To anyone who is feeling suicidal and hopeless. Please read.

Hello everyone,

I've been reading the forums for a while, gleaning helpful information and getting encouragement from the many good posters here. You guys are a very supportive bunch, always uplifting each other and helping one another from sliding into the abyss. I had been meaning to create an account and discuss the ins and outs of winning the PMO battle, but now I'm here for a more important reason. Since I've been reading a lot here lately, it just seems appropriate to post this here now.

I've noticed that some people come through here who are feeling suicidal, possibly in part to a PMO addiction. Browsing through the forums one will see thread titles about not wanting to live anymore, feeling suicidal due to PMO addiction, and so on. If you are one of those people, please read on; this post is for you.

Today I was informed that my childhood friend of over two decades has taken his own life. He was a troubled guy since his teenage years, and while I'm not utterly surprised that he actually went through with it, it is still a shock. Many times over the years he talked about suicide, but we all grew accustomed to his emotional "drama" and stopped taking him seriously. In the back of my mind I was always a little concerned, but I didn't think he'd actually do it. Not now, at least, when his life, although far more ideal, was finally starting to improve. The last time I spoke to him a few weeks ago, he seemed fairly calm and collected. He wasn't particularly joyful, but seemed better than he had been in recent months. We certainly weren't expecting him to end his own life right now.

I was hoping to begin posting on NoFap under better circumstances, but perhaps I can offer a life raft to anyone here who is having a bad time and might be feeling like going the way of my friend.

To anyone who has written about "not wanting to live anymore", or is lurking around the forums and thinking similar thoughts, I have this to say to you:

Firstly, you must know that if you give up and take the "easy way out", you will leave family and friends who are close to you behind and they will be heartbroken. If you have low self-esteem, you might believe no one will miss you, but there are surely people out there who care about you a lot more than you think. Even if the choice of ending your life seems logical to you right now, in your darkly clouded mind, loved ones will be asking themselves "why?" for a long time to come. My friend's choice makes no sense to me, and it wouldn't make sense to your loved ones either if you did it. Some will feel responsible for your decision somehow; no well-written suicide note will fix that. Family and friends will all wonder if there is something, anything at all, they could have done differently in the last several weeks (or decades) to save you from your terrible decision. Some might not ever forgive themselves for as long as they live, even if they did nothing wrong.

It's only been several hours since I received the news of my friend's passing, from his mother who was choking back her tears, so I'm still in shock, but I'm already going through a confusing tempest of emotions and questions. All day long I've been alternating between pacing the sidewalks around town, muttering to myself, and sitting at home drinking one beer after another, and wondering "Why? Why now?" His life was actually getting better. Why didn't he call me and tell me he was feeling desperate enough to actually take his own life? I might have been able to talk him out of it. I know I probably did everything a friend could do, more or less, to help my poor buddy over the years, but I keep wondering "what if...". I can only imagine how his mother feels right now.

If you're feeling suicidal, and nothing seems to help, at least think of your friends, your family, neighbors, co-workers, everyone around you. You wouldn't want any of them to be feeling this way, would you? You're in a black pit of depression and you think no one cares, huh? I guarantee you that at least one person out there does.

The funny catch phrases and inside jokes I had with my friend won't be spoken anymore. Even just today I saw something cool and thought "I can't wait to talk about that with my friend!" and then remembered, "oh wait, he's dead." I was hoping that some day we'd be old white-haired men reminiscing about our "war stories" of the crazy shenanigans from our youth. Instead, I'll be placing flowers on his silent grave.

If you're one of the depressed people talking about "not wanting to live anymore", remember this. Things might seem hopeless for you right now, but you must understand that millions of other people felt just as lost as you do right now, who weathered the storm and got through it. Countless souls who were in a worse life position than whatever you might be in, overcame their obstacles and improved their situation. And so will you.

So don't give up. Don't throw your God given life away. Don't leave your friends behind.


That's all. When I'm feeling up to it, I intend on engaging with the NoFap community under better circumstances.

-WildHorse, an anonymous guy who's fresh out of childhood friends.

 

Thanks for your kind words, guys.

None of us really know why he did it, but as someone told me today, "it never makes any sense." If he had the choice to take his mistake back and keep on living, I'm sure that's what he would do.