Quote:I'm kind of the same way.  I had a childhood friend do essentially the same thing fairly recently.  The common denominator(s) that I see in both cases is addiction and depression.

 

I personally have dealt with several ups and downs in my life as well as personal "demons" that I had to overcome at one point in my life.  That being said, I never felt the need or the feeling that ending my own life was my way out.

 

I guess different people react and deal with things differently.  It is certainly a sad situation and my hope and prayer is that Robin has finally found some peace, and his family/close friends can move on and cope with the matter.

You have to be in a very dark place to see death as your best option. 

 

I had a cousin who was in just such a place.  What was sad about the entire situation is that he was talented, and just a great guy.  He tried to live a normal life but, as we found out from his suicide note, it was impossible for him to do so.  His oldest brother was gay, and when he came out to his family he was shunned.  As a result, he moved across country and never looked back.  When my cousin started to get the sense that he too might be gay, he had a difficult time dealing with it, keeping it to himself the entire time because he saw what happened to his older brother.  As a result, he bottled up everything and played the good son right up to the point where he couldn't do it any longer.  He wrote notes to everyone in the family, highlighted passages in the Bible that expressed his torment, went out in the back yard, and hung himself from a tree.  It was a shame, but he really didn't see any other option because he expected his parents, who had eventually come around and accepted the older son's announcement, to shun him the way they had done previously.  He was being bullied at school, and had no friends to talk to, so he saw his only option as killing himself.  It's been more than 30 years, and you can still see the pain in my aunt's eyes when we get together as a family. 

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