A lesson learned?

[Neox]

So here's how my night went last night:

Finished watching an awesome Canucks game with a buddy of mine, with whom I messed around with a bit afterward before saying, "hey, I work tomorrow and its 9:00: I gotta get to bed."

Literally seconds after he leaves, I get a text message from a friend of mine who lives in Michigan that I met in an online gaming-community.  She's the person who originally recruited me into the Halo Reach clan that I'm an avid member of, and I knew her to be a bit emotionally unstable so I made it a point to be really nice to her.  Her fiancé is the founder of the clan.  Couple nights ago, she and a few of the other clan leaders got into an argument (which wasn't anything new) and she got in a fight with her fiancé (also nothing new.)

So her text was something along the lines of "I'm sorry for all the problems and drama I caused. Goodbye."

Instantly, my red-flags start going up.  I've talked two people out of suicide before and this is usually how something like this starts.

I reply, "Everything alright?"

I get, "No, it's not alright," followed by a picture of her wrist with a slash-mark across it and a follow-up text, "Tell [fiancé's name] I loved him."

Lovely.  So instantly I get a shot of adrenaline and my heart starts racing.  I try to call her and she doesn't reply.  Several times.  I try to call her fiancé and he's not picking up either, so I left a sort-of panicked message telling him that his girlfriend might be trying to off herself and he should try to get a hold of her immediately.  So then my brain goes into overdrive...

I know that she lives in Michigan.  Then I tried to remember HOW I know that.  Facebook.  I knew I was going to call the police but what was I going to tell them?  "I have a friend in Michigan, here's her name and phone-number, please help?" What police department do I call? On Facebook, I find out the town she lives in and I call the appropriate police department.  I manage to give them her name, phone-number, and her internet IP address (because I'm an admin for our clan's website and she posted in the shoutbox around the same time she texted me, so it was recent.)  They tell me they have her address and they've dispatched a car to investigate, and that they'll call me back when they find out what happened.

I call work and tell them I won't be coming in for my shift today.  Her fiancé manages to get a hold of me, freaking out, telling me that she wasn't picking up her phone for him either.

Then the police department calls back.  She's okay.  What state did they find her in?

She was sleeping.  The one slash mark on her wrist that she took a picture of and sent to me was superficial and harmless.  The whole fucking thing was a cry for attention.

Well she got attention alright.  Now she could be facing charges with the police department.  Her fiancé has absolutely no idea how to handle this.  He tells me that, after talking to her, her parents are kicking her out of their house for being woken-up at 1:00 in the morning by the police at their door for a fake suicide attempt.  I spent about an hour and a half thinking my friend just killed herself, and a further two hours trying to calm my nerves so I could sleep last night.  Now it's 4:00 AM, I've been up since 3 and I got about 2.5 hours of sleep before my 12-hour shift at work.

Understand that she's not an emo teenager.  She's 25 and I felt I knew her well, hence why it was so easy for me to have believed her in the first place.

I'm pissed off.  Firstly, she fooled me with something as serious as suicide?  Low.  That's really fucking low.  And secondly, she's facing the ramifications of her little outburst and I actually kinda feel bad for calling the police on her and getting her kicked out of her house.  But really, how the fuck was I to know?  And what else would I have done?  I would do this for any of my friends if I thought they were attempting suicide.  I hope she learns her lesson.

Moral of the story: don't cry wolf with something as heavy as suicide.  Especially don't do it to someone who cares about his friends and will do everything within his power to make sure you can live to realize that you AREN'T the most misfortuned individual in the world, and that if you feel your life is so worthless that you need to kill yourself, what does that tell the people who actually give a shit about you?  That you don't give a shit about them.  That you don't respect the fact that they actually care about you and wish to see you improve your way of life and self-esteem.

Consider the consequences of your actions.  Always.

[H u nn Y]

[4am rant]Wow, that is a lot to handle, hopefully you'll be able to get some sleep soon. But seriously, if she was having problems, instead of pulling a dumb stunt like she did to you and her fiancé, she could have talked about it with her fiancé, and then none of this would have happened. Yes, it is a big lesson to learn here, because it gets us nowhere when we do stupid stuff like this. Suicide is a serious thing and when you hear from a friend that they either tried to commit suicide or are going too, you're right, it does raise red-flags. I don't understand why they only think of themselves and don't consider the fact, that maybe there actually are people out there that care about them, like you towards your friend. Hope everything works out, sorry to hear about this little mishap. You in a way did the right thing of calling the cops, because had she actually cut herself, that would be a lot worse, but doing what she did just called out trouble. The whole getting kicked out of her parents house is karma biting back.[/4am rant]

[Temrin]

Thats really tough. I've been in that position a few times. Its really scary. You handled it really well. Congrats for that. Its always hard to sleep after something like that.

