My after-effect experience...

I'm posting here since I need to log in to the appropriate section. Perhaps the moderator could please move this thread there.

This is related to my first post here. A few months ago, I was in college studying for a career that I didn't want to get into. I hated the program since I first started it. The third, and my final, semester in the six-semester program was very stressful. Added to the stress was my friendship with someone whom I thought was a very good friend, and was the best friend I ever had. I felt like she was giving up on me, and we were constantly arguing. There was a week where she completely ignored me; that made it hard for me to be in class as we were in all of our classes together. Finally, the day of my last attempt and first overdose came. (I've attempted before but not with medication.)

She told me she was losing her patience with me, and that people were telling her to just leave me alone. Well, and hour later, I grabbed my bottle of medication and, out of frustration and guilt, overdosed. The medication was prescribed for me to calm down in case of anxiety attacks. I felt drowsy; I stated in my instant messenger name that I overdosed, and that caught her attention. She approached me and said that she never said she was giving up on me, and stated that she was having an anxiety attack. She was breathing rapidly and looked like she was going to cry. The last thing she said to me that day was: "What am I supposed to do?"

I called a distress line because I was feeling sad, especially after seeing her reaction. The person I spoke to got me to call an ambulence. I acquiesced, and paramedics came and took me away to the hospital. I was just feeling a bit tired throughout the ordeal. At the hospital, the nurse just took a blood sample, and a doctor asked me why I made an attempt. Later on, a social worker came and spoke with me. I was discharged from the hospital after a few hours. I felt numb.

A few days later, she was again ignoring me. I confronted her, and her reason for abadoning me was because of this. She accused me of making her feel bad. The last words she ever said to me in person were: "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" The rest is history...

 

:arms:

How do you feel now? Are you still feeling numb?

Maybe, in time, your friend will start communicating with you again. But if not, maybe you will have another friend who you can talk to easily, with the them having or finding the resources to cope as best as they can.

The feeling of abandonment is horrible. Maybe it's important not to blame yourself too much. It does sound like your friend was feeling the strain and getting frustrated but that's understandable as much as your understandable overdose and your feelings before the overdose. I've been in both situations before and it is very painful- and makes me all the more aware of how much support that people, who are in the role of caring, need.

Your post effects me a lot. Please take care and don't give up when it comes to reaching out to people. :hug:

 

It would be nice if she communicates with me again, but it's NEVER going to happen. She abandoned me and that's that. I don't feel numb now; I think I'm starting to get my life back on track, but I do have my depressive moments. I sometimes grieve over the loss of a close friendship like that.

Speaking of tracks, I found out that there's a program at a college that trains you (excuse the pun) to become a railroad conductor. I hope to get into that program so that I can be a locomotive engineer--or as the Brits call the job, a train operator. That's giving me some hope in life.

 

That's brilliant news. :smile: I hope you get into the program too. :hug:

 

I'm glad you've found some hope in life but I can relate to both you and your friend but for different reasons.

I can relate with your friend because I too have a hard time in real life dealing with a person who is so in crisis. It's a massive responsibility to be the hinge that keeps someone alive and if they are a close friend or loved one, positive feelings can turn to resentment because of the pressure they feel themselves under from. People train for years to be able to cope with people like you and I and ordinary people just aren't equipped to deal with pressures like that.

On the other hand I can relate to you too, I hide my symptoms from my loved ones because I fear they will reject me, they wouldn't, I know that, they're very supportive but I worry that being honest with them would hurt them in some way. I have a shrink I talk to every few months and a keyworker at a centre for the mentally ill that allows me to talk about how I feel, then there are the friends I have met on the site here.

I guess I learned the hard way to pick who you open up to with care, it can be lonely sometimes but if you get out of your relationships what you're able to and not what they're not willing to give it can help a great deal.

 

I had a very similar experience. I feel your pain, in as much as anyone can ever truly express such a thing. It is hard to understand when a friend, in your time of crisis, turns away from you. I have tried to understand and have come to the conclusion that horrible shit happens. I believe, at least in my case, that the person I felt failed me had simply gotten to the point where they felt that had to choose between saving themselves (for the strain of trying to hold another person above water is severe and much to ask of any person) and continuing to try to save me. Such a situation can be made even more difficult by the fact that the strain on the other person is increased by the fact that it can be indescribably frustrating and grief-producing to watch someone loved destroy themselves. Depression especially, as a sort of invisible killer, is hard to understand from an observers point of view. You love someone and you just can't understand why they can't love themselves or help themselves. People in the end are only human. The average person is not trained to deal with more than the average break down from a friend. I am sorry you suffered this. The situation was not fair to either of you. Sometimes all it takes is having someone to talk to, to really talk to. You are welcome to contact me. Email srg00001@stir.ac.uk I mean it. Sometimes I feel if one person when I was internally collapsing had just said "Tell me everything. I'm here. I'll listen." I might have been able to let down my guard, fall apart, and pick up the pieces again. I wanted that from my friend (perhaps this is what you wanted too?). But she didn't have it to give and I didn't know how to ask anyway. And that is just the way it had to be.

 

Thank you Robin and BelovedDreamer. Robin, your input on how you can relate to this person is interesting to me. She told me before that week she temporarily stopped talking to me that she couldn't help me. I needed professional help, she said. I thought friends were supposed to be there for you. I wish I could have another friend like her, but who doesn't abandon me. Sadly, she was really the best one I ever had.