I've tried to kill myself twice when I was a teenage. It was really silly. The first time I was in my bed, trying to sleep, when I tought : "Why don't I kill myself?" I don't remember what kind of problems I had at the time. I was 15 and that was the best year of my life up to that point (ages 10 to 14 really sucked and I would understand if it had happened at that time). I didn't do anything special, just covered my head with my pillow cover. After a few seconds I realised that wouldn't work, dropped it and went on to sleep. I don't remember when or how the second time happened, all I remember is that I tried a second time that same year. Many times I caught myself thinking about using gas to end it all, but I would not do anything that would cause trouble to my family (even though I had no reason to like them at the time).

A few years later, I got really depressed after a party and, on my way home, I stopped in a bridge, looking to the river and thinking. I knew I would never have the courage to jump, but I stood there. Then, from the other side of the bridge, came an old crazy friend, he was really drunk and hugged me real hard, leaving me with the stench of cachaça (brazilian rum). He kept going and I went home.

I never had any suicidal thought after that. On contrary, sometimes I feel that I now am "immune" to that kind of thing. Even if I feel depressed, it all goes away after a good night sleep. And I even became a person that is really good at talking to people with suicidal thoughts. I'm 24 now and, in the last five years, I've had a few friends come to me saying they were thinking about killing themselves and I somehow made them feel better.

I think that the most important thing when talking to people about this is: never say "don't to it". I usually say: "it's up to you, but.. have you considered this and that?" If you just tell them no to do it, they will ignore you, because they will think you don't understand their problems. And they are probably right about that.