to muddle through things blindly trying to figure out life and the world at large. In my early years I spent most of my time reading books and as I got older this divolved into games and the rest of the internet. I still somewhat satirically think to myself that I was raised by the internet, I mean this in the sense of the things I learnt from the people I met online as well as the physical amount of time I spent online with these people. For better or worse my siblings followed in this behaviour and all 3 of us developed similar interests. We all chose to go to art schools which probably didn't dissappoint our parents as much as stereotypes would probably have you believe and my love of books and reading grew into one for anime and games(among other things).

As I mentioned I think the one thing that separated myself from my siblings is the fact that I was the first to experience a lot of things in life that would be coming their way along with that instead of having an older version of myself to turn to I found myself turning to strangers online(ironic I know, that I'm posting here). I think this led me to have a slightly easier time making friends as well as heavily informing the kind of people I wanted to have around me as well as the kind of person I found myself wanting to be. I think what it really boiled down to was that the questions my sister had and the questions my brother currently is trying to answer I had to try and find an answer to at a much earlier stage of my life. I often try and say this to my friends and especially after my sister passed away that my life would have ended up very different if I hadn't met them and that I might not still be here if I hadn't met them. These friends gave me a space for me to try and find myself and at the same time allowed them to do the same.

Before my sister passed, I had continued to live in the same city that I went to University in, I struggled the entire time I was at university and had to take a years intermission after my first time trying to do my 3rd year. At the same time I was in a pretty toxic relationship that ended badly. When I tried to redo my 3rd year I felt probably the worst I've ever felt and was the closest I've ever come to ctb, my friends had graduated a year before me and almost all of them had left the city to find work elsewhere. I felt so isolated and alone, that I couldn't finish my 3rd year and ended up dropping out halfway through university altogether.

Tenía / tengo un gran temor de tomar medicamentos para tratar la depresión o los trastornos mentales. Mi miedo es que me hagan sentir 'como otra persona' y que la persona que era dejará de existir y para mí esto es peor que morir en algunos sentidos, como para mí la idea de dejar de existir en una forma diferente. que no sea 'yo' me aterroriza en comparación con simplemente no estar vivo más. Una conversación con uno de mis mejores amigos sobre el tema de la medicación para cualquier cosa fue que para ellos estaban felices de tomarlo si les hacía la vida más fácil en el momento actual, como les comenté no podía ver que medicarse fuera a largo plazo / solución de por vida para mí y que creo que si alguna vez voy a ser 'verdaderamente' feliz, entonces necesito encontrar una solución para mis propios problemas, ya que creo que si soy el creador de mis propios problemas, entonces también puedo ser el solucionador de ellos. Pero es mucho más fácil decirlo que hacerlo y en ese punto bajo cuando estaba tratando de completar mi tercer año nuevamente comencé a tomar medicamentos para tratar de lidiar con mis pensamientos suicidas. Después de poco tiempo decidí que quería dejar de tomarlos, ya que solo puedo describirlos realmente como que me hacen sentir como si estuviera viviendo en una burbuja. No podía sentir ninguna respuesta emocional extrema a nada, feliz, triste o de otra manera. Si bien esto ayudó a limitar los extremos de mis emociones, sentí que había una parte racional tranquila de mi conciencia que sabía que no encontraría una solución permanente de esta manera, ya que no '

A pesar de cómo me sentía en ese momento, sabía que me habría sentido aún peor si regresara a casa, no creo que pueda exagerar lo suficiente lo mucho que no podía soportar a mi papá en ese momento y todavía estoy de acuerdo hecho de que sé que hubiera sido peor si lo hubiera hecho. Sé que si mi hermana eligió ctb, finalmente fue su elección, pero creo que es justo decir que si alguien te ata los cordones de los zapatos y te dice que huyas de un lobo, definitivamente tienes menos opciones sobre cómo te va. eso.

