It totally stinks to go through something terrible yourself, or to have something unexpected and awful happen to you.

It’s a whole other kind of pain to witness the same sort of stuff happen to the friends we love and root for every day, don’t you think?

These 14 people had to witness some pretty awful stuff go down in their friends lives, and my heart goes out to them!

14. How could you not, I suppose.

My friend had another good friend of ours die in his arms after being shot three times from a drive-by. Even to this day (9 years later) he feels like the they were meant for him and lives with some guilt.

13. I really wish she hadn’t done that.

I was on a Skype call in 2014 with a friend I had met when I was at school in Japan. She casually brought up that she hadn’t heard from her Dad in a couple of weeks after he went on a work trip to the Middle East. He was a journalist and this was when ISIS was at its height.

A few months later a video of him being held hostage by ISIS was released on Facebook. After the Japanese government failed to co-ordinate an effect exchange agreement with the Turkish government in time, a video of him being beheaded was released. My friend later told me that she forced herself to watch the video.

12. We all hope that.

One of my friends was sliding down a railing that was next to a ground storm drain made of concrete. He slipped backwards and cracked his skull open.

It was near midnight and we were pretty close to a hospital so I just kinda picked him up and ran. I hope I never see the inside of someone’s head up close again.

Since people keep asking me if my friend is still alive, he is and is doing much better

11. When you don’t realize you’re just a little too late.

He died of a seizure in the middle of the night. The worst part was he was going to see a neurologist the next day about his sudden onset of seizures.

10. Don’t play with guns, people.

I had a friend who I went through elementary school and middle schools with. He moved away in the middle of 7th grade and our friend group was heartbroken, but figured we’d see him again.

Last week, he was shot in the head by his friend who was showing him a gun and pointed it at him as a joke. He was 18.

9. This is all too common a tale.

Went swimming in a lake and got tangled in a bunch of weeds and drowned. RIP Dan.

8. Heartbreaking and senseless.

A friend in high school was hit by a car and dragged a couple of hundred yards before he died. The driver was drunk and on coke, it was 8AM when it happened, my friend was on his way to school.

7. I hope they caught the murderer.

A friend of mine was murdered, shot 14 times. He was left for dead on somewhat remote road. He was 15.

6. I hate unsolved murders.

Murdered by an unknown person.

There was some extremely shady shit going on at the time.

They found her dead in bed with the front door wide open.

28 years on, I still miss her so much.

5. You hate to think she’s lucky, but…

My best friend was shot point blank in the head by her husband and then he killed himself. She survived with no long term damage.

4. Some things you can’t fix.

There’s a really good friend of mine that was driving his girlfriend at the time and got hit by a drunk driver.

Only fatality of that accident was my friend’s GF.

It’s been about 10-15 years and he still doesn’t drive.

That shit destroyed him. He is still a happy dude but it isn’t the same for real.

Just. Broke.

3. I hope the surviving one can find peace.

Two of my good friends, twins, got in a car accident.

They were upside down in a wooded area.

The one brother died instantly. While the other was upside down for 3 hours until someone saw their car.

2. Best to argue at home.

A guy I know was driving home with his girlfriend after a party or club or something. She was drunk and they started arguing, so he pulled off so they could stop and talk and not be driving distracted.

She ended up getting out, took off down a road with no sidewalk, and got hit by a car. The argument itself was apparently super minor and the whole thing just wrecked him.

1. A true cautionary tale.

A few winters back my friend was driving and merged uphill onto an interstate overpass. He hit a patch of black ice on the ramp and went into a skid. His truck ending up slamming parallel into the guard rail and he wasn’t wearing his seat belt.

He’s a big dude, college football player at the time, and the force of the impact sent him clean through the driver door and off the overpass. He fell forty feet and landed on the highway below that he’d just left.

Amazingly, no spinal or cerebral damage but basically the whole left side of his body was shattered. Pelvis, elbow, 5 ribs were all broken, huge hole in his diaphragm, torn urethra. He was in a bad way.

3 weeks of medically induced coma and 8 procedures later he pulled through. 8 months after that the mad man made it back on the football field for his senior year of college, practically a cyborg at that point with all of the hardware in his body.

Doctors are pretty sure he only lived because he was in such good shape at the time of the accident. He always wears his seatbelt now, as should you.

Here’s hoping everyone is on the road to recovery, or at least is going uphill.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever watched happen to one of your friends? Tell us about it in the comments!