This is my first time going on this site. I am 18 now, but when I was 15, my 13 year old brother hung himself in our room, on our bunk bed. There was no note, and seemingly no reason as to why he did it, or what he was thinking at the time. I was the one who found him. His name was Leo and he was my only sibling.
Over the years I have felt so numb and different. Sometimes I feel like I have no emotions and I feel nothing. Having his suicide been 3 years ago, enough time has passed to where I have adjusted to my own unique reality. I notice a huge change in my relationships with people. It was not instantanious, but it took time for me to realize. I have trouble dealing with anything commitment. I feel as if I can easily find the flaws and bad in other people; and that forces me to push them out of my life. This makes me feel like I’m not normal and I’m just a really evil person.
Going from having someone I can talk to all the time about anything, to nothing at all; i feel betrayed. I’ve isolated myself from a lot of things. I spend most of my days just playing xbox. I dont share how i feel with my parents because i really don’t know how to express in words the amount of pain and feelings of abandonment that i experience sometimes.
Being only 13, it hurts that much worse. He wasn’t an adult. He was a child. And he committed suicide. The suicide aspect of his death adds a personal touch to his departure. Almost like it was directed at me and my parents. Growing up, we had a really great life. He was not bullied in school. We didnt have family issues; in fact, we had a really strong family bond. So when I start thinking about reasons why he would do it. I start thinking because of me. I was his older brother, and I couldnt be there for him and now I will never be able to.
Adjusting to that reality, i dont think, is possible. And if it is, it takes longer then 3 years. Me being 18, I have to struggle finding my own personal identity. Figuring out who I am in life. That is not easy. On top of that, dealing with grief and everything that comes along with it, just sucks. No other words to describe where I am at right now, except just stuck.
His 17th birthday is in 2 days from writing this post. Usually, the 2 weeks leading up to his birthday are usually pretty rough, and then his birthday just comes and its, okay. I just figured I’d share my story on here, because I’ve never done something like this before.

Dear Baby Brother,
Wow, it will be 3 years tomorrow. I started thinking about it today at work and started crying. I think about you everyday. Its getting better but you still broke my heart. With all this shit going on in the world right now, I wanted to txt you so many times and hear your dry sarcastic responses to things. HA!
Made Detective finally, but I think you already knew that 😉
Guess I dont have a lot to say as I talk to you all the time at night. Labor Day was awful. Couldnt stop crying as this was the last time I saw you. CW and the kid just left me alone. I blamed it on the bonfire smoke so I wouldnt scare the little guy, who is getting BIG!! Online learning right now, could have used you for computer advise the other day. All these little things of daily life you take for granted until someone is gone…..fuk!!!
I will say it feels like so much longer that just 3 years. Maybe because I feel you took our childhood from me. I dont even like to look at pictures because I see you and wonder when it all changed. It was me and you and now its just me and it wasnt suppose to be like that! I then I think about all the family responsibilities you left me with. Now I have to make decisions by myself. Im not prepared to do that!!! Its not fair! There, I said it!! And after mom and dad are gone, it was to be us helping each other out. Bouncing life ideas off each other. CW is around but he is my husband, not blood and he didnt grow up with the experiences we did. Its not the same. I still need you!!!! Now I feel like I could throw up. I miss you so much!!!!!!!!!!!! I love you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sis.

I’m having such a hard time right now. 2020 has been a horrible year and not just because of the COVID crisis.

I lost my stepdad in January due to neglect.  My brother took his own life while going through a horrible divorce. I tried so hard to help him but it was just too much for him to bear.

I lost my sister to breast cancer 10 weeks after my brother died. I have lost all my siblings and now I must make the decision as to whether my mom (she’s 86) can live alone anymore.

I don’t know how much more heartache I can take! I talk to a therapist once a week, otherwise I don’t know if I’d get through these past nine months.

I wish I could take my mom out more (she loves to go shopping) but I am too afraid due to her age and the possibility of her contracting COVID.
Thank you so much for letting me get this off my chest! I feel like I’ve cried on my loved one’s shoulders too many times! Sometimes even telling my story to complete strangers can help me make it through another day. Thank you again!

My dearest sista put a gun in her mouth today and pulled the trigger. She is now on life support with her 2 grown sons at the hospital. I am far away but my nephew said not to come. She won’t make it past tomorrow. She just turned 51 and I am devastated. Cradle to grave I thought. My ride or die through life…my best friend…how do I go on without her???

My baby brother, Doug, shot himself in the head two days ago. I am struggling with every emotion I have read about. What I have not read about is the images that are engraved in my head of him sitting in his car, alone…and the graphic details of his death. I don’t think I will ever be able to close my eyes again and sleep peacefully. Please help me!

