Imagine you’re hanging out with your best friend one day, joking around, laughing at everything humanly possible, and just enjoying the moments with them. You’re talking about the most random things and making the stupidest but funniest comments to everything. You make a joke about something serious, well, at least they thought it was a joke, so they kinda just blew it off. Well, over the course of the next few days, you become distant from them. When your best friend starts to notice this, they text and call you to ask if something came up. Then you respond and say

“I’m okay. I’ve just had a few personal things to take care of the past few days.”

They shrug their shoulders and say okay and end the conversation in a friendly way, not thinking anything of it. A few more days go by, and they still don’t hear much from you. Except, they start to notice that you haven’t been coming to school as often. So one day, they decide to text you and see what’s going on. You say

“I’ve been out of town with my parents for a while. I should be back sometime this weekend.”

They’re starting to get kind of suspicious, but they calmly say okay and hang up the phone. The following week after that phone call, they see you at school. they run up to you and hug you because they haven’t seen or talked to you in a while. Even though they think you’re wanting them to hug you, you kind of push them away, but you accept their hug and give them a slight hug back.

One day after school, you’re sitting at home while texting your boyfriend. You notice that he’s acting differently. You call him to see what’s up with him, and he tells you that he has something to confess.

“What’s going on?” You say in a curious voice.

“I need to talk to you about something..” He says while he’s trying to stay calm.

“What do you need to talk to me about? I’m always here if you need someone.” You say while starting to get worried.

“I.. don’t think I love you anymore. I’m sorry, but we have to break up. I know we’ve been together for a long time, but I just don’t have feelings for you anymore.” He tells you in a relieved voice because he finally said what’s been on his mind for a while now.

“Oh… Okay. I’m going to get off the phone now. I’ll see you around…” You say, trying not to break down inside.

You walk into school the next day, Trying not to cry when you see him in the hallways. Your best friend notices that you look a little down. She asks you why you’re acting so different lately, and you just say something along the lines of;

“I’ve just been really busy with a lot of stuff at home. I promise it’s okay.”

She starts to slightly worry more about you, more than she originally was because you’ve never acted like this before. Little did she know, you were planning something very for a lot of people. She didn’t know that you get bullied and get made fun of on a daily basis. One day, your group of friends all walk to the busses together, then these girls walk up to you. They push you to the ground and call you names. Once you get up, everyone makes sure you’re okay. You say you’re alright, then walk onto your bus. Once you sit down in your seat, you decide you’ve finally had enough. You went home, went into your room, and laid on your bed staring into space. You start to think of everything everyone has said to you, and then you started crying uncontrollably.

“You’re worthless.”

“You mean nothing to nobody.”

“You don’t deserve to be alive.”

“You’re just a waste of space.”

All of those things came rushing back into your mind and you started getting majorly depressed. You’ve been depressed for a long time because of being bullied, yet you never told anybody, including your best friend. You were scared that they would worry too much, so you decided that you would keep to yourself. You’ve been holding it in for so long, that it’s all rushing out at once.

You start shaking and trembling and you don’t know what to do. You try to calm yourself down, but you just can’t. You try texting your best friend, but they fell asleep so they don’t answer. By the time you're finished spamming their phone, your mind goes to a very dark place that it cannot escape. You get out a piece of paper and rewrite that suicide note that you’ve written over and over again, for the last time. As you are writing it, the tears are streaming down your face, hitting the paper. You’re shaking like crazy and you can barely understand the writing. The paper is getting hard to write on but you finally finish writing. You get out that razor blade and cut for the very last time. You take that razor blade, place it right on top of your vein going parallel with your forearm, and pull the blade up your arm twice. Through the pain, you still continue to leave marks all up and down both of your arms. The thick, red blood running down your arm as you cry and wish you would be dead already.

After a while, your best friend wakes up to 15 messages from you. They read them and they begin to panic. They rush over to your house and they notice that the front door is unlocked. They rush into your house and they hear your cries up from your room. They run upstairs to your room, they open the door and drop to the floor in a panic. They get up and rush over to you, crying for help. They immediately call 911 to get an ambulance to your house as fast as possible. They run and grab a towel to wrap around your arm. You slowly start to fall asleep into something that you will never wake up from, but they try their hardest to keep you awake as long as possible. There is blood all over the floor, all over your arms and legs, clothes, and everywhere around you. When the ambulance got there, they rushed up the stairs, into the room, and rushed you away. When they got to the hospital, rushing you to the emergency room, it became a little too late.

The next day at school, they make an announcement of your death. The school has the library and the guidance counselor's office open for anyone who needs to talk. Everyone is so in shock from your choices. You were the person that everyone thought was happy go lucky. You were the one person that nobody would’ve assumed anything like this would happen to. Your best friend is an absolute mess, but their so in shock that they can’t do anything but sit there and stare into nothing. All of your classmates are coming up to your best friend to make sure they’re okay, but they can’t say a word. They start to shed a tear, but they wipe it away before it becomes more. They can’t help but cry so they rush out of the classroom, into the bathroom, and cry for a straight hour before returning back to class.

Everyone else is still in shock, so the hallways were silent when they were switching classes. You could hear the drop of a pen from down the hall. Teachers aren't teaching traditional classes they would originally be teaching. They were in front of the class, ready to talk if someone needed it. Everyone is in pain from the decisions you decided to make. Your best friend? She is sitting outside her classroom door, