Yet another post about "reaching out for help" to friends. Maybe I realized something.

Last year, I came close to killing myself. I told one of my best friends, and she seemed concerned. She invited me to spend the night at her place so I wouldn't be alone. I also told another close friend, and my sister, that I wasn't doing well. They asked how they could help (awesome, right?) and I said, "just check in with me from time to time and ask how I'm doing". No one ever did. My sister pretty much stopped talking to me. My 2 friends moved, one 2 hours away and one 4 hours away. They don't want me to visit them, one of them doesn't return my texts and the other one still does, but never reaches out to me like she used to.

Obviously they didn't move because I admitted my suicidal thoughts, I'm not that paranoid. And I guess it is hard to maintain friendships at a distance. Even my parents told me that my sister lacks empathy, so I guess that's just her. But I'm hesitant to be open about my situation again. What I might have realized is, maybe people don't know what to expect when they say "you can always talk to me about anything". Maybe they don't expect me to ever take them up on it. Maybe they expect suicidality to be a time-limited thing or something they can fix.

I've been intensely suicidal for 4 years, and I can't imagine anyone wanting to be my friend or stay my friend if they knew this. It would probably feel like too much responsibility (even if I'm not asking for anything), and most people couldn't relate to it. Maybe after a while, they'd stop taking it seriously, but I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.