Open Letter to the Suicidal
Dear reader,
I was reading the book 'The Best Teen Writing of 2010' and came across this Personal Essay/Memoir. It really touched my heart . Yes, it is long but so worth the read. It might help you personally or it might help you know how to help others. Thank you.
Love,
Megan
----------
Dear Person,
i don’t know you, but you are the subject of most of my fears,
strange as it seems.
i fear for those around you, for those who pass you by every
day, taking note of your bright smile without realizing your dark
secrets, and yes, i realize that that’s cliché, but the point is they don’t
get it. see, people are supposed to be happy, no matter what, and
they hate it when things don’t go according to plan, so when they
see you hurting, they just ignore it. Because that’s not the way it’s
supposed to go. But i still fear for them, because i dread the day that
will come when you’re gone and in place of what they thought was
a hopeful young person, they find a vast hole, a chasm of memories
that they wish they could unremember, sounds they wish they could
unhear, moments they wish they could unlive. But they can’t, and
they never will. And i fear for them, because for the rest of their
lives, all they’ll remember of you is what they wished they had done,
even though they never could have seen it coming.
(i say this because i knew a girl who killed herself, knew in the
sense that i spoke to her once freshman year at the squash courts.
She was short, with black hair and a mind that filled pages with
the products of an angsty teenage life. i could have gone to the
columbia university summer writing program last summer, which
she attended, but i didn’t. Maybe if i had, i wouldn’t have felt so
weird about crying the night after she died. her poetry was so
succinct, so beautiful, the literary embodiment of her life. sometimes
when i close my eyes, i feel her tears.)
i fear for your best friend, the person who knows your thoughts
better than most people know your words. surely they will have some
idea, some vague notion that you’re pondering the worst, surely they
must know, but they’ll never say anything. nobody wants to take
that trip, nobody wants to verbalize that thought, because they’re
afraid of the answer, choosing to deny the painful truth rather than
admit your agony to themselves. They would rather turn their backs
on your torture than risk even imagining you gone. But surely they
knew. And surely the moment they find out, they’ll be inundated
with shame, plagued by questions of whom to blame, which will,
inevitably, be themselves. They’ll beg, crying out to whatever god
they believe in to please help, please bring you back, please wake
them from this dream. But it won’t be a dream. i fear that they’ll be
crushed by guilt, guilt that nobody should incur. They’ll hear your
voice in every song, see your face in every picture, feel your warm
embrace whenever they shiver. Alone, cold, bombarded by the winds
of life, they’ll call out your name and wish, just wish, that you were
there. But all that wishing will amount to nothing.
(i had a friend who almost killed herself. she was naive and
beautiful, conditioned to laugh like every other freshman did. she
was secretly dark and broken, tortured by monsters that she didn’t
deserve, the products of a splintered family and a taxing schedule.
she couldn’t take the criticism at home or the lack of understanding
at school, so she cut herself until the blood running down her
arms assuaged her deepest demons. one night she called me to say
goodbye, and the next day she wasn’t in school. nor was she the
next. She was OK that time, but I always wondered. Always worried
that the next day she’d be gone, and there’d be nobody to blame but
me. i used to lie in bed, unable to sleep in case she would call. see, i
thought that if i answered the phone, i could save her life, bring her
back from the edge of the cliff. sometimes, lying there in the dark, i
would reach up and try to hug her soul.)
i fear for the world that you will leave, for the people who will
cry at your funeral, the ground that will be dug up to allow for your
misery, the classes at school that will be tragically left with one more
empty chair. i fear for the swings that will remember your juvenile
laughter, hearing the joy you harbored in the years before life became
a burden. i fear for the music you’ll never listen to (at midnight, when
the utter silence of your house starts to become overwhelming), and
more importantly, the songs you’ll never sing, the repressed notes
that will never come out of your mouth as vocal representations of
the self you never showed. i fear for the poems you’ll never write,
the verses that won’t flow like blood through the veins of your pen
onto the tear-stained page. i fear that the only short story you’ll ever
write will be the note you leave behind before it’s all over.