My sister killed herself with meth in her system. I had sent her a careless text a few days before and argued and made her feel she couldn’t reach out to me. I was the only person left she would have gone to. I feel so guilty. And tired. Sometimes i feel like I’m taking her place. Her life seemed hopeless and hard, I understand why she felt like taking it was an option. Im not suicidal myself, but I can’t forgive myself for not seeing how horrible life had been for her and just assuming she’d get through it. I feel like I deserve to feel even a little how she did, and still it doesn’t compare.
Damp
The ocean pulses against me
In
Out
Over
around
pullmetugmetakemeconsumeme
Sometimes I wish the water would just take me
No longer damp, but
Drowned.
Right there with you sister
Sometimes,
I think she had the right idea.
And while I feel so ashamed, I can’t stop myself from thinking it.
And pondering it
For a while
pullmetugmetakemeconsumeme
Sink into the edge
The ocean pulses against me
In
Out
Over
Around
Like blood pumping,
A dank existence that never stops
An infinite cycle, damp, uncomfortable.
clogged skin, clogged senses, clogged mind.
A dank existence that never stops–
Never stops
Pulsing
Drowning doesn’t look so bad
pullmetugmetakemeconsumeme
With clouded eyes,
You jumped in–
And sank.
My eyes are wide open.
Crusted in tears like the hot sand that lines what consumed you.
I don’t stare at the water.
I stare at you.
No clouds haze across my sky
But you do.
The constant tug of the ocean
The constant scortch of the sand
The constant pulse
pullmetugmetakemeconsumeme
The constant pulse,
That just. Won’t.
pullmetugmetakemeconsumeme
Maybe to have the right idea
You need clouds.
Or maybe,
Had I been right there with you,
Sister
The ocean would not have pulled
The sand would not now burn
And an existence that never stops,
Wouldn’t look so bad.
But My eyes are wide open.
Damp
The ocean pulses against me
In
Out
Over
around
pullmetugmetakemeconsumeme

You and I, we are the same. You were the one person on earth to be so much like me and you took your own life. Is it going to happen to me, too? I have been living with depression for years, just like you. Genetically, we are alike. Raised in the same environment, so if you as my big brother couldn’t stand the world, how will I survive? I try so hard to be okay, to snap out of it but most days I am hardly breathing really. So am I gonna suffer the same fate too? I am so lost without you, it feels so incomplete, this world, it feels so incomplete without you. Most days I don’t want to be here anymore, I just want to be with you. To know you are okay, to know you finally found rest. Please if you can, come to me in my dreams and tell you are okay. Just once, I just need to know you are okay. I need you to know I love you, so far you have been the biggest influence of my life. I love you so much.

I found this site while doing research on how other people cope with the feelings that I’m feeling. I know I probably need professional help but I can’t bring myself to talk to mom about it because i’ve maintained this stable version of myself in front of her and everyone else for this long. It’s killing me to see her so heartbroken since we lost you. And although it doesn’t seem to be working I want to believe that her seeing me being okay will help her be okay. Since the day I was born you were always there. And I honestly don’t know how I would’ve made it here without you. In elementary school,  when a half-diagnosed disorder kept me from being able to speak a single word to the teachers and most of the kids, you were always there to communicate for me. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom at afterschool care without you having to ask the staff for me. At summer camps when I was put into a group of girls that I had nothing in common with, you let your annoying little sister tag along with you and your friends so I wasn’t alone and I can’t ever repay you for that. My whole life I’ve had you to look up to and I wish I would’ve given you the opportunity to rely on me like I relied on you. It’s been 3 months exactly since you left us, and not a day goes by where I don’t think about how things could’ve been different. I am so sorry that I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry that I let an argument keep me from saying bye and telling you I loved you the last time I saw you. With everything going on, the soonest we could have your memorial is next weekend and the closer it gets the more i’m dreading it. I’m not ready to sit around listening to everyone talk about how you’re gone. To finally see everyone in one place mourning is going to make it so much more real. I want to keep living in this little bubble where I pretend you’re not dead. Even though I know it’s real, it feels like you’re just away on vacation or something and that’s why I haven’t seen you in so long. I don’t think i’m ready to say goodbye for good but I know i don’t have an option and it hurts so damn bad.

I’m having a really tough time these days. My mental health has been deteriorating because I am running out of ways to stay distracted. It’s been 2 and a half years since you died and I haven’t even began to comprehend it. I just didn’t have time to grieve, so I didn’t and every time I would think of you, it would lead to a weird experience where I think “huh? he can’t be dead. How in the world could he be dead? And before I send myself into a panic attack, I just go on Instagram to distract myself. Life is really f***** hard and I just don’t know what to do anymore. God said that if he took something from me, he would give me something to fill the hole in return. How could he replace my brother??? Nothing could ever compensate for the way I feel.

