A little story.
This girl, in my group at my university - for convenience I’m going to call her Nancy - was very worried about the way things went with her studies. She told a few people, that she was going to take a 1 year break, which they tried to convince her out of, since the situation she was in did not appear to be anything remotely tragic or even worrying.
And really, she was never a bad student, things went just as well as they did before for her, at least from the looks of it, and in the subject I study, there’s not much more to judge the situation by.
Recently she came to the classroom to pick up her things. I’m guessing she didn’t expect to run into anyone from the group, because it was Saturday - people usually don’t go to University on weekends.
Yet, in the end of the semester the situation is different and we did some extra classes. Nancy told us she was only doing it then (not earlier), because she had just returned from the hospital. Later Nan told another two girls and me, that after we left her place the other day she tried to kill herself by taking pills and drinking the entire bottle of Valerian.
Luckily, she didn’t know how to actually kill herself using medicine.
After this event I expressed my angry disappointment about how stupid her decision in these circumstances was, to what I received a shit load of criticism. They said “You can’t be angry at her, she needs help.”
I just hate how people get noticed and cared about only, if they get some serious sickness or try to kill themselves and succeed or not. Something happens and everybody’s suddenly your friend, then they disappear, once you’re a bit better, like nothing happened. Everybody wants to participate in an “important” event like that, show everybody “see I care”. People should always be cared for. If you don’t care about them, don’t show your stupid-ass “care” sign. That pissed me off enough at my dad’s funeral.
Suicide is a stupid and selfish way to solve a problem. Not only will there be nobody to feel the relief of not having the problem anymore, but new ones will be crated for the relatives and friends.
(Not talking of course about very sick people, who want to end their life to avoid years/months/days of torture right before the inevitable death, that’s another story.)
People should have listened to what she had to say, understand what was the real source of depression and see if there was actually a problem, instead of trying to convince her into staying at the university.
Nobody ever cares. Then they wonder why they didn’t see it.
I feel guilty for not knowing how to talk to her at that time, even though I had a feeling she wanted to end life.
