My friend... J

I'm not going to put name's on here as it's personal stuff. lets just call him J.

I met J nearly two years ago at work. It didn't take long for us to become good friends and I've spent an everage of two weekends a month round at his house getting my ass kicked at Halo or Poker. He had a few problems which came to light recently. Mainly centered round/leading to his depression. A few months a go he had hidden himself away for a while, not seeing anybody apart from his parents which left us all a bit worried ut at least we knew he was being looked after. While we were at Glasto we got a phonecall to say that he had been found on the roof and then in the bath with kitchen knives. It looked like attention seeking to us (why start trying to kill yourself when people are coming round?) and we ignored it as much as we could. That seems harsh but we are all good friends and could eiher laugh or ignore most things away and carry on.

A few weeks on and J has moved back in to his flat, started work again, playing poker again, sitting up till 6AM playing Halo and more recently going to the pub too. He also had caught up with some friends he hadn't seen for ages who had no idea about his depression. I spent quite a lot of time listening him and making suggestions. i suffer from depression myself and found the best way of coping is that when your feeling down is to recognise that is the depression making you feel like that and to ignore it. He told me how left out he felt because of his hearing difficulties (death in one ear) and that information didn't go in because of this. I'm not sure if that was because of his hearing though, i get the same thing sometimes, I can hear people talking but not what they are saying. I'm just not processing the information, I think it's normal for some people. He also spoke about being middle aged and still single, this is a real shame. He was pushing on 40 had a house, no baggage, kids, etc. was an interesting guy and therefore a very elligible batchellor. I spent a lot of time listening. He told me now and again that he ges so frustrated and wanted to end it... i didn't know what to say to this so just encouraged him to stay on at work and stick through it.

He had gone away to Ireland, setting off on the Friday to see friends for his anual uni-mates meetup do. He got as far as the airport and something flipped. He was going to see mates who had put their degrees to use and were settled/settling down with family and he had done none of this. So he went for a drive and ended. This is the tragic thing, he was getting better with the depression, showing a real change and smiling again, then this came along.

So... The first couple of days I spent wondering if I pressured him too much, should he have being sectioned. Should I have taken his medication off him. Everything I could have done to stop it going through my head. I knew very little, J worked with me so didn't know if HR were informed.

I went to work on the Monday, again in a state and found out they'd already being informed. Next I thought it would be best to let his friends at work know before the roumers spread. I managed to speak to his trainer and go for a cig and then caught the end of the meeting informing everybody on the way back in. I took the next couple of days off work too and popped up to see J's flat mate to see how things were. As I mentioned this guy shows no emotion and I arrived to them laughing and joking wwhich actually made a good difference. We've always laughed and joked at each others mis-fortune... Usually it's stuff like loosing a poker hand in a dramatic way or having problems walking due to various reasons. On the other had these guys are quick to compliment on things well done or offer understanding if something goes really wrong. The thing that really flipped it for me is that we all used to have some fairly epic battles involving tea towels, the dogs toys or play fighting. One of the lads is ex military and quite stocky, last week J had absolutely sucker punched him leaving a bruise and a dead arm (not seriously hurt) but it was the funniest thing I'd seen in ages. Us lot waiting in the kitchen to ambush J and then out of nowhere J annhialates this lad, anyway, it was pointed out that J won this one and there was nothing that could be done about it. After a cup of tea I went up stairs to see his last movements.... Very distrubing, clothes neatly folded where he'd been deciding what to take with him and a pile of medication packets in the bin.

I went home for a long think. It dawned on me that although this is a tragedy, it would have been a lot worse if he'd just disappeared and never gotten out of the hole where he wasn't seeing anyone. We did the right thing, we got him out having good times again and back on his feet. It wasn't this that finished him off, it was his depression and the thoughts of Ireland... That's how I feel now, my thoughts may change.

Thinking back, this has been on the cards for a while. Apparently some notes were written 3 weeks ago and destroyed. There's little cluess though. At Solfest J told us that it would be his last festival... I found this strange as he had such a good time. J and I were wanting to start fencing lessons as the umberellas were gettig too much of a bashing, a couple of weeks ago he changed his mind on it. The same with teh Boosh tickets, he was complaining becaus ehe ddn't get one so I went out of my way to get him one but he completely lost interest in it last week