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yeah, that's intense... my first reaction is "WTF do you have to go an lay all that on us".....
By:  Tendenzi (Canadian; 3883)
Posted on: 05-24-2012 18:25.
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Only because of how much anxiety I felt for you while reading this. That's insane. You had it right at the end though, now I wanna puke.

I would just continue being the friend, support and explain your self. In the very least you must know there is no blood on your hands. You did the right thing.

    Sydwyndir had 1,000 monkeys type:
    this is tl;dr. you have been warned.

    It is the story of Tim, Dave and "Jim". Jim is still with us so that's not his real name.

    I want to preface this by saying I don't have a messiah complex, I don't think I can save everyone, I don't like taking people's burdens on unnecessarily. I'm 42, sometimes I feel like I'm 62, I am basically too old for most people's bullshit regardless.

    I got to know Dave almost 20 years ago when I worked at Musicland. Dave was a kind of rock-and-roll goof, just sort of a not at all easy to anger, easy going kind of guy who bounced around stores as a 3rd key or AM, never quite grabbing the brass ring and getting his own shop to manage. I liked him a lot. After I left ML and went to Best Buy I ran into him again at a house party in like '96 or so, we swapped info and talked about hanging out again. Dave would call me some Saturday mornings at like 10 or so (which before I had kids was "early on Saturday morning") or sometimes late in the evenings and we'd chit chat about whatever, about what we'd do when we'd hang out or I'd go to whatever other party and see him again, I've always had pretty nerdy habits so I didn't really know how/why I'd interface that well with him but we always got along and talked about hanging out. Fast forward a year or so to me stopping by my old store at the Mall, and my old boss asked me if I knew Dave, I said yeah and she said a guy who I had worked with had stopped in and said he'd died of a heroin overdose...I never made that date, I never hung out with Dave, never made that call-back I said I would. Dave was a huge Collective Soul fan; he'd been a backer/occasional roadie for them when they were playing bars in GA and FL. I can't hear their music now without thinking of Dave and it tears me up.

    Tim was a gaming buddy I'd known since like 1993 or maybe before. Tim was a unique guy. He loved and hated with equal passion, sometimes at the same time. We'd game, hang out, do "stuff"; if Tim heard I didn't have food in the house (as the case sometimes was in '95-'96) he'd invite Colleen and I to dinner and load us up with leftovers. That was just Tim. Tim took me out on my bachelor's party pub crawl, got together everyone he could, let me crash at his house and strictly adhered to my "No strip clubs, no whores" rule. I remember stumbling back to Tim's house at 3:00 the next morning and Tim offered me an eight ball and asking if I wanted to play Chess or Starfleet Battles...! I passed, I've never done nor wanted to do the hard stuff and so it went. While on the trough between contact periods with Tim I found out he'd had severe fights with his wife Jan, and one night he'd threatened to kill himself if she left with the kids. His brother called the cops because Tim had a large collection of guns, so they came and took everything (so they thought) and told him they wouldn't baker act him that night but that he needed to get help. His wife Jan said she'd watch him and get him help the next day. Well, the next day she said she was leaving and taking the kids (again). Tim went to his kids' schools and said goodbye, then came home, took two bottles of prescription pain killers, called Jan and told her he was holding a gun to his head and as soon as he felt himself start to go, he'd pull the trigger. Turned into a police stand-off, with one of my friends sitting next to Tim (Jan had called the cops and the friend, friend got there first and sat with him trying to talk him down). Well, friend talked him down but it didn't matter. By the time the EMTs got to him his heart had failed. Another dead hero, right?

    I got to know Jim through a mutual internet pal, and that's the only contact I've had with Jim, on-line. The mutual friend knows I've done work on D&D modules and that I'm a published writer and Jim was working on a book so connected us together to see if I could assist Jim in getting published...we got a good internet friendship going and I considered (consider? who knows) Jim a pretty good pal. Well, that started in 2005. As I got to know Jim, three salient points came through: Jim is insanely smart. Jim has a very important job. Jim suffers from such severe depression episodes that he engages in self-harm. Jim and I text each other pretty frequently and I got to the point where I could tell when an episode was starting or ending or in the middle, or so I thought. I'll break this paragraph here.

    Back in January - on my birthday, no less - Jim pinged me late on a Sunday night just before I went to bed and said he'd spent the weekend injuring himself in ever-increasing amounts. First pins, then an iron, then knives. Nothing I said back seemed to help. The last thing he texted me was "I'm going to the top of the apt. building and jumping off." then the user id went to disconnected. I called the Suicide Prevention Hotline, they said if it had gotten to that stage I needed to call the police. I called the police, they did a drive-by. Jim pinged me back later and said it "hadn't been that bad" and I shouldn't have worried but most of all I shouldn't have made the phone call to the cops, that it might cost him his job.

    I accepted that, I told him if he wanted to be mad at me to go ahead...he and I have talked a lot since then, but today he texted me: "Man, Bill...(dude never calls me by my name, it's always "hey man," or "hey, what's up") I know you were worried back in January but I really, really really wish you hadn't made the call you did. This is the only career I have, and I am probably going to lose it now." Then signed off.

    god damn fuck, what am I supposed to do? Sit back idly and say "yeah, whoop, there goes another one", look my kids in the eye and tell them about the three dead friends I have that I didn't lift a finger to try and help? Of course knowing what I know now about his depression, if he gets kicked out of his job (in case you're wondering, it's a 3-letter-acronym job that is not usually open to the public) it could trigger an episode where he does kill himself, and if he's that upset with me he won't contact me beforehand!

    I feel like I'm living Pink Floyd's The Wall but the g/f on LP 1 side 2. I can't handle this. I'd rather have a live ex-friend who blames me for their problems than another dead friend whom I didn't help. Again, I don't have some jesus complex, I don't think I can fix everythign and everyone, but this is simple shit, if a person was drowning in a culvert, I'd try to pull them out.

    I wanna puke.

    there, sorry, I had to get that off my chest in a place I'm pretty sure it won't come up mentioned elsewhere