My best friend died.

My best friend died almost ten months ago. I am 19 years old. He was off-roading with a friend in a rock quarrey where they had recently blasted for more rock so that the old path was gone. They fell 40 ft to their deaths. I was really good friends with (lets say his name is) Kevin, who died. We always were able to spend time together and he was the only one I would be able to talk to even though we would go through periods (often corresponding to new girlfriends) where we did not talk much. He died during a period where we had not talked in a while.

I had to pretend I was the tough guy and support my girlfriend at the time. She was very distraught about his death and it seemed to not affect me too much. Now, ten months later, I find myself crying over his loss and missing him. It has been continuous since his death but NEVER in front of anyone. I broke up with the girlfriend and have a new one now but it is hurting my relationship with her. He was the only person in my life I could talk to about anything. He never judged me or anything. I feel guilty that i was not in a best friend time with him when he died and have felt like i was not allowed to be sad.

Everyone else has been able to miss him openly and look for support. I feel so alone. He was the one i would talk to about these things but he is not here anymore. I really miss him, i really do. I don't know what to do with myself. It is affecting everyday of my life but i cant tell anyone. I feel like its not that big of a deal and it hurt others more and i should just get over it. I have turned to alcohol more than I am proud of.

I don't know what to do anymore. I don't even know what I am looking for by posting this information.

jww14 wrote:My best friend died almost ten months ago. I am 19 years old. He was off-roading with a friend in a rock quarrey where they had recently blasted for more rock so that the old path was gone. They fell 40 ft to their deaths. I was really good friends with (lets say his name is) Kevin, who died. We always were able to spend time together and he was the only one I would be able to talk to even though we would go through periods (often corresponding to new girlfriends) where we did not talk much. He died during a period where we had not talked in a while.

I had to pretend I was the tough guy and support my girlfriend at the time. She was very distraught about his death and it seemed to not affect me too much. Now, ten months later, I find myself crying over his loss and missing him. It has been continuous since his death but NEVER in front of anyone. I broke up with the girlfriend and have a new one now but it is hurting my relationship with her. He was the only person in my life I could talk to about anything. He never judged me or anything. I feel guilty that i was not in a best friend time with him when he died and have felt like i was not allowed to be sad.

Everyone else has been able to miss him openly and look for support. I feel so alone. He was the one i would talk to about these things but he is not here anymore. I really miss him, i really do. I don't know what to do with myself. It is affecting everyday of my life but i cant tell anyone. I feel like its not that big of a deal and it hurt others more and i should just get over it. I have turned to alcohol more than I am proud of.

I don't know what to do anymore. I don't even know what I am looking for by posting this information.

jww14,
First off you need a hug, may I?
{{{{{{{{{{{{jww14}}}}}}}}}}}}
jww- you lost your best friend, it is ok to grieve. I lost my best friend too, the first yr sucks. the second year I felt so lonely like you do. I still that way at times still.
I have wrote around 75 letters to him. Just because I had to get it off my chest. I wrote a poem, I also planted a tree, and a rosebush in honor of him, puma suggested those ideas.

There is nothing wrong with crying, you should cry. Don't bother with other people with at attitude, grieving is so different for everyone, it is a process.

oh man tears are welling up in my eyes. When you lose someone it hurts, it hurts for along time, and I dont know if it will ever end.
It just get a little little little better each day.

I understand trying to use alcohol, but it just makes it worse is what I have found..

Whatever pain is there is there, and you have to work through it. There is no time table in grief.

Best wishes- this is how I happen to find this forum, is reading about grief on the web. It feels good to talk and share and take a load off.

jww14,

Just because you weren't talking to each other at the time that he died does not mean that you shouldn't feel sad about his death. A friend of mine died recently and I did not speak to him for almost 2 years. I still loved him and missed him like crazy. Just beause we weren't close anymore did not mean that my love for him wasn't still there. Your love for your friend was still there when he died. You do not have to feel guilty at all for feeling sad.

It is so difficult to lose someone you can really talk to about things. It is a big deal - he was your best friend! Don't feel like you shouldn't be sad and shouldn't cry.

Also remember that he wouldn't want you to dwell on his death. Of course he would be glad that you grieve...but he wouldn't want you to feel guilty about anything.

