u/Federal-Pass-2055

A good friend of mine committed exactly one week ago. She was VERY Catholic and an active member of the Dominican community. She prayed a lot and attended lay seminaries on Aquinas. She was a kindergarten teacher in a well-regarded Catholic school.

Her family made her life miserable. Her psychiatrist, I’m sure, wasn’t the best option available. But I’m trying to focus now on the implications of Catholicism itself.

For a start, I assume you all know that killing oneself is a grave sin according to the Catechism. But at the same time, Catholicism teaches you that suffering is the fastest road to Heaven. If you’re experiencing depression symptoms, conservative priests/laity would likely tell you you have to “offer it up”. Or even suggest to pray more, take Communion more often, and so on.

My point is that I think this horrible mindset played a major part in her not asking for help earlier, if at all. She only started treatment about a year before her passing. And even then, she kept living with her awful family, who forced her to live with a sister of hers who’s a paranoid schizophrenic and who attacked my friend during her psychotic episodes. Repeatedly. All of this while her family had the financial resources to fucking rent her an apartment away from her sister, or institutionalize the sister in the first place. We came to know this terrible truth only after her funeral. She NEVER mentioned any of this to us.

A sane individual will obviously reject being part of all of that and flee as soon as they can. A sane mind would definitely not put up with that. But if you add the “suffering is actually GOOD” mentality on top of that, it really does blur the mind when it has to make high-stakes decisions like moving away from a toxic household.

Her mind imploding and taking the decision of ending her life was obviously terrible and misguided. But she sought to escape in the only way she could find. And that was the rational thing to do. The goal was rational. The means was not.

EDIT: forgot to mention that she also suffered lots of bullying on her teenage years, again in an “elite” Catholic school.

EDIT 2: moderate/liberal Catholics could argue that there’s a distinction between preventable and unpreventable suffering. But the whole point of imitating Christ is taking up your cross voluntarily, as he did it!

My brother-in-law has a bakery. He mostly sells B2B now, but is basically broken and unable to pay some taxes. Until now, my mother-in-law has been repeatedly bailing him out so he doesn’t incur in debt. Nobody in the family believes this business would’ve lasted this long (he started in 2018) if it not were for the recurrent financial aid by my mother-in-law, who is a retired physician.

My brother-in-law is a CPA. Since I work in IT, I suggested him to look into business analyst roles, after proper training in the discipline. He submitted like 2 resumes for senior business analyst roles and is now frustrated that nobody called him back.

I suggested that he start looking into accounting positions, but since he’s not been actively practicing it’s a safer bet to aim to junior roles. I even recommended to tailor the resume to the job description.

The thing is, my wife is mad at me because according to her I’m not doing enough. She believes I should be applying to jobs and scheduling interviews for him.

I insisted that job search is a job in itself. It takes a lot of time and effort, and I’m not willing to waste my time in something he’s perfectly capable of doing himself.

EDIT: since some comments are already calling me NTA, I feel compelled to add some information to the mix.

When he started his business, he did it with a female partner who was like 15 years his senior. Have you heard that you don’t shit where you eat? Well, he was having sex with her, giving her money for her 4 children. She was divorced, at least.

She ended up resigning after realizing the business wasn’t working as expected and filed a lawsuit against him. Since my wife and I are also lawyers we managed to win the case. It only took 4 lawyers: my wife, a friend of his, a friend of ours and me. This was for free, and I don’t remember him thanking us for it.

About 2 years ago he got his childhood sweetheart pregnant but she doesn’t care about the baby at all. He’s a full-time babysitter while trying to run an unsuccessful business.

EDIT 2: calm down, “full-time babysitter” is a hyperbole. I have 2 kids of my own. I know the difference. I was simply trying to convey the image of a functionally single father, with an absent mother and a broken business.

Me refiero a expresiones como “más duro que empanada de escombro” o “cerrado como culo de muñeco”.