Has suicide effected your life?

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It has impacted most of our lives in some way.
In junior high, I had a friend whose older brother committed suicide when she was eight years old. I couldn't believe the callous way so many people treated her when they found this out, telling her that her brother had gone to hell for killing himself. I was a devout Catholic at the time and I refused to buy into this condemnation of a person who was troubled enough to take his own life and the mental abuse of his surviving sister. I told her that I did not think that God was cruel enough to send a person who had been sad enough to kill himself to hell.
At the end of high school, one of my classmates hanged himself after his girlfriend broke up with him.
When my brother was a senior in high school one of his close friends killed himself with a gunshot to the head.
In the summer of 2004 my second cousin, who suffered from lifelong medication resistant depression, killed herself by overdose.
Although it is a person whom I never met in life that finally pushed me into doing something about my belief that there needs to be a new understanding and compassion in the mental health community and the world at large if we are to prevent future suicides, all of the aforementioned people are also part of my motivation and they live in my heart forever.
As well, I live with a mood disorder and consider suicide myself at least once a month. I do not know if I will end my life by suicide or not. But I do know that whatever the case, I want to do what I can before the time comes.

For my co-author

This was supposed to be published on April 8, in honor of my co-author. And though I didn't remember to do so, I thought of him--and with him--on that date. He chose this.

"There's a stench in the air, which, from this distance underground, might be the smell of either death or of spring--I hope of spring. But don't let me trick you, there is a death in the smell of spring and in the smell of thee as in the smell of me. And if nothing more, invisibility has taught me my nose to classify the stenches of death."
--Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1947)

I suffer from springtime depression as well. Most people don't realize it, but the time when suicide rates are highest in the Northern hemisphere is not the recognized December holiday season, but Spring: April specifically.
With the current climate of consciousness, and for me the economic climate in my country of residence, I wonder how we'll ever get our message across. Is everything all in vain? I keep trying, because I think it's very important. Even if it only ever comes across posthumously, I have to do it. For better or worse, it is my calling. He tells me he's sorry for any distress becoming involved in this has caused me. But I don't blame him. I blame all the fuckers putting up roadblocks at every turn!
Someday we'll reflect on what we've gone through. And if in the end we made a difference, we'll celebrate together with the few that dare to see things our way.