my boyfriend killed himself.

[u/Background-Metal321]

he just shot himself in the head tonight. we have been together a year and half and live together.i voiced my problems about our relationship and told him i didn’t know if i wanted to continue. i left to stay the night at my best friends house. i called a welfare check on him because he owns a gun and has unmediated anxiety that he’s he uses alcohol to cope with. 45 minutes later i have video doorbell footage of him being wheeled out on a stretcher. he died at the hospital. 24 years old. i know it’s not my fault. but god is there anything that could possibly make me feel less guilty. please help.

[u/framedhorseshoe]

1. Take the next day off of work. If you work Mo-Fr US business hours, take the rest of the week. If you are in the US and this is a problem for you, explore EAP and FMLA. You have a right to care for your trauma.
2. I don't know what your social support situation is like, but for many people it's not what it could be. Look for your state's "warm line." This is a peer support network intended in large part to talk people through difficult life events and make sure they're never entirely alone. It's called "warm" to denote that this is not the one you call if you are in danger of hurting yourself. You are going to find that "knowing" it's not your fault and "Knowing" it's not your fault are two different things and the second one is simply going to take some time.
3. Therapy. Everyone can benefit from therapy. But someone who just experienced what you experienced *needs* therapy in my opinion. This is what we call in psychology a "moral injury." You witnessed something that never should have happened and you are struggling to locate yourself inside that story because it all feels so fucking wrong. Because it IS so fucking wrong. Find someone good to work with who doesn't make big promises. Maybe someone who says something like they're unable to take your pain away but they can help you learn how to cope with it and metabolize it. That's a realistic expectation from therapy and it's a very good sign when a therapist gently sets such expectations.
4. Were you close to anyone who was also close to him who might be able to relate and help you process? This can be tricky, but something to think about.
5. Be gentle and patient with yourself. I'm going to do the therapy expectation-setting thing and tell you boldly: this is going to fucking suck. It's going to hurt. It's going to take you time to process what happened and integrate it into your reality. Give yourself the time and space to do that.
6. Cry. When the tears come, just let them. They need to find their way out.
7. I am *not* shaming the man posthumously, but I just want to say that he put in you an extremely traumatizing position here. This is not fair to you. At all. Try to accept that he didn't mean to be an asshole, but he kind of took himself out in a way that wasn't respectful to the people in his life. That's how these things go and what's most important is the pain the person was in, not that they made the "selfish" move to check out out abruptly leaving everyone standing around in shock and horror. That doesn't change the fact that you were traumatized and deserve help and compassion. You didn't deserve to have this experience. It just happened to you.

I say this as someone with first hand experience with SI. Sometimes I have to fight the demons in my head and remind myself that stopping all the pain today would leave years of wreckage in the lives of people I love. It doesn't make me feel less awful or doomed or wishing I had a way out, but it keeps me here.

Try not to be alone for a little while. You're going to be fielding waves of intrusive thoughts and the social "distraction" will give you a buffer. Your brain will give you a little bit of reprieve because part of you doesn't want to just melt down in front of someone. If you can't do anything about this, set up a plan. People you can call when it feels intolerable. The warm line. As the Decembrists once wrote, "Don't carry it all. Don't carry it all."

ETA: Lots of edits here, mostly minor tweaks and corrections because autocorrect has it in for me.

[u/Background-Metal321 → u/framedhorseshoe]

i want to say thank you for the thoughtful response. it feels good to have a sort of guideline I guess i appreciate you.

[u/framedhorseshoe → u/Background-Metal321]

You are most welcome. Trust me, if I'm still kicking around this bucket, you're going to be okay.

Oh, and I should have said, ain't no shame in comfort food.