What was the first time you heard about suicide and how did you feel?

[Ariii]

My childhood was pretty decent (from what I was able to comprehend at the time), so I was always afraid of death. I think the first time I heard about suicide was sometime in elementary school, about suicide prevention. I can't remember anything about it, not even where I heard it, but being shocked that someone would want to die. It's funny in a sad and ironic way now.

 

[Darkover]

i was a kid watching tv and it was showing a bridge and someone was talking about how someone jump off it to kill themselves i thought to my self i would never kill my self because life was good to me back then but then life happened and now i never want to exist at all

 

[Ariii]

i was a kid watching tv and it was showing a bridge and someone was talking about how someone jump off it to kill themselves i thought to my self i would never kill my self because life was good to me back then but then life happened and now i never want to exist at all

I remember I used to daydream that God or sone higher-being (I'm not even religious lol) would bless me and my family with immortality. It's crazy how things can do a total 180

 

[ForestGhost]

The first time I can remember is when my cousin committed suicide around the time I was 7. I was sad and didn't fully get it but I think even then at some level I understood he was just trying to stop his pain.

 

[uglyugly]

I wanted to end my life before I understood what the word suicide meant. After witnessing a murder as a kid, I wanted to die. I thought I could harm myself the way the person I saw die was harmed and it would work. I tried and it did not work.

I think the first time I was exposed to suicide was seeing someone fall on their own sword in a movie. My brother and I laughed and thought it was funny, but we were very young (6 and 7, I think.) My mom was beyond pissed that we'd watched that show.

 

[lacrimosa]

In Catholic Church. When I was younger, I believed he killed himself to save humanity. Which, technically, he did.

I know this might piss some people off, but that's where my concept of suicide originated.

 

[-Link-]

My introduction to the concept was an actual suicide -- it was a classmate.

At the time, I was in a persistent daze for having a lot of my own ongoing (yet-to-be-identified or addressed) mental health problems, and I don't think I really registered the gravity of what happened... That they had died, of course, yes... But that it was at their own hands, I don't remember thinking much at all about that aspect.

I do recall how jarring it was to see how upset the school staff were -- just from a standpoint that, as a child, I always viewed teachers as these unflappable, got-it-all-together adults.

I don't remember thinking much at all about suicide as a concept until I started dealing with my own suicidal ideation.

 

[desolatefuture]

I was probably about 9 or 10 years old. I saw a suicide prevention poster in the local library and I was intrigued by the idea of ending my life even though I didn't understand how.

 

[SmallKoy]

I really have no idea but I think mine probably originally stemmed from stuff happening to me and my automatic mental response being "I'm gonna kill myself" especially because I grew up with alcoholics and anytime shit happened that would just be my auto response. Idk where I learned it tbh but I did grow up with internet so.

 

[FuneralCry]

In my case I've always and only wished to not exist, all I wish is to be permanently free from the terrible cruelty and suffering of existence, ever since I became aware of what death was it comforted me as I've always believed it to be nothing more than an dreamless, eternal sleep where all is finally forgotten about for me and I cannot be harmed in any way. Non-existence truly is all that's desirable to me, I'm not meant for the futile and torturous burden of having the ability to exist and it's something I'd never wish for no matter what.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I heard about suicide when I was a kid and I related to them as I also wanted to be dead

 

[meowingnomore]

honestly i've wanted to kill myself since before my memories begin

 

[finallydone]

like many other users here, i think i wanted to kill myself before hearing about suicide

 

[etherealspring]

when i realised that was an option i already felt like it was something i wanted

 

[Forever Sleep]

I'm not completely certain of the first time but, it likely would have been something on TV or in a film. I do remember in all the examples I saw thinking- I don't blame them! I was suicidal from a young age.

 

[Reflection]

When I was a kid I would have probably thought:" why would anyone do such thing?"....well I'm (un)happy to say that younger me finally got his answer.