(i believe in the power of music to save lives. it’s a cliché, but i
remember long nights talking to my girlfriend, YouTube-ing songs
because that’s how i could save her life. some of them we listened to
for hours on end, just hitting replay and being infused time and again
with hope that the struggle wasn’t in vain. Maybe it sounds silly but
it really felt like every word was life or death, the latter approaching
with each passing second and the former only possible through
placing our trust in the power of song. i used to send her MP3s when
she wanted to cut herself, like the lyrics were little pairs of lips that
could kiss her scars and set her at peace, spurning misery with love
and healing her wounds. i think sometimes they were.)
This will sound selfish, but I’m also afraid for myself. For the last
four years, there’s always been one point or another where someone
was dangling off the edge, tempting fate in threatening to let go.
suicide has been a presence in my life, like the awkward friend who
follows you around and whom you just don’t have the heart to tell
to go away, or like the teacher who constantly berates you on the
idiosyncrasies of your work, keeping you up at night with worry.
suicide was my Minotaur; i often felt like Theseus, roaming a cryptic
labyrinth in order to fight a terrible monster. Theseus knew that the
Minotaur was stronger than him, and that given a fair fight, the
Minotaur would win. He knew that he may never find the Minotaur,
and wander forever in the labyrinth like a 1960s Beat poet on a bad
trip. But he knew he had to at least try, because the only thing worse
than getting killed by the Minotaur would be not fighting the Minotaur
at all, and leaving Athens subject to the cruel caprice of its fearsome
evil. As pompous as it is to compare myself to a greek hero, that’s
what i often felt like. i felt as though i was locked in a battle, david
versus goliath, for the sanity and safety of my friends (and also
myself), one that i could not afford to lose. every day i hugged
them, striking a blow, but every night the phone calls piled up and i
was inundated with the guilt and shame of failure. i think that’s why
it hurt so much when the girl i didn’t know killed herself. Because
up until that point, i was winning, subjugating suicide with the
meager weapons i have (words, love, music). But suicide got me
back, and that hurt. so i hope you won’t be insulted that i’m afraid
for myself. Perhaps you think it’s silly or even disrespectful that i,
one who doesn’t know you (maybe), would claim to have such a
personal stake in your struggle. it’s just that i’m not sure i can look
at myself in the mirror and claim victory over suicide. And victory
over suicide has been all i’ve really wanted for the last four years. so
please forgive me, but i fear for myself as well.
My fears aside, I have some questions. I hope you won’t find it
disparaging to be questioned on such an intensely personal matter
by a high school writer whom you’ve never met (probably), but i’ve
had four years to think about suicide, and the questions in my mind
regarding it are numerous. Questions like, What will happen when
you die? not in the sense of the afterlife (or lack thereof), but in
the sense of what will actually happen. What will it feel like? Will
it be like a Band-Aid, ripped off quickly without full awareness of
what’s happening? like falling asleep, your mind slowly taken away
into the realm of nothingness to which we all return someday? or
will it be like a dentist’s appointment, the feeling of dread setting
in as the dentists rake your teeth with instruments that vibrate in a
torturous rhythm, the intrusive discomfort that invades your entire
being just before the tools are removed and a cool calm washes over
you, a smile returning to your face. is that facetious of me, to compare
suicide to a dentist’s appointment? Perhaps, but the question remains:
does death come quickly, before you even realize what’s happened, or
does it come only after the enormity of the decisions you’ve made has
occurred to you?
The question that always occurs to me is, Who do you think
will find you? My biggest fear in eighth grade, bigger than the fear
that my friends would stay home and never come back, was that i
would find one of them, sprawled out in some room in the basement,
eyes closed in peace, feigning sleep. i wouldn’t have been able to
handle that, because what could i do then? look on in disbelief, as
if standing very still would change the scene in front of me? cry?
Tears for me always tasted like salty defeat, their presence streaming
down my face like the most fragile effusions of my soul flowing out
and enveloping me in weakness. The sight of a friend in front of me,
killed by their own hand, would have driven me to insanity.
