I want to try something, but I’m kinda afraid

@LostAzure411

If you feel you want to try and help apply for it.... it is not that you failed your friend as a support person we can give advice or be a listening ear but in the end it is the person who chose to do not not do ... to take advice and help or disregard it......  you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make them drink.

you want to help and sometimes we have a perspective that can help from living thru such a close tragedy etc, 

@LostAzure411

Hello, LostAzure, I appreciate you having the bravery to share your story. I'm so sorry to hear that a very close friend murdered his girlfriend; I will never possibly be able to understand what you're going through, but what I do know is that you must be feeling overwhelmed, perhaps so overwhelmed you don't feel anything at all anymore, and maybe you feel very betrayed, shocked, unsure who to trust knowing that someone so close to you committed such a violent act. It sounds like a part of you also feels a bit responsible for what happened and wonders if you could have done something differently.

I just want to say this--but even the most trained, experienced mental health professionals have a lot of difficulty predicting when someone will commit a violent act or crime. There's been a number of studies on the subject, and maybe it's something you can look into and perhaps will give more peace of consciousness in understanding that it wasn't your fault. Your friend was the one who did what he did, and you aren't responsible for something you haven't done. You tried your best to help, and sometimes, trying to help is not enough to prevent something bad from happening, but that doesn't mean that it didn't matter that you tried. The fact that this feeling of failure is following you now tells me you're a good person, you're someone who genuinely cares about the people around you. It's people who care who often feel the greatest burden when things go wrong.

I'm not surprised that you wish that you never knew him. Someone who killed another person is something that you likely never expected, and much less you would never expect it would be someone you were friends with. But what happened with him doesn't mean that you can't be a successful youth and family support assistant; I think it could be within your capability to do, and you have good reasons to do this, like getting work experience on your resume for student teaching.

I think it mainly depends on how much emotional bandwidth and time you have. The other thing is that if you take on this position, it may be stressful and may make you question yourself or think about things in the past--so it could be an important consideration to look into getting a mental health professional or using mental health services through your college or an outside provider to help you process and reflect about things that happened in the past. You definitely don't sound arrogant, and it is possible to recover, although it's hard; I will never discount how hard these things are, and you've dealt with a lot. It takes a lot of time and effort to heal and move on, and I am truly wishing you the best.You're not harming anyone by applying to the position, and perhaps your personal experiences will offer something additional, a greater perspective into the role that someone else may not have.

In this role, you may not be able to help everyone, and this doesn't mean you're a failure; not even the best of the best professionals know how to help everyone, and you shouldn't have to take on that burden alone. I don't know always how to help or support everyone either, even after being on this platform supporting people for so many years. So you shouldn't have to know everything either, and you don't have to expect that of yourself. Please take care, and I hope what I said means something to you and am wishing you the best.

Thank you, your words have truly lifted a bit of a burden off of me. This isn’t necessarily in response to anything particular that you said, but I want to share a bit more on the situation.

Part of the reason I blame myself is because despite everything, he does not bear full responsibility for how he turned out.

I met him in middle school when he was 12. He was a bright, curious, and oddly direct kid. We were in an individual project class, and he never failed to check in with me to see what I was up to, and I eventually was his main reviewer for his book.

In high school, I learned a bit more about him. He moved to our town from the opposite edge of the country a bit before I met him, his dad was never in the picture, and his mom was always on something. All things considered, the fact that he only smoked weed was a miracle. His teachers had no interest in him, and at times he seemed far younger than how he looked. So… I stepped in as well as I could. I brought him food on a few occasions. I gave him rides home. In our shared classes I tried to help him focus. I tutored him when necessary. When he broke his arm in wrestling, I took him to the hospital for every physical therapy appointment, and kept giving him rides home or to work after. I truly saw him as a younger brother.

I graduated, and texted him pretty often. He closed up his high school career on his own, and at his graduation party, I was impressed by how put together he seemed. His girlfriend, a girl I had known since I was 6, seemed like the one for him. That summer they moved to Colorado together, and I thought they would be fine.

About two months before the incident, I went out to dinner with them, and I saw nothing wrong. When I saw it in the papers, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. But when I saw his mug shot, years of grey flags turned crimson and I knew he was guilty. I felt like I should have know. I felt like it was my fault for not watching him directly enough. I know that’s probably not right, but that’s not a thought my heart will let go of.

Despite how horrible his crime is, and how scared she must have been, I can’t bring myself to hate him. I hate that I don’t want him dead. But he was a child who received nothing from his parents, nothing but mild distaste from his community, and it probably reached a breaking point. Now, the same people that looked down on him and hated him for his eccentricities and , probably, his race, are now claiming that they always knew he was rotten and they were justified in having hated him. He was a kid, let down by everyone. How can I not feel responsible? Maybe that wasn’t my burden to bear, but I was trying to carry it. I couldn’t save him, and it hurts knowing that.