Why it is important to speak out to someone when you're not ok

Out of respect for the memory of my friend whom I'm going to speak about, please refrain to come and troll that topic or ask about any unrelated thing. If you want to speak with me about something unrelated, use one of my giveaways or put a message on my Steam Profile and I'll do my best to get back to you.

For those who know me a little more out of SG, you may have heard that I'm mostly a MMORPG player who can stay years without needing to touch a single other game than the MMO I'm currently playing for literally years.
I'm currently taking a break from FFXIV and the story I'm going to share is one of the thing that caused me to have a breakdown, I want to share it with you to raise awareness about solitude, mental and physical health and that idea we have that we should keep things to ourselves to not burden others.

Trigger warning : The story I'm going to share involves mental distress, physical health and death. If you believe that you aren't in a state allowing you to handle the story, please skip the TW part which I'll be properly tagging and read what comes after. Your wellbeing is important, do not push yourself to read

I'm a MMO player since 2004/2005 or so, I met all sort of people, good and bad and always ended up to form my own Clan, Guild, Free Company as having a way to enjoy the game which doesn't always correspond to how most of players engage the content of video games.
FFXIV was no exception, I tried to test some other FC but eventually made my own which could be considered as a place for those having gone through something and needing to mend their broken wings before going and flying again, maybe with us, maybe elsewhere. We have seen people coming and going and eventually the core of our little FC became really close as we would include friends and family to it, meeting IRL and so on.
Things went pretty well for years, we had highs and lows but the story I'm going to share shook me to my core, it isn't something anybody did to me and believe me, I went through a lot as a woman playing MMO since so long, it is something that happened that got us all desperate as we were powerless and couldn't do anything.

About B

B was an amazing member of our little community, he came along with my best friend whom convinced some of her close friends to come and try the game, leading this little group of 4 people who knew each others since decades to be part of my daily life. I honestly love each one of them and I'm very happy to be able to count them as my friends
B was someone who was going in and out of the game, playing other things aside, and while he was the most supporting person in the world, when he was himself at the bottom of the hole, he would disappear for months on end. I cannot say why exactly, I know he was ashamed and didn't want to be a burden to others, but I'm unaware of what caused him to even think this way. He was there for us and we were here for him too, but taking the hand we were extending to him was simply not always possible to him.

[Trigger warning : ON]

At some point he disappeared again and when he came back, he told us he had been stuck in his bed due to a pain so high in his leg that he couldn't even go up to the kitchen to take his phone. He was found miraculously by his boss who was wondering why he didn't come to work, after a little more than a week and was sent in emergency to the hospital.
As I was the latest addition to that small group of friends, I didn't dare to ask about his health problems, what is sure is we asked him to have his phone with him at all time and to call any of us in case of emergency, as his close friends were living in the same country they would be able to call for an ambulance so on and so forth.
Months passed and he was super chirpy super happy. December 17th 2017, he was taking care of his crafting classes, having fun with them and he gifted a few people the armchair mount that was released a few days ago before wishing us "good night, see you tomorrow," as he did every days since week.

I'm sure you're guessing that he never came back and you would be correct.
This time was odd to us, mostly because he was opening to others when he wasn't doing right and honestly you could sense it in his way of speaking, also he was really into his character, active on Tumblr and with a group of people playing the same race (Roegadyn in case you're curious) and as far as I'm aware they had stuff planned. When he wasn't ok he would simply ceased to be social, not going into the TS he shared with his friends since over a decade but you could generally see some activities, like him logging on Steam and playing. Here we had absolutely nothing, he just vanished.

Over time we shared our concerns and if you know me a little, you may know I can be opinionated, stubborn and this can lead me to not the best version of myself. After worrying like we did and some events that continued to happen showing us that he wasn't even paying his bills, I had a discussion with his decades friend and pushed them into investigating what may be happening. I know this caused one of them to be very stressed and I apologized for it afterwards, I should have been more tactful, I had reached that one point where my own stress regarding the unfolding events caused me to want an answer and I sure should have engaged this discussion in a different way.
At this point none of our possible answers about his disappearance were positive, we had 3 options and they were all shitty : hospital (maybe mental care ?), homelessness or death (maybe even suicide). If it was option one or two, we wanted to help and offer as much support we could, if it was option three, we would have a closure even if it would be so hard to deal with.