(it almost happened once. That girl, the pretty one i mentioned
before, she handed me a note, crumpled and folded like the cruel partition
of her life. it was about 7:45 in the morning, and she walked out of
the room just after giving me the note, like she was
going to class. i unfolded the note, and read what seemed to be an
irrevocable ultimatum: “i’m sorry. Bye.” i ran, carried by legs of
desperation to the room in the basement where i knew she’d be. i
knocked once. silence. Twice. silence. A third time. The door slowly
swung open, the motion dripping with reluctance. There she stood,
eyes flooded with tears and a knife in her right hand. Pushed to the
brink, but alive. For the first time in what seemed like hours or years,
i exhaled.)
But the biggest questions in my mind are the ones that i can
never answer. Questions like, What led you to this? every high school
life is tenuous, like a bird holding on to an electric wire during a storm,
but what led you to let go and allow the storm to take you under?
it might seem strange that i ask that question, but it’s a wonder to
me, how quickly stress turns to coping turns to depression turns to
thoughts of suicide. Perhaps it’s the psychologist in me, or perhaps
it’s just some twisted side of my conscience that longs to understand
what drives us to the edge, but that question, the question of why,
is omnipresent in my thoughts.
Maybe it’s because i want you to understand. let’s face it, even
if i understand why you want to kill yourself (sounds scary when
you put it that way, right?), there’s not much i can do. ultimately, the
decision is yours. so maybe i’m just hoping that you’re questioning
whether this is really what you want, whether the accumulation of
miseries that you’ve encountered sums up to this. does it scare you
to think about it? My friends always told me it did, that the notion
crept into their thoughts like a silent bandit, tortured them with
demeaning slurs, and absconded with their peace of mind, leaving
them more scared and alone than before. it’s a scary word: suicide.
it reeks with the putrid prospect of impending catastrophe, singing
eerie tunes into the ears of those who hear it. Just that thought, “i
want to kill myself,” is not one to be thought lightly. in some ways
i feel for you, you being those who have had that thought before,
had it recurring like the jingle of a bad commercial in your head.
i feel for you because i cannot possibly imagine how terrifying it
must be to have that thought on a daily basis.
i think that happens to the rest of us, too; we all realize when
somebody is struggling, but nobody wants to take that step, nobody
wants to say the s-word, because that makes it real. That makes it
possible, and nobody wants to think that suicide is possible. realizing
that someone wants to kill themselves is the worst feeling in the
world. All the questions i’ve asked here pop into their heads like
flashbulbs, stalking them with the unremitting fervor of a virus.
stress is inherent in the high school experience, so it’s easy to brush
off someone who’s been crying. it’s easy to pretend like suicide
is only for the crazies, not us (because we’re all perfectly normal,
right?). even like it’s something to be invoked in jest (how many
times have you heard somebody say “i have so much work tonight,
i’m gonna kill myself ”?). i think in the back of our heads, we all
realize that it’s possible, that it’s really just an additional symptom of
the stress syndrome we’ve all inherited by becoming a part of the
“higher-education system.” it’s easy to see high school as a four-year
battle with tests and papers, fought in order to win the privilege of
fighting a harder battle with harder tests and harder papers, and in
that context, it’s difficult to see the end. I think we all realize that
some people would choose to forfeit the battle, and in doing so
reinforce the magnitude of it. But nobody wants to acknowledge it.
nobody wants to make it real, even when we all know that we have
to. sometimes, given the choice between saving a person’s life and
upsetting the delicate equilibrium of our own, we choose ourselves,
simply out of a desire to remain ignorant of the harsh realities that
the battle entails. When the girl killed herself earlier this year, i
think everyone at my school took a step back, and realized what was
actually at stake. We all wished that we had stepped off the battlefield
for a second in order to help one of our own. We all regretted our
incessant obsessions with our own lives. We all took a second to
reflect on the fragility of the balance upon which we walk. But
mostly, we all took a second to wish things were different.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why i’m writing this.
sure, i’ve told you a lot about my past and my general musings on
suicide, but i wouldn’t be writing this if that were all i wanted to do,
right? There must be a point. And really the point is that i want you
to understand a few things.
