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I just read every profile Marka listed, along with the comments left for them.
I cried big ugly tears, the kind where my nose is running and my sinuses will be hurting tomorrow. My hound became concerned, came over and smelled my tears. In the 10 years he has been living with us, he has never seen me cry.
I love the eternal member designation. What a great idea, a great tribute.
When I was an administrator of a very active forum, we had a member commit suicide. Many of us were close with him, some of the members talked to him in real life. There were warnings. I felt responsible. I felt like I should have notified the authorities. I still feel responsible. I wish I had thought of eternal member.
I just read every profile Marka listed, along with the comments left for them.
I cried big ugly tears, the kind where my nose is running and my sinuses will be hurting tomorrow. My hound became concerned, came over and smelled my tears. In the 10 years he has been living with us, he has never seen me cry.
I love the eternal member designation. What a great idea, a great tribute.
When I was an administrator of a very active forum, we had a member commit suicide. Many of us were close with him, some of the members talked to him in real life. There were warnings. I felt responsible. I felt like I should have notified the authorities. I still feel responsible. I wish I had thought of eternal member.
Kudos to City Data for being a class act.
I joined this sub-forum back in mid-2006, and MoMark instantly became one of my best friends on here. I was absolutely devastated when I learned of his untimely passing. I believe he may have been our first "Eternal Member". Even for those who haven't been dubbed "eternal members" I still always do worry when they take very long and unexplained hiatuses from our forum (there's one very intelligent "regular" on the Pittsburgh sub-forum who's been AWOL for months now). The people whom we interact with on here on a daily basis do eventually feel like family to us---albeit often more contentious and dysfunctional in nature.
As someone who has seriously considered suicide in the past (not that long ago in 2010) I would like to advise you to never "feel responsible", Hopes. I was in a highly unstable frame of mind but tried my best to keep it clandestine due to how stigmatized those with mental illnesses are in American society. If not for my strict Christian upbringing that indoctrined us to believe those who committed suicide were automatically hellbound I probably would have ended my life in 2010. Suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems. I was facing a multitude of overwhelming adversities simultaneously, felt trapped, and saw that as my primary "escape". Now that I've powered through that I feel more resilient than ever and rarely even get sick because my body "fights" everything off. You're not at fault, Hopes. Part of my severe depression resulted from my diagnosis as having "White Knight Syndrome" (a.k.a. "Savior Complex") in which I drained myself tirelessly to force myself to "save" others from themselves (whether or not they had asked for my assistance). This debilitated me to the point I had no strength left to fight all of my hardships that befell me when I lived in VA.
Do yourself a favor and realize that even if you DO spot "warning signs" of suicidal tendencies you still very often can't prevent someone from making such a disastrous decision to end their own life.
Do yourself a favor and realize that even if you DO spot "warning signs" of suicidal tendencies you still very often can't prevent someone from making such a disastrous decision to end their own life.
I just felt that if I had notified authorities, he could have been locked away for observation and gotten help. The reality is I didn't even know how to notify authorities. This was years ago, and I doubt authorities had a handle on how to quickly identify people online. They probably wouldn't have even bothered. I didn't know that other forum members talked to him IRL on the phone until after he died. That's how we found out. His sister called one of the forum members. I know deep down I wasn't responsible. It makes me sad to this day. He was a great guy going through a difficult time. The world is better with people like him in it.
Enough. I don't mean to make this thread about what I went through. I just thought "eternal member" was an awesome concept.
A lot of people are going to miss him. He was one of the better ones around here.
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