Después del fallecimiento de mi hermana, tuve dificultades para hacer frente al trabajo y mi relación en ese momento también se estaba deteriorando lentamente. Por esta época el año pasado dejé mi trabajo ya principios de este año finalmente decidí volver a casa. Ahora vivo con mi familia, leo como mi hermano y mi madre, ya que mi padre rara vez está aquí, por encima de una comida china para llevar diferente a la que crecimos. Actualmente estoy en la antigua habitación de mi hermana porque no hay espacio para yo en cualquier otro lugar, duermo en la misma cama en la que crecí y en la misma en la que ella falleció. Sé que probablemente sea un poco inquietante escuchar eso, pero mis padres, mi padre, especialmente crecieron en una zona de guerra y rara vez, si es que alguna vez, tiran algo que todavía "funciona". Muchas de sus cosas todavía están en la habitación y en los cajones, como creo que mis padres, especialmente mi mamá, pueden ' t desnudo para tirarlos. Seré honesto y diré que a veces me pone más que un poco triste cuando me detengo y pienso en cuánto de 'ella' todavía hay en esta habitación, pero soy reacio a tener una conversación con mi madre al respecto. Sé que le molestará si lo hago (todavía enciende una vela todos los días por ella), así que casi siempre trato de no pensar en eso. Y me siento raro acerca de si sigue siendo su habitación o mi habitación ahora, a veces me pregunto si alguna parte de ella alguna vez me ve deambular por su habitación y qué podría pensar. No soy religioso en ningún sentido y tampoco lo son mis padres, que yo sepa, aunque intentaron tener un extraño funeral híbrido occidental / budista, así que no lo soy.

Sé que a la mayoría de las personas que están aquí que buscan encontrar formas de ctb probablemente no les interese leer este muro de texto, pero espero que esto también haga que la gente se detenga y piense un poco más y tome una decisión más informada. Una vez más, respeto a mi hermana si esa fue la elección que tomó, pero no puedo mentir que cuando pienso en ella me siento triste y que no tendré la oportunidad de hablar con ella de nuevo o verla crear más obras de arte o simplemente para simplemente emocionarse con las pequeñas alegrías que la vida a veces puede ofrecer entre todo lo demás.

Hay muchas cosas aquí que me he perdido o omitido, principalmente porque no estoy seguro de si alguien estaría interesado en leerlo / discutirlo, pero si hay algo que alguien le gustaría preguntar o discutir sobre lo que le gustaría saber más. Estoy feliz de discutirlo.
[/CITAR]
sabes? es difícil recitar algo de lo cual tenga elocuencia para algunos espectadores, tengo 36 años y he tenido muchos errores en mi vida que llevaron a que mi hogar se separara y esto ha generado un sin numero de errores que han reforzado mas, a no estar aquí, no se porque es tan difícil lidiar el día día así solo y que por mas que se intenta no existe solución que conlleve a no pensar en quitarme la vida. no creo en esos términos psicológicos que definen un supuesto duelo porque ya lo viví antes, lo intente y ahora estoy solo y es imposible retroceder no es fácil estar así y ver como pasa el tiempo y vez que no encajas en nada. para mi si seria útil saber la receta que uso tu hermana, llevo 3 intentos y no han sido posibles, para mi seria de gran ayuda. pienso en mis allegados y se que eso tendrá que pasar en ultimas se que las cosas pasan por algo y esto es algo que yo quiero hacer. ojala antes de que finalice este año tan horrible. insisto a mi me serviría mucho saber la formula.

 

[QuietNightSky42]

Hello, sadly I don't speak Spanish and I'd like to be able to reply properly to you but I can't do so with full confidence but I'll assume you can understand more of what I write than I can of you(had to use Google Translate). But thank you for taking the time to reply and express your thoughts and feelings. I think from what I understand you say that you find it hard to talk about how you're feeling properly and that you're currently struggling. I think you say that you're alone and everything feels hard to deal with, unfortunately I don't think I'm the person best suited to offering advice of any kind because of the language barrier and I'm too new here to be really know where else to point you to but if you're looking for someone to talk to then I would hope that you can find that here.