first, you’re not alone. i know, it’s cliché, but often our most
trying endeavors can feel in vain, simply because it seems like nobody
understands. everyone feels that way sometimes, no matter how
they choose to cope. The world moves at light-speed, and sometimes
we all feel left in the dark. And when things get to the point where
we decide to opt out, it can feel even lonelier. But hopefully you’ve
seen in this that you’re not alone; i am constantly thinking about
you, praying for you, worrying for you. it may seem to be all in
vain. Perhaps. But i don’t believe so, because i believe truly that love
will save the world. You feel the way you do because of a deficiency
of love, whether that’s from your parents, from your peers, or from
yourself (most likely the latter). But if someone can be there to
embrace you with all your flaws, scars, and fears, it is love that will
save your life.
second, killing yourself is not the answer. cliché again, but it’s
true (funny how often clichés are true, and how often they are so false).
Killing yourself doesn’t solve any problems; it simply transfers the onus
from you to those who survive you. As i said before, losing you will
affect many more people than you would expect. They’ll miss you,
long for you, cry for you, but most of all they’ll regret. regret is a
demon that allows no respite, no repose from its malicious claws.
They’ll fall into the hole that you’ve dug for yourself, assuming your
burdens and wondering what they could have done. it’s ironic. You’ll
be the one causing all of this, but they’ll be the ones who would
never forgive themselves.
The last thing that i hope you take from this is this is just one
moment in your life. And sure, it’s dark, but the beautiful thing about
war is that those who survive one day fight the next stronger than
they’ve ever been in their entire lives. And it’s the same in this case. i
know you’re struggling, everybody knows it. But push through this,
and you’ll soon be Theseus after he slayed the Minotaur: conqueror
of the most tenacious demon, fearlessly sailing into the future. in
short, keep fighting, know that you are loved, and stay strong.
sincerely, with love,
EBG
Evan Goldstein, 16
choate rosemary hall school
Wallingford, cT
Evan Goldstein is a high school student from Wallingford, Connecticut. His
first creative writing class in seventh grade inspired him to write. When he’s
not writing, he can be found playing the violin, participating in Model United
Nations, and preparing arguments with his school’s debate team.
I was reading the book 'The Best Teen Writing of 2010' and came across this Personal Essay/Memoir. It really touched my heart . Yes, it is long but so worth the read. It might help you personally or it might help you know how to help others. Thank you.
Love,
Megan
----------
Dear Person,
i don’t know you, but you are the subject of most of my fears,
strange as it seems.
i fear for those around you, for those who pass you by every
day, taking note of your bright smile without realizing your dark
secrets, and yes, i realize that that’s cliché, but the point is they don’t
get it. see, people are supposed to be happy, no matter what, and
they hate it when things don’t go according to plan, so when they
see you hurting, they just ignore it. Because that’s not the way it’s
supposed to go. But i still fear for them, because i dread the day that
will come when you’re gone and in place of what they thought was
a hopeful young person, they find a vast hole, a chasm of memories
that they wish they could unremember, sounds they wish they could
unhear, moments they wish they could unlive. But they can’t, and
they never will. And i fear for them, because for the rest of their
lives, all they’ll remember of you is what they wished they had done,
even though they never could have seen it coming.
(i say this because i knew a girl who killed herself, knew in the
sense that i spoke to her once freshman year at the squash courts.
She was short, with black hair and a mind that filled pages with
the products of an angsty teenage life. i could have gone to the
columbia university summer writing program last summer, which
she attended, but i didn’t. Maybe if i had, i wouldn’t have felt so
weird about crying the night after she died. her poetry was so
succinct, so beautiful, the literary embodiment of her life. sometimes
when i close my eyes, i feel her tears.)
i fear for your best friend, the person who knows your thoughts
better than most people know your words. surely they will have some
idea, some vague notion that you’re pondering the worst, surely they
must know, but they’ll never say anything. nobody wants to take
that trip, nobody wants to verbalize that thought, because they’re
afraid of the answer, choosing to deny the painful truth rather than
admit your agony to themselves. They would rather turn their backs
on your torture than risk even imagining you gone. But surely they
knew. And surely the moment they find out, they’ll be inundated
with shame, plagued by questions of whom to blame, which will,
inevitably, be themselves. They’ll beg, crying out to whatever god
they believe in to please help, please bring you back, please wake
them from this dream. But it won’t be a dream. i fear that they’ll be
crushed by guilt, guilt that nobody should incur. They’ll hear your
voice in every song, see your face in every picture, feel your warm
embrace whenever they shiver. Alone, cold, bombarded by the winds
of life, they’ll call out your name and wish, just wish, that you were
there. But all that wishing will amount to nothing.
