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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

This described my brother too. He killed himself four years ago, after about thirty years of just that kind of depression. And I was my little brother's keeper damn it, so it's my failure. Ever since I keep reliving it and wondering what I could have done. All I come up with are fantasy scenarios in which I somehow make us both wildly successful. But even that's a stretch given his outlook. I fantasize about some kind of extreme intervention, but that would probably have just alienated him from me along with everyone else.

Not that you shouldn't try. I hope you find a way.

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You are not responsible for another's illness. Nor their choices.

Don't get stuck ruminating on the past , possibly infecting yourself with the same disease. Instead maybe pour that love and attention on those still around you. Care for those still with you. You are not at fault, you can't change the past, but you can change the future.

This is the only way even if some of the guilt is deserved. Grow the love around you, give your time and attention to others.

I went through the same thing, but my brother didn’t succeed in taking his life. He had a similar profile as described above, and socials played an outsized role in his alienation.

At the time, I quit everything I had on my hands and reorganized my life to be much more present. Living around for a while, trying to engage and be a part of his life as much as I could: sometimes in innocuous forms (“hey, wanna do that thing you love this week?”), sometimes straight up suggesting therapy.

You know what? No matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work. I wasn’t able to connect more with him at the time, nor to change his viewpoints. The simple act of getting in touch with him became extremely hard, to an extent none of my friends, or relatives that weren’t part of the nuclear family, were able to comprehend. Ultimately, I just think he had decided things wouldn’t just stop there, or something inside him held him back among us mortals, and that’s about it.

All I’m trying to say is don’t blame yourself for this.

We’re all doing our best and it sounds like you were already being a great brotherly figure. Blaise Pascal once said: “The heart has its reasons which reasons knows nothing of”: the inner workings of one’s mind (God’s, in Pascal’s case) are too difficult to penetrate for our logical reasoning. We’re just out there on this planet trying to figure out how to help our loved ones, and sometimes it’s not up to us.

You’re not at fault, and I hope you’ll soon find peace.

I found solace knowing (reading about) that blaming yourself is a part of the process. Thanks for sharing. Now, time for me to go outside. It's spring.

Hey, I went through something similar. Even though it's inevitable to fault yourself, you need to avoid it. I also do it sometimes but it never helps; I need to actively remind myself that it's not something worth thinking about. Hope you're doing a bit better now.

I'm sorry to hear about your brother. Thank you for sharing- your words are helping me think through some related things.

It's shocking to me that you think yourself even remotely powerful enough to have prevented his suicide.

It "takes a village" to fulfill a human's social needs. No one's brother can, on their own, fulfill all another's needs. His deep thoughts, his poop jokes, his pillow talk, his watercooler chat? We need whole communities for which no individual can substitute. You might do well to recognize your own social poverty.

I'm sorry that you blame yourself. I tell my siblings not to blame themselves for my depression, isolation, and alienation. The fact is that these are statistical trends evidencing large, multidimensional social structures. They're unassailable by individuals. There was nothing "you" could have done.

Your brother was killed by a mental illness. You are no more responsible for his death than if he had died from cancer.

It's not like life has any worth in its own right. It's sad that he was driven that far, but what could you really have done? No use blaming yourself.

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