You can't really save anyone, part 2

A few months back I wrote a post titled "You can't really save anyone" the thesis of which was that essentially it isn't your fault if someone commits suicide and you hadn't called or something to try to talk them out of it. My point was that it is not possible to know when someone is thinking about that, and, if they truly want to kill themselves the will find a way to do so without your input one way or another. I do want to make clear that I totally believe it is possible to drive someone to suicide with your actions, but I am really hoping that none of you reading this are in the process of doing that.

Years ago I decided to watch Dr. Who, I had heard that the (at the time) recentlyish rebooted series was a lot of fun so I got into it for a while and watched a few seasons, one of them, during the David Tennant era, involved the gang visiting Vincent Van Gogh and attempting to dissuade him from suicide, and it seemed to work! But then they returned to the present and found history hadn't changed at all, he went ahead and did it the day after they left him. They had done everything they can, and more than is technically possible in the real world, but they still couldn't beat the disease.
They knew what he was going through, new he had problems, and did their damnedest to make him feel worthy and deserving of life, but it wasn't enough.

The lesson I took is that you can do everything right, and it still won't work. So the at the time widespread exhortations on social media to "check on your friends who might be having problems, you never know if you could save a life" rubbed me the wrong way. They still do, but I was thinking more about it lately and I realized there was another angle that bugged me too.

Shouldn't you be checking in on your friends anyway just because they are your friends and you want to know what they are up to? I can't speak for all people who deal with depression and this may just be me being ornery, but I notice when someone is just contacting me because they think there might be a problem, it's like, well yeah there is a problem, and it is because I only hear from you if you think I am going to hurt myself.

To be clear, this is not an attack on anyone, and those communications have been exceedingly rare for me, I don't want anyone feeling bad or attacked, lord knows I am bad at keeping in touch with folks too, it's just... we spend so much time doing things when they are a crisis that being in crisis becomes the norm.

I dunno if I have a coherent thought here, I've not been sleeping well and have a lot to do, I'd love to get other people's opinions on the topic because maybe my personal issues don't make me the best judge of the idea. I guess I just feel like if we all interacted more before it becomes a crisis, maybe we have fewer crises and maybe we don't have to feel bad about not being psychic.