(i had a friend who almost killed herself. she was naive and
beautiful, conditioned to laugh like every other freshman did. she
was secretly dark and broken, tortured by monsters that she didn’t
deserve, the products of a splintered family and a taxing schedule.
she couldn’t take the criticism at home or the lack of understanding
at school, so she cut herself until the blood running down her
arms assuaged her deepest demons. one night she called me to say
goodbye, and the next day she wasn’t in school. nor was she the
next. She was OK that time, but I always wondered. Always worried
that the next day she’d be gone, and there’d be nobody to blame but
me. i used to lie in bed, unable to sleep in case she would call. see, i
thought that if i answered the phone, i could save her life, bring her
back from the edge of the cliff. sometimes, lying there in the dark, i
would reach up and try to hug her soul.)
i fear for the world that you will leave, for the people who will
cry at your funeral, the ground that will be dug up to allow for your
misery, the classes at school that will be tragically left with one more
empty chair. i fear for the swings that will remember your juvenile
laughter, hearing the joy you harbored in the years before life became
a burden. i fear for the music you’ll never listen to (at midnight, when
the utter silence of your house starts to become overwhelming), and
more importantly, the songs you’ll never sing, the repressed notes
that will never come out of your mouth as vocal representations of
the self you never showed. i fear for the poems you’ll never write,
the verses that won’t flow like blood through the veins of your pen
onto the tear-stained page. i fear that the only short story you’ll ever
write will be the note you leave behind before it’s all over.
(i believe in the power of music to save lives. it’s a cliché, but i
remember long nights talking to my girlfriend, YouTube-ing songs
because that’s how i could save her life. some of them we listened to
for hours on end, just hitting replay and being infused time and again
with hope that the struggle wasn’t in vain. Maybe it sounds silly but
it really felt like every word was life or death, the latter approaching
with each passing second and the former only possible through
placing our trust in the power of song. i used to send her MP3s when
she wanted to cut herself, like the lyrics were little pairs of lips that
could kiss her scars and set her at peace, spurning misery with love
and healing her wounds. i think sometimes they were.)
This will sound selfish, but I’m also afraid for myself. For the last
four years, there’s always been one point or another where someone
was dangling off the edge, tempting fate in threatening to let go.
suicide has been a presence in my life, like the awkward friend who
follows you around and whom you just don’t have the heart to tell
to go away, or like the teacher who constantly berates you on the
idiosyncrasies of your work, keeping you up at night with worry.
suicide was my Minotaur; i often felt like Theseus, roaming a cryptic
labyrinth in order to fight a terrible monster. Theseus knew that the
Minotaur was stronger than him, and that given a fair fight, the
Minotaur would win. He knew that he may never find the Minotaur,
and wander forever in the labyrinth like a 1960s Beat poet on a bad
trip. But he knew he had to at least try, because the only thing worse
than getting killed by the Minotaur would be not fighting the Minotaur
at all, and leaving Athens subject to the cruel caprice of its fearsome
evil. As pompous as it is to compare myself to a greek hero, that’s
what i often felt like. i felt as though i was locked in a battle, david
versus goliath, for the sanity and safety of my friends (and also
myself), one that i could not afford to lose. every day i hugged
them, striking a blow, but every night the phone calls piled up and i
was inundated with the guilt and shame of failure. i think that’s why
it hurt so much when the girl i didn’t know killed herself. Because
up until that point, i was winning, subjugating suicide with the
meager weapons i have (words, love, music). But suicide got me
back, and that hurt. so i hope you won’t be insulted that i’m afraid
for myself. Perhaps you think it’s silly or even disrespectful that i,
one who doesn’t know you (maybe), would claim to have such a
personal stake in your struggle. it’s just that i’m not sure i can look
at myself in the mirror and claim victory over suicide. And victory
over suicide has been all i’ve really wanted for the last four years. so
please forgive me, but i fear for myself as well.