I won't tell your everything we did, we began with his social media, his Facebook and his name, we trailed him to his town, narrowed to his street and building thanks to some help. It took months until we got all the information leading us to find the phone numbers of a few of his neighbors. I'm French, he was German, I can only speak English, so just picture a crying mess trying to speak to those neighbors asking them if they saw him, if they could knock at his door, etc. Luckily one of them was speaking French and after I called and explained to my best friend that this person answered and told me a few things, she decided to called that person again to explain better in German and have them checking the name on the mail box and a few more requests that I had been unable to convey as I had some difficulties to convey what we wanted to know to that neighbor whose French wasn't perfect and wasn't speaking in English.
Of course this lead to a dead end, the apartment was sealed (I'm unsure what it means but that was clearly different than just him not being there and the door simply being locked), nobody was living there since months and he had no idea when was the last time he saw our friend. We didn't know where he was working at the time, the only thing we knew is he was in vacations at the time he disappeared.
We were stuck because we weren't members of his family, we couldn't ask for him in the hospitals around or ask the cops if he was ok and alive. We did give it a try and they dismissed it as "if your friend decided to go you shouldn't try to force them to speak to you" which is absolutely true but didn't answer to that dreading feeling we had since months.
So I called the French Embassy, I pushed for several weeks to have a call conference with the ambassador or whoever would hear me out. I called a bit too late one evening and the policeman who answered to me actually listened all the story, we were already in August 2018, I told him everything and because of that he answered he would help as we were all worried enough to went through all those events and he wanted to offer us closure if it was possible. He only needed a bit of time to have an access to the tools he needed to help and not to be guarding the place for the night, but he DID call me back.
He told me that he couldn't disclose where he was living exactly, but that he was alive, not in an hospital and maybe living back with family.
I shared the information with the others and we decided that we had to stop there. If he wanted to come back, he would, we had some answers, not the one expected, we had to accept things as they were and move on.

We continued to wish him a happy birthday, leaving little messages to him, adding him to our little conversations in case he could read or come back, until May 18th 2020.
My best friend checked randomly his Facebook and found a message that had been posted minute after she wished him a happy birthday, a friend announcing that he died and joining the picture of a newspaper RIP section with his day of death noted as July 2nd 2019.

I'm going to spoil the next part, read at your discretion.

My best friend reached out to the woman who posted the newspaper cut and asked her what happened, she told him that the date was fake, she explained that his body had been found in his apartment at that date by the people who were hired to clean the apartment for it to be rented again. She thanked the woman and didn't tell her what we knew regarding the time of his death as this was already heavy on her mind.
Our friend died at some point between the night of December 17th and 18th 2017, but his body was found over a year and a half later, he was only in his forty.
His family never tried to find him and is unlikely to know that he even died, they never reached out to the woman who announced their son's death and he had cut ties with them years prior his death.

What happened is weighing on me every day since a year. I had never forgotten about him, I was constantly reminded of his absence by all the little events and items he had left behind him. Yet we couldn't have guessed, we couldn't have known what really happened and we will never know the exact details. Because of some specific things he did, we also know that he didn't commit suicide, our best guess is his leg problem may have came back and he fell from his height as he was walking to his kitchen.

[Trigger warning : OFF]

B was always ashamed when he was sick or had a problem and wouldn't contact anybody, withdrawing entirely until the problem was solved. He believed he was a burden. That's the reason why I'm sharing this story today.

If anything happens to you, don't be ashamed to reach out and seek help. Don't just vanish. Even if you're sick or in a situation that had your fall down in a deep hole, even if you're in the deepest depression. Tell your friends.
You never know what you leave behind you, you may believe that you will be forgotten after a week or two, but it's simply not true. We searched for him for months to get all the information we had, we never forgot and kept an eye on his social media, just in case.
A friend doesn't forget, a friend simply waits for you to break the silence, ready to accept pretty much anything. Speak to your friends, they are ready to listen.

We waited for years, we did everything we could not to have a closure, but to help if he was in a dire situation. In the end, all of this pushed me to try and be kinder, to reach out to people and ask them if they are ok, to spend the necessary time to listen to people when they would reach out and always reminding people who couldn't speak that I was here to listen whenever they would need or would be ready to speak.

Communication is difficult and in many cultures mental and chronic health issues are considered as something you should keep quiet about. If you believe that you cannot speak of your struggles to close people, reach out to a hotline where you can anonymously speak and receive the help you deserve.

Here are a few hotline websites and numbers you can call if you need support :

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline : 1-800-273-8255.
• The Samaritans : 1-212-673-3000.
• CONTACT Helpline : 1-800-932-4616.

I decided to share his story because a lot of people are like him, afraid of burdening their friends regarding an issue, especially if it's something that happens chronically. I want you to know that you are loved and that you may be unaware of the impact you have on other people's life. You may feel like you're alone and that nobody cares, but it's unlikely the case. What you have to do if you are down the hole, no matter the reason, is reach to out, even if it's by using a hotline, someone will listen to you.