Hopefully she's learned something from that. :/
Wouldn't be surprised if not though. humans are stubborn like that. But i hope for the best.

[zenia]

I think you did the right thing.

I had a friend once that I let slip to that I had cut the my palm just below my thumb (on purpose). I wasn't suicidal or anything but apparently he thought that I wanted to kill myself because his friend didn't like me the way I liked him. I mean, I was sad, but that isn't even my I cut myself to begin with. Anyway, for the next 3 hours he called my house over and over again. I told him the first half dozen times that there was NOTHING to be worried about. I wasn't going to do anything that stupid... plus I wasn't upset that our mutual friend didn't like me that way. He wouldn't believe me and kept calling until I left the phone off the hook. THEN he got his dad to drive him over to my house (this was now around midnight) to make sure I was ok and he pounded on the door  until my cranky step father went out to tell him to bugger the hell off. The cut was so shallow that it was already healed over... kind of like a cat scratch.

The irony to this, is that when I was rejected I was fine... but after that, they both went on a crusade to make me hate them because they wanted me to not have a crush on the friend anymore. Now, if he had just said "I am flattered, but I just want to be friends." I would have dropped the crush and stayed friends. Instead, they accomplished their goal and I haven't talked to them since. And that was just over 10 years ago.

[EmoFox]

this oddly reminds me of some one i knew in high school. She was threatening to off herself after her boyfriend broke up with her, and one of our friends called the cops to make sure she didn't. Turns out her parents ended up being investigated for weed, and they told her that our friend who'd called the cops actually did so because of the pot and was trying to get them all in trouble. biggest drama shitfest ever.

I would've done the same thing. And if she's stupid/immature enough to pull that crap at 25 then she deserves to be kicked out.

[Zythren]

Oh gawd. I have a friend who used to cry suicide every other week and I would always end up calling the police and he would be just find sitting somewhere crying... Over the littlest things, too. But he's still just a kid. She did this at 25? Wow. =.='

[mediar]

Never cry wolf, very good quote. You did the right thing, don't feel bad. Its never cool to do that kind of thing to people..

[AMZinthos]

A very difficult situation to handle. You are an amazing good friend :thumbs: just sucks that it turned out this way. Not that if she really did try to kill herself it would of been much better but you know getting scared like that then feeling guilty for causing more trouble instead of helping at all isn't the best of feelings either.

Now concerning the whole suicide situation. Caring and trying to help people who try or think of suicide is a very noble thing to do but its not very effective over long distances. I suffered from depression that made me want to suicide in the past would like to share the information I have. Please keep in mind that its different for every individual but I'll try to lay out the basics about it.

When you're in a depressive state like that you head is pretty much sealed shut.
Its very hard to describe this feeling to someone who hasn't experienced it but I'll try my best:

All living creatures have the instinct to survive; However, the human mind is the most advanced out of all creatures which can be a bad or good thing.
When depression and suicide thoughts happen, what the person wants is someone to recognize and understand what they are going through (whoring attention) but they're also terrified and overwhelmed by the same thing they want to be understood for (Ignoring attention when getting it). This conflict leaves a person in state of near insanity and pushes them to leave a message or hints to friends that they are "going". Basically the mind is telling you to stfu, go die and get this over with while the instinct (subconscious whatever the hell you wanna call it) is trying its best to convince your mind of the opposite.

The point is while your head is undergoing epic "instinct vs feelings" battle, words will have close to no effect at the time even though it might help later. The only way I found to be effective in helping someone suicidal is to give them a hug or some kind of physical attention, touch etc. The problem is suicidal people tend to choose long distance friends to give a warning to...

Anyway, Naetholix , you handled this situation the best way you could even though your action might of caused her more trouble you did the right thing. I just hope this can gives more insight on how to deal with depressive individuals.

[AMZinthos]

Holy crap what have I done, attention disorder treatment might be giving more focus on things than needed  :-[

[Sevrin]

You should try not to judge her too much, I'm not saying I condone her actions, but she obviously has something going on or she wouldn't be doing this, you might not know the whole story, it's likely there is a lot more going on than meets the eye, I really doubt she just wanted attention... this isn't the kind of thing you can afford to make mistakes in, if she really does have some big issue going on and everybody turns on her because of what happened she may get much worse. It's hard to know exactly whats going on with people and you know what they say about assumptions...