Plans......

9/9/16 -- Today, I received a card and short letter from my nurse friend, the card was thanking me for being her friend, but the letter not only was thanking me but asking me to forgive her for what she was about to do.  Meaning that as she wrote this letter she was planning or had already overdosed.  According to the letter, she had already planned on leaving this world because she couldn't handle living with out her husband, but my/our friend dying was the last straw.  She had already taken the normal steps people (most people anyway) when they are about to commit suicide.  It seems that she already had determined that she wasn't going to ask for help because she couldn't.  It's too bad......
Not even my friendship was enough for her to even want to try, I guess that is the part that I don't completely understand, but oh well.
   I really still am having a difficult time with this, grieving over her death along with the death my friend who died of cancer, two weeks ago now.  Two deaths, one due to illness, one due to the inability to ask for help.  That one is the saddest, please please don't ever be so "lost" in someone friend, spouse or otherwise that you can't ask for help when something happens to that relationship, death or the relationship is dissolved for whatever reasons.  Please, Please, if you find yourself sliding into depression, get help.  If you know someone who has slid or is sliding into depression, please don't ignore them, don't tell them to "buck up" or "put you big person's pants on" it isn't that easy to get out of depression.  I know from my own experience that it isn't easy, to get help.  It does take strength and courage to get help, sometimes either you or someone you know don't have the courage to pick up the phone and make the call, so then you do it for them.  Suicide isn't that far from depression and sometimes it just doesn't take that long to get to the point that you can't or don't want to deal with life anymore, believe me I know from my own experience and from the letter from my nurse friend.
  They say the it's the "loners" you have to worry about - well I say that's true, but not necessarily for the reasons you/people might think.  I say that the loners are the ones who need the friend, not bullies.  The loners, the ones that isolate themselves are the one who most need people who care about them, to be true friends.  The people who hide, stay away from anyone and everyone are the ones who need people who truly care, they are the ones who have the potential of committing suicide.
Maybe not always but I think that there is a higher potential, anyway.  Don't be embarrassed either, because there really isn't anything to be embarrassed about, depression is a disease and it can be made better but only with help.  Professional Counselors are the only ones who can help people who are depressed get out of it, along with some medication, if necessary. 
  I am very thankful that I have found my strength, in God, along with the friends that I do have and the Counseling that I have been going to.  With all this, I don't know that I would have been able to take all this without "crashing" myself.  I mean "crashing" as in maybe committing myself due to my inability to handle those deaths.