My fears aside, I have some questions. I hope you won’t find it
disparaging to be questioned on such an intensely personal matter
by a high school writer whom you’ve never met (probably), but i’ve
had four years to think about suicide, and the questions in my mind
regarding it are numerous. Questions like, What will happen when
you die? not in the sense of the afterlife (or lack thereof), but in
the sense of what will actually happen. What will it feel like? Will
it be like a Band-Aid, ripped off quickly without full awareness of
what’s happening? like falling asleep, your mind slowly taken away
into the realm of nothingness to which we all return someday? or
will it be like a dentist’s appointment, the feeling of dread setting
in as the dentists rake your teeth with instruments that vibrate in a
torturous rhythm, the intrusive discomfort that invades your entire
being just before the tools are removed and a cool calm washes over
you, a smile returning to your face. is that facetious of me, to compare
suicide to a dentist’s appointment? Perhaps, but the question remains:
does death come quickly, before you even realize what’s happened, or
does it come only after the enormity of the decisions you’ve made has
occurred to you?
The question that always occurs to me is, Who do you think
will find you? My biggest fear in eighth grade, bigger than the fear
that my friends would stay home and never come back, was that i
would find one of them, sprawled out in some room in the basement,
eyes closed in peace, feigning sleep. i wouldn’t have been able to
handle that, because what could i do then? look on in disbelief, as
if standing very still would change the scene in front of me? cry?
Tears for me always tasted like salty defeat, their presence streaming
down my face like the most fragile effusions of my soul flowing out
and enveloping me in weakness. The sight of a friend in front of me,
killed by their own hand, would have driven me to insanity.
(it almost happened once. That girl, the pretty one i mentioned
before, she handed me a note, crumpled and folded like the cruel partition
of her life. it was about 7:45 in the morning, and she walked out of
the room just after giving me the note, like she was
going to class. i unfolded the note, and read what seemed to be an
irrevocable ultimatum: “i’m sorry. Bye.” i ran, carried by legs of
desperation to the room in the basement where i knew she’d be. i
knocked once. silence. Twice. silence. A third time. The door slowly
swung open, the motion dripping with reluctance. There she stood,
eyes flooded with tears and a knife in her right hand. Pushed to the
brink, but alive. For the first time in what seemed like hours or years,
i exhaled.)
But the biggest questions in my mind are the ones that i can
never answer. Questions like, What led you to this? every high school
life is tenuous, like a bird holding on to an electric wire during a storm,
but what led you to let go and allow the storm to take you under?
it might seem strange that i ask that question, but it’s a wonder to
me, how quickly stress turns to coping turns to depression turns to
thoughts of suicide. Perhaps it’s the psychologist in me, or perhaps
it’s just some twisted side of my conscience that longs to understand
what drives us to the edge, but that question, the question of why,
is omnipresent in my thoughts.
Maybe it’s because i want you to understand. let’s face it, even
if i understand why you want to kill yourself (sounds scary when
you put it that way, right?), there’s not much i can do. ultimately, the
decision is yours. so maybe i’m just hoping that you’re questioning
whether this is really what you want, whether the accumulation of
miseries that you’ve encountered sums up to this. does it scare you
to think about it? My friends always told me it did, that the notion
crept into their thoughts like a silent bandit, tortured them with
demeaning slurs, and absconded with their peace of mind, leaving
them more scared and alone than before. it’s a scary word: suicide.
it reeks with the putrid prospect of impending catastrophe, singing
eerie tunes into the ears of those who hear it. Just that thought, “i
want to kill myself,” is not one to be thought lightly. in some ways
i feel for you, you being those who have had that thought before,
had it recurring like the jingle of a bad commercial in your head.
i feel for you because i cannot possibly imagine how terrifying it
must be to have that thought on a daily basis.