 

[noname37]

I got the idea in my mind what would happen if I drank a bottle of bleach since I saw the poison logo on it when I was 11 years old. always had self esteem issues as far back as i can remember

 

[wren-briar]

I don't remember the details, but as a very young kid I learned about the concept of death, and that every single one of us IS going to die, and that most of the ways people die are less than desirable to me, and after a lot of thought on the matter, I decided that, if at all possible, I wanted to choose the when and how of my own death.

In other words, death itself never scared or concerned me, but the unplanned, actual death processes did, and I've known since then that, if possible, I wanted control over that process for myself.

Fast forward several years to middle school and we had an assembly all about how "suicide" is bad. That's when I learned the word, and was frankly grateful that there was a word to describe it, and I was very confused why people thought it was bad in general. (I did, and still do, feel that some suicides are bad, not in and of themselves, but the individuals' problems don't appear, to me, to warrant suicide, or they were clearly horrific deaths, that I just wouldn't want anyone to have to experience).

Over my 50+ years, my views have refined a bit. I strongly believe that suicide is a personal liberty, but more than anything, it still amazes me that there are so many people who don't believe this.

 

[Moniker]

Too young to remember or understand the weight of it. I have an older sibling who shot themselves. I was suicidal myself around that time too, but I never grasped the weight of that.

 

[render]

dont remember exactly when, but i learned the concept through church and was told that if i killed myself id go to hell. its funny but i think the church is part of the reason why im here, so…

 

[YandereMikuMistress]

I didn't know death was an option till my mom tried to kill herself,
And my feelings with '"suicide" were firstly disheartening because of the idea my mom would no longer get to join her friends in the "new system" since that's when I also found out it was considered "sin" to take your own life.
For context I was raised jehovahs witness

 

[NeoN0va]

The first time I've heard about suicide was probably in elementary. One of the civils from our town have hanged himself, and I've thought he was so stupid because there's so much good in life. Now I think way different, there's way more bad than good in life, at least for me.

 

[vampire2002]

my mom used to have lots of pictures on the walls of our house. i would often ask who these many people were. she told me that one of them was a cousin of hers who committed suicide long before i was born. she said they were best friends. i think i felt sad for her, but it was quickly forgotten given my young age (probably about 4 or 5) and my inability to fully understand death yet. i didn't really understand why anybody would want to die yet.
later on, i found out more about him, him being gay and growing up in the sort of community he did (heavily flds.) i lived there for a few years with my mom as she moved us all back to her hometown for a short time. i went to school there, and the only openly gay kid i knew was horribly abused by both classmates and his family. i can't imagine how much worse it would've been for my mom's cousin who grew up in the 80s/90s in that small town.
so while i didn't understand it as a child, i definitely can now. especially now given my own desires to ctb. but that's the first time i can remember thinking about suicide.

 

[LostExit]

I was 5 and a family friend hung himself in a garage near us. Think he was maybe 14 at the time. Was def over a girl. Was a good kid.. looked out for us lil squirts. So he was a loss for sure. He was missing a day or 2 before his mom found him. She was a mess tbo. I found myself curious right then. Life was difficult as a child. I wanted to see, and was always in the area. Was almost impossible to not look inside. Knew he was removed but still wanted to look inside at how he did it. Or what the garage looked like inside. Def felt like the area was haunted after that lol…. Kids but it never left me.

 

[Emeralds]

I was very young and probably learned about it in elementary school. They had an assembly about suicide prevention. I felt very sorry them. I remember feeling horrified at the thought that anyone would actually kill themself.

 

[nihilistic_dragon]

I think I was a teen. I was walking down the street with my mother and we saw a crowd of people, when we approached we saw that it was a funeral. A very young girl hung herself.

My mother was disgusted.

Me, since I was religious at the time I was kind of scared but at the same time kind of indifferent since I am not a very emotional person, so I wondered why she did it, how she did it, etc. Morbid curiosity of sorts I suppose. At the time I was already quite depressed because of my toxic parents, but I wasn't seriously thinking about ctb-ing.