I don’t really know why I’m here, I just know I need to put my thoughts somewhere as right now they’re trapped inside my head. I don’t know if anyone is even going to read this but I know I’ll feel a sense of relief once I hit send. I’m a survivor of sibling suicide.
I’m not sure survivor is the correct word I’d use because I’ve not been surviving since it happened.
I’ve not looked into getting support until now, nearly 6 months later. Support from family and friends is just simply not enough. No words can make me feel better and no one knows what I’m going through unless you’ve been through it yourself, which is how I ended up on this website.
I’m 23 and my brother was 20.
I still live at home with my parents, my 18 year old sister and my brother who is no longer here.
We had a very happy childhood and life up until that point, which keeps me wondering why it happened.
My brother was very sensitive. He liked to sit in his room all day playing his PlayStation. He was definitely a home bird like myself. We liked our own company.
I won’t say he was odd but some of the friends he hung around with weren’t a great influence which led him to get into trouble a handful of times. I’m getting off track here but I want whoever is reading to understand the type of person he was. He had his anxieties and the day after his death and the day we visited him in the mortuary, he was supposed to be at a job interview. He had been unemployed since he finished school. Like myself he wasn’t sure of what he wanted to do in life and was afraid of growing up but he just needed to get out of his shell.
He had a girlfriend who he seemed to be really fond of, they were together for around 10 months and broke up a short while after Christmas.
I’m not certain it had anything to do with his actions but may have played a part, I will never know. He never left a note or any trace of “why”.
It was New Year’s Eve and I had gotten promoted in my job, with very little time to celebrate, my new position would start January 20th. I had been practicing my new title while in work with the help of my manager so I’d be ready and also at the time we were doing a stock take so I came home on the 8th of January exhausted after working 4 full days in a row. It’s Wednesday night and I hadn’t seen my brother since the weekend, not even remembering the last conversation I had with him. I was always out of the house before he was awake and I came home from work and went straight to bed.
That night I had come home to hear he was drunk, got scolded and went to sleep it off. Everything about that night and our routines had changed, as if it were meant to happen. My usual routine was coming home at 8pm, having dinner in front of the tv with my mam, while my dad watched a movie in the dining room/kitchen. That night I decided to leave my mam asleep, eat dinner in my room and watch twilight with my sister. During this time my brother was supposedly asleep. My dad decided to watch tv in the sitting room because I was upstairs. These actions ruined our lives. Not that we were to know, these situations had happened before where he came home drunk and slept it off.
I was so tired that I turned the movie off halfway through and went to sleep roughly at 9:30pm. I was awoken an hour later by screaming downstairs. I was so afraid to move that it took me at least a full minute to get out of bed and see what was happening. I thought a murderer had gotten into our house. I met my sister on the stairs screaming “he stabbed himself”. My legs were like jelly as I ran downstairs and entered the kitchen where I seen my brother laying on the couch we had in the room, sitting slightly slouched and eyes wide open staring at me. I sometimes can’t seem to remove that awful image from my head when I close my eyes. I don’t want to get too graphic or go into too much detail. At the time I thought he was alive, I don’t know why because there was hardly any blood left inside him. I was just trying to be hopeful. Ambulance came, police came, he had been removed from the “scene” and were questioned. The whole entirety of that night has traumatised me. The way we were all being questioned as if we had done something because of the circumstances of his death. I know they were only doing their job and It definitely wasn’t a typical suicide case or way to do it. He had stabbed himself in the heart with a knife. We were told he would’ve died instantly which is the only thing keeping me going. Knowing he wasn’t in any sort of pain and not being able to shout for help. We thought it had happened as soon he did it, my mam got up to the toilet and she found him. My dad heard a glass break which we thought he was holding at the time of his death, as he must’ve come down for a drink like he always did. Normally he’d pop his head into my mam or dad to say sorry or hello, he didn’t this time. No one heard him, no one knew why it had happened, we were in complete shock. The doctor told my dad he had been there for an hour before he was found which I still question to this day. I just don’t understand. I’m forever going to question that night and never get the answers I want which is the biggest struggle for me. I could cope with an explanation but I don’t have one.
I went back to work on January 20th and seemed to be doing well.
Fast forward to lockdown where I’m unemployed and having to be stuck in the house where my brother took his own life 24/7. I’m being constantly reminded of his absence.
This is the first time I’m dealing with grief, the first time I’m losing someone, someone so close to me. I don’t know if my grieving behaviour is normal or excusable. I don’t know how to grieve. I don’t know how to cope. People rely heavily on support from friends whereas I push them away and isolate myself completely and try deal with my emotions on my own.
People around me seem to be moving on with their life and I’m stuck on this loop.
I’ve been crying every night since it’s happened and I’m afraid that soon I won’t be able to get out of the hole I dug for myself.
I hear the saying “you don’t get over it, you learn to live with it” but I don’t know how to.