Talk to people about it. It will make you feel so much better! and *hugs* to ya

Its so easy to say, death is a cycle of life, and that grieving is ok. Let it out, do what makes you except his death. However the truth is pulling through is your responsiblity. I have no doubt you can deal, and that you will be fine.

Take his life and make it your own. Don't hide your grief. your always going to feel that loss. However you can fill it and make it yours. It will help you grow. That walk towards surenity.

You are strong and you can deal. Good luck to ya son.

Best wishes in your troubled times.

i just want to say thank you to the people that replied to my post before. I really appreciate it in a way that you will never know. Its a weird and foreign feeling for me to hear that someone really cares about how i am feeling so thank you. i have not been able to talk about kevin with anyone recently because i always feel like they always have too much going on, dont want to make them feel sad and all that but no worries

i think i am going to go back to my psychiatrist in a few weeks when i get back home from college. thank you again and best wishes to all of you.

first of all you need a hugg . Try to keep your mind busy i know that you will always miss your best friend. Keep your head up dont give up easilly.

Its really sad to hear that, i can understand the pain of loosing a best friend.
If we have a fight between best friends its unbearable...painful... saddest moment. My sympathy is with you, i know its difficult to forget moment but life doesn't stop..i 'll pray for your health and happiness.

Yes,I can relate. I have not been in daily contact for thirty years with my best friend. But I was crying daily or almost daily in the last year when I lost him. and just now I am shocked to feel - for the first time- some emptyness and the ceasing of this feeling of loss...after a whole year of daily missing him and writing poems and painting pictures on him and crying almost daily...I decided to look for others in similar situations to feel less isolated around this process. I was afraid this will never end and now I am frightened seeing that maybe it has ended after all. At least for today this is my feeling. A feel the loss of a strong feeling of loss.

