Suicide.

When you read/hear the word, what do you think?

No, I am honestly asking.

Do you think about depression?

Do you imagine a person cutting their wrists?

Do you remember a person in particular with a history of suicide or suicidal thoughts?

This is a topic that usually gets put off by teachers until something happens to the community directly.

We, as children and students, as people, are taught that we are only one call away from getting professional help.

We have suicide prevention hotlines, yet I wonder how many teens and adults actually use that.

We all have our issues, it just depends on how well a person is at hiding their own.

We are told that all bullies are dealing with something at home, but what if even that isn’t true? Sure, that might be the situation for SOME, but not for all. Who are we to generalize?

You can’t give a group of people two or three solutions to the same problem, because there is no guarantee a person will react positively to a solution that helped another greatly.

I have been sent to a therapist, but I hardly said more than ten words. It is creepy, you know? Having one person know everything about you and your mind?

So, I use Wattpad to talk.

You don’t know who I am, so that relieves some of the anxiety that is constantly eating away at my soul.

When people in real life confide in me, I comfort them and I try to relate instead of telling them what they should do.

They know what I know; we watched the same suicide-prevention videos they showed to us.

On the Internet, I give the brutal truth to those who confide in me about their depression or their thoughts about killing/harming themselves. Now, I’m going to share it with you:

I can’t tell you what to do, nor do I want to. The way the world is heading, I do not blame you. I’m not going to tell you not to kill yourself because that is your decision. It is your life. You have the power to take your pain away in the blink of an eye, and it sure would be the easy way to get out of the situation.

No matter where you look, I am sure there will always be one person telling you that you “shouldn’t”, or that you “can’t”.

I had a friend that attempted suicide a few years ago by overdosing. Do you want to know what he told me?

He told me that he regretted it the moment he popped the pills. He told me he was grateful when he was saved. He had realized then that he had much to live for.

I had another friend that had tried to hang himself, something happened; I don’t quite remember. But he didn’t come to school the next day, and everyone was in tears. His ex was bearing the guilt, because (if I recall correctly) he had texted her something or sent her videos, I’m not entirely sure.

The entire grade was emotional that day - except for his closest friends. Myself included. We were the few who didn’t cry, and we were the ones comforting the people that didn’t even know hink.

We were shocked, worried.

People were sharing their personal stories, and teachers were trying to talk about what to do to prevent this.

We hardly spoke about him, but the entire school had an emotional day.

You know what that’s like, right?

__________________

“Zach?” The young boy had just sat down in his own seat - dropping his bag next to his chair. The teacher’s eyes were wide and emotionless, giving Zach just a twinge of anxiety.

“Yeah?” He pulled one earbud out of his ear, leaving one in.

The teacher ushered him into the hallway, and Zach’s instincts told him he was in trouble. So, naturally, Zach began racking his mind for anything he had done to get himself into trouble with his English teacher.

Was it about the study guide on Friday? Because he had a perfectly good reason for having his phone out…

But something told him this was bigger than that. The woman looked close to tears, yet also as if she had cried herself to the point where she could no longer.

“Um, I,” she took a deep breath and did her best to avoid eye contact with the young boy as she whispered. “I wanted to tell you before the rest of the class, um.”

Zach felt a rock slowly sinking to his stomach as his nerves began to react to the suspense of the conversation.

“What’s going on?” The teacher glanced at him and mentally told herself she would not fall apart in front of a student.

“Diana’s mother got home early this morning, and, um,” she cleared her throat. Somehow, that did nothing to erase the lump that remained there - making it hard to breath and speak. “Diana had, uh, killed herself.”

Of all the people at the school, Zach was one of the few that were closer to the girl than anyone else. Zach had told her everything, and he trusted her with his life. She was always the definition of optimism, the beaker of hope and happiness.

The boy’s nose began to burn, and his vision began to blur, but he did as much as he could to block it off. “What? No, she wouldn’t do that.” The rock sank suddenly, and he remembered the last message she had sent him. The one he hadn’t even replied back to:

Hey, Zach. I just wanted to thank you for everything you are. I don’t tell you enough that I appreciate you.  You know that you are important to me, right?

“I’m sorry, Zach.” The teenager and adult just stayed in the hallway awkwardly until a girl with dark brown skin walked into view with her head to the ground.

Zach noticed the figure, his jaw dropping when she looked up at him with her dark brown eyes filled with tears. He let a whisper of her name escape his lips as walked towards her.

Madyson was one of the few female friends Diana had, which meant they had a close bond that very few boys shared with her.

The girl covered her mouth the muffle the sob that was breaking through; her legs giving out. Madyson had tried so hard to keep it together, but seeing Zach was the only push that was needed to break down any walls she had begun to built up.

Zach caught her just under her shoulders, silently allowing tears to fall on her Nike jacket. She had dropped her folder to wrap her arms around his neck.

“Why didn’t she tell us?” Madyson’s voice was higher than usual, but that wasn’t why Zach didn’t answer. He didn’t know, he didn’t have an answer. He knew his friend would hear his sorrow if he did indeed respond.

“Why her?” Her voice was filling with anger and hurt; which she took out on the collar of Zach’s shirt. “Why!” She shouted, grabbing the eyes of the students still in the hall. “Why?” Her grip loosened, and her volume decreased so that only the boy could hear her small voice.

“I don’t know, M.” His voice was frail, in a way only one other had heard before. He hugged the sobbing girl tighter while he stared at the steps behind her. “I’m sorry.”

________

“Okay, so I’m going to ask you all to remain silent while I talk for a few minutes. This morning, Diana was found in her bedroom. She had committed suicide.” A gasp of silence filled the room as the English teacher took a moment to compose herself. “She, uh, she was found next to a bottle of pills. Anti-depressants. They were her mother’s.”

Zach looked at his bouncing knee from above the table. He could feel the eyes of the rest of the class boring into his head. A wave of guilt passed over him; he was her best friend.

They were one of the closest set of friends in their Junior year.

How could he not notice? WHY did he not notice? After all the phone calls, the emails, the texts. How could he not have even suspected? Even when he strained his brain to think about a time when she may have let something slip, he couldn’t imagine a time when she wasn’t smiling. That in itself made Zach feel the knife in his heart.

As first, second, third, and fourth period repeated roughly the same speech, the students closest to her never spoke. They never made eye contact. The rest of the student body wasn’t that much better, even if they didn’t know Diana directly.

She had impacted the lives of the staff members, basically anyone that came upon her path. Even if they didn’t know her, everyone at the school knew someone that knew her. She was friends with everyone, for she seemed to be able to bring the good out of a person.

Zach knew she didn’t really care for all the attention, and she sometimes claimed to be exhausted from communicating with others.

Nobody knew her like they thought they did.

“Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is morally desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere.”

-Thomas S. Szasz