Sorry if it's insensitive to ask, but that anime sounds interesting, may I ask where can I find it?

It's not insensitive at all, as I've already expressed I think the act of sharing stories or thoughts inherently opens up avenues for further discussion. It's one of the reasons why I like forums as a concept, they promote discussion and as a result understanding.

The anime I'm talking about is called Log Horizon, it's one of my favourites for several reasons. The episode I referenced is in the 2nd season, episode 20 called 'Birthday Song', you may find that you might enjoy it more or find it easier to understand the character's exposition if you watch all of it but if you're only interested in seeing the part I'm referencing then I think you could do so by just watching the first half or so of that episode.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

This particularly stood out, as well as most of what follows this quote:

When I consider the option of suicide I also consider it to be the end of possibilities for me and with the gravity of that in mind then follows on the question of is there anything to keep living for.

I'd like to suggest that this may potentially help you come to some sort of peace when considering your sister's choice.

If you spend any time reading the forum, you'll see that this is one of the things a majority of members consider: Is there anything to keep living for? Even though she was only 18, and of course I didn't know her, I would suspect your sister considered this and came to the conclusion that there was not, or if there was, that it didn't outweigh her pain and, potentially, that she did not have the capacity and available resources to manage it let alone recover.

but to me if I choose to end my life I'd like to do so with as full an understanding of everything that led up to that decision in all it's gravity because I feel like when you talk about something as absolute as death that it should be done with an equal absolute seriousness.

Yes, I agree with this. A majority of members here show that they process their decision like this, each in their own way. Perhaps you can grant that your sister did this as well, but did not reach the same conclusion for herself that you would have, whether for her or for yourself?

You seem to me to have found a degree of self-empowerment. I've found it as well, and it's a heck of a journey to get there, one that requires, I think, acceptance of things as they are, and understanding what not is within one's control and what might be, and that life is full of the mundane and things that cannot be predicted, but experienced with awareness and as much equanimity as one is naturally capable of and/or has achieved. I have found this makes other people, life challenges, emotions and personal perspective more manageable, even conducive to personal growth for the grappling, experiencing, surviving, and sometimes even overcoming. I have also found that not everyone has the internal or external resources to achieve this, and also that this empowerment makes life more manageable and less offensive to experience, but there are things that can still overwhelm it, just not as many.

A final thought. You have a shared history with your sister, but there is much outside of what overlapped. Just as she didn't tell you her reasons for suicide, she had thousands of experiences you were not present for that I can comfortably hypothesize she never told you about, and some may have caused great pain and that she did not have resources to manage, let alone overcome to some necessary degree. I honor that she suffered enough to choose to end her suffering in the way that she did (or seek to end it, as there remains the possibility she died in her sleep), and I honor that you are deeply impacted by it. I send you and her both much compassion and respect, and for your life, I wish for your continued empowerment, for your well-being, and to the highest degrees possible, your freedom from suffering.

 

[SanJunipero1]

I'm so sorry for your loss. My fiancé died by suicide a year ago so I know all about the abject devastation left behind. Having said that, since his passing, I myself became suicidal and tried to take my own life in May.
Since learning first hand what that pain is like, it took away all of the questions, anger and guilt that come with being bereaved by suicide.
I am and always will be devastated by his loss but now I'm just happy his pain is over.
I came to this site looking for methods myself but found an incredibly supportive environment filled with people who understand the abject agony of not wanting to live anymore.
I've only really just started posting myself having mostly been lurking but it does give me comfort reading about and sharing with people who get it, same way I can on my young widow forum.
Having been shunned and grief ghosted for how uncomfortable suicide makes people, I think your attitude is beautiful and I wish more people were like you.