On the other hand I feel relieved too. And I still do feelthis huge forcefulloving feeling...like a yellow flame...I still feelloved by him...I feel close to him...Which was not the case during those years we lost contact..It is a sad story.His wife was jealous of our friendship and told me he has found some other guy to work with /we worked together in successful artistic stuff/...and she hinted at more intimate closeness between him and that other friend...I felt devastated in jealousy and I did not doubt the truth of the "news"...So I created some anger outburst, with unforgiveable language and I left his environment...fo years...In his last years he was calling me again and we planned something together again, I felt he was kind of saying "sorry".But only after he died now-a year ago - did I go around - and actually asked those guys /there was not only one/ who were reportedly "closer" than me. They both said it was not true. He never knew why I departed -I suppose he did not ask me,because he thought that I am not balanced - I was always too dramatical and demanding so maybe it was okay for him to lose me this way.I also thought I am unable to handle my emotions around him,so even now I think it was a good decision to diminish the contact level - /except it had career and financial consequences, but that is not important now after so many decades/. But now after a whole year of this intense grieving feelings /and the poems and pictures I made during this time/ I do see that I made a huge mistake back then - and I was hiding even before myself the intensity of my attachment...I suppressed it. I felt betrayed and angry. I am feeling really sorry now.
I don't know how to deal with this. /The intensity changes,ther are days when it abates but then recurrentlyit gets strong again./I try to see what is it really.I needed some vicarious fathers.I repressed eroticism,I went to therapy for normalizing myself and in spite of strong emotional attachment I never sexualized my fathering needs.I married, had children. -That is good of course... But now everybody tells me - reading my poems - that I was "in love" with this guy./And others before and after him, yes/.But I don't want to equate "love" and sex. Whenever I acted out sexually I never was able to stay with that person for another experience on that level. I just could not so eventually I accepted that I only need emotional nurturing from friendships.That is why I felt his reproted alleged betrayal sexually so painful -that I left the common workplace...That was a big mistake because we were so successful together and apart neither of us was able to reach the level we were on before,together./Naturally I fantasize that if we wd have stayed togetehr he wd not have died at all...as his lackof ralsuccess was partly responsible for his early demise...This is just a fantasy,I know, but it is painful./ And I tend to forget that -although he was a cute slender young boy when we met -he baceame a fat old man during the decades that passed /while I managed to stay slim and youngish relatively/, so I really was not able to relate to him with the former unconditional reverence and adoration.../especially as I did believe he found others instead of me./
It was also an element in this sad estrangement, that we both decided to stop being unfaithful and promiscuous and we both found loyal wifes and had children so for twenty years we really were not in the position to do any research and re-start and reflexion on this old hurt in me... I worked with other artists /in movies,theatres/ but only the films we wrote together are still watched and still remembered as something revolutionary /in avantgarde cricles here in this Central European country/...So I suppose I cd somehow process this estrangement -as I lost many other "significant others",idols,ideals...But with none of them did I have so good results -valid today - and no one spent four years with me...like him. And yes,I felt love forhim inspite of the non-sexualized stance...I do feel this love still.../in spite of my real love for my family, children,wife, and for many other friends/...This guy looks a bit better than Leonardo DiCaprio /looks very similar/. I just mention this because it was and is a very strong element in this story. I "used" him to enhance my image - I had a skin problem back than so I felt intense shame around my body image - and the fact that everyone knew this strar-quality Hero accepts me as his best friend and co-worker really saved my life. I was suicidal in my distress -and in those instance I always imagined he deserts me...I felt I cannot live without him.So to desert him - whatever false stories have prompted me - was a huge decision on my part. And now I think I did not really grieved back then. I tried to impress him -showing new "best friends", who were also very spectacularly good-looking /I even went to Marocco to find such a "friend"/ and this pattern -of showing him my new "friend" - repeated itself during all those decades in every 5 years almost. I am ashamed now as I am telling this all. The amount of bad and unimformed and non-adult responses to stress in this tory is shocking from my present adult viewpoint. Now I think it wd have been wiser to ask him about those rumors.It wd have been wiser to stay with him - even if he wd have had other friends - just for the sake of our work sucess possibilities. I shd have accepted my homoerotic potential maybe and not force myself into a marriage /in this I followed him, he stayed to be my reference person and due to our backward country's habits it was a security arrangement too./...I am frustrated by this series of dumb and emotionally unintelligent behaviours especially as I considered myself a virtuoso of relationships...and still with all these mistakes I feel tremendously grateful, because those few years still were worth all the suffering...I cannot imagine a greater luck and blessing than having this DiCaprio-like genius as a best friend as a vicarious father figure... it really gave me a starting velocity and strength that helped me to stay on course and to not submerge in all the vicissitued life entails normally...Somehow he was like an angel that really,even now,after his death, still is able to hold me over the surface...So instead of remorse and frustration and sourness I feel blessed and grateful and elated and loving... And in spite of these huge mistakes -I can say I have had a beautiful and fulfilling life. I have learned so much during these decades of grief./Because I now see myself as grieving him ever since I left him./ I learned to survive without leaning onto an idol...I learned to organize myself so as to recieve vicarious fathering from other beautiful and talented men and even to get enough accepance on a body-touching level, because that is the key in such distress.I learned to discharge my anger and my tensions /not only in art but in direct pillow-pounding and crying too./ I learned to communicate about myslef-I learned to be open about my failings and vulnerability /like with my wife and children who accept me as I am and even enjoyed my outpouring of grief poems./ I learned to use therapy: groups setting,self-help groups,co-counseling, analysis - all of them were and are helpful. I was able to create valid and accepted art work - writing novels around this guy and our story, and making exhibitions of pictures around himand writing poems...I may complain about how dumb I was and how sad I am... but in reality I am glad - also - I have had just this kind of "tragic" life task...we all have such life tasks - some are similarly tragic or even worse.someare milder...It is a must to handle all this and survive them and learn from them. Thankx for listening. The biggest mistakes in my life -as this story teaches me now - were when I wanted to avoid suffering and head-on confrontation. Because of this I killed our friendship decades before my friend now died. And now I am as yet unable to forgive myself for this.

I am so sorry to hear of your friends passing. My best friend of 50 years passed away unexpectedly last month. I am finding that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Sometimes I find it helps to talk with other people who knew her. Sometimes I like to "talk to her" and sometimes I just want some quiet thoughts of her and our life together. Sometimes I feel angry that she died, other times I cherish memories of our escapades together... What I am finding out is there is no right way to grieve.... it is very individualized and grieving is a healing process without time limits. I believe the best help is remembering the love you both had for each other and the times you spent together. I also know that my friend is in a place (heaven) where she is whole and happy. She would not want to come back even if she could. She also would not want me to feel sad and cry. I believe someday, when I pass away, she will be there waiting for me. God bless you on your journey of grieving and missing your friend. Remember the joy in your relationship.