i think that happens to the rest of us, too; we all realize when
somebody is struggling, but nobody wants to take that step, nobody
wants to say the s-word, because that makes it real. That makes it
possible, and nobody wants to think that suicide is possible. realizing
that someone wants to kill themselves is the worst feeling in the
world. All the questions i’ve asked here pop into their heads like
flashbulbs, stalking them with the unremitting fervor of a virus.
stress is inherent in the high school experience, so it’s easy to brush
off someone who’s been crying. it’s easy to pretend like suicide
is only for the crazies, not us (because we’re all perfectly normal,
right?). even like it’s something to be invoked in jest (how many
times have you heard somebody say “i have so much work tonight,
i’m gonna kill myself ”?). i think in the back of our heads, we all
realize that it’s possible, that it’s really just an additional symptom of
the stress syndrome we’ve all inherited by becoming a part of the
“higher-education system.” it’s easy to see high school as a four-year
battle with tests and papers, fought in order to win the privilege of
fighting a harder battle with harder tests and harder papers, and in
that context, it’s difficult to see the end. I think we all realize that
some people would choose to forfeit the battle, and in doing so
reinforce the magnitude of it. But nobody wants to acknowledge it.
nobody wants to make it real, even when we all know that we have
to. sometimes, given the choice between saving a person’s life and
upsetting the delicate equilibrium of our own, we choose ourselves,
simply out of a desire to remain ignorant of the harsh realities that
the battle entails. When the girl killed herself earlier this year, i
think everyone at my school took a step back, and realized what was
actually at stake. We all wished that we had stepped off the battlefield
for a second in order to help one of our own. We all regretted our
incessant obsessions with our own lives. We all took a second to
reflect on the fragility of the balance upon which we walk. But
mostly, we all took a second to wish things were different.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why i’m writing this.
sure, i’ve told you a lot about my past and my general musings on
suicide, but i wouldn’t be writing this if that were all i wanted to do,
right? There must be a point. And really the point is that i want you
to understand a few things.
first, you’re not alone. i know, it’s cliché, but often our most
trying endeavors can feel in vain, simply because it seems like nobody
understands. everyone feels that way sometimes, no matter how
they choose to cope. The world moves at light-speed, and sometimes
we all feel left in the dark. And when things get to the point where
we decide to opt out, it can feel even lonelier. But hopefully you’ve
seen in this that you’re not alone; i am constantly thinking about
you, praying for you, worrying for you. it may seem to be all in
vain. Perhaps. But i don’t believe so, because i believe truly that love
will save the world. You feel the way you do because of a deficiency
of love, whether that’s from your parents, from your peers, or from
yourself (most likely the latter). But if someone can be there to
embrace you with all your flaws, scars, and fears, it is love that will
save your life.
second, killing yourself is not the answer. cliché again, but it’s
true (funny how often clichés are true, and how often they are so false).
Killing yourself doesn’t solve any problems; it simply transfers the onus
from you to those who survive you. As i said before, losing you will
affect many more people than you would expect. They’ll miss you,
long for you, cry for you, but most of all they’ll regret. regret is a
demon that allows no respite, no repose from its malicious claws.
They’ll fall into the hole that you’ve dug for yourself, assuming your
burdens and wondering what they could have done. it’s ironic. You’ll
be the one causing all of this, but they’ll be the ones who would
never forgive themselves.
The last thing that i hope you take from this is this is just one
moment in your life. And sure, it’s dark, but the beautiful thing about
war is that those who survive one day fight the next stronger than
they’ve ever been in their entire lives. And it’s the same in this case. i
know you’re struggling, everybody knows it. But push through this,
and you’ll soon be Theseus after he slayed the Minotaur: conqueror
of the most tenacious demon, fearlessly sailing into the future. in
short, keep fighting, know that you are loved, and stay strong.
sincerely, with love,
EBG
Evan Goldstein, 16
choate rosemary hall school
Wallingford, cT
Evan Goldstein is a high school student from Wallingford, Connecticut. His
first creative writing class in seventh grade inspired him to write. When he’s
not writing, he can be found playing the violin, participating in Model United
Nations, and preparing arguments with his school’s debate team.
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