A few years ago, my friend died by suicide. At least, she used to be my friend. We had drifted apart, maybe because I was too depressed to keep in contact. I was anxious and depressed and I wish we had stayed in touch. So we hadn't talked for several years. 

The last time we did talk (on text message, i looked through our convo), we had a conversation about sexuality and religion. I told her I was Christian and straight but I supported bisexual people (she had come out to me as bi). I was fourteen. She told me she liked me as more than a friend and I didn't understand it at the time but... I liked her in that way too. I have not identified as a Christian for several years now, and I have recently come to terms with the fact I'm asexual and biromantic. I wish I knew my feelings sooner, I wish I could tell her how I really felt. 

I keep thinking 'what if?' What if we had entered a relationship? What if I had stayed in touch? What if? Would she still be alive? It has been killing me slowly since I found out, and I didn't even find out at the time of her death. It was months later when I read an article about an inquest into her death (an inquest because she died at a mental health hospital... yeah).

I feel like I'm not allowed to grieve her because we weren't close when she died, we had been close once though. Also, I wasn't a good enough friend to stay in contact and check up on her regularly and make sure she was okay.. and now I can't fix it. I feel so incredibly depressed. I have been depressed for a long time but now I'm at home all the time and I just think about her all the time. How horrible she must have felt to do something like that. I don't have any friends I can talk to about it. I knew her from a group for girls with low self-esteem (we were referred from our schools). I remember playing table tennis with her and it ended up going all around the room, we couldn't be confined to the table. We had some really fun times.

She was so lovely, and she always made me feel included. Why did I lose touch? She was the best friend I ever had. I don't have any real friends these days and all I can think about is that she was the one friend who never let me down, yet I let her down. The world let her down. She deserved better.

I don't know how to cope, even though it's already been a few years and maybe I should be over it by now, but I can't. She's dead and she's not coming back and that is so hard to get my head around. I miss her and we have no opportunity to reconnect now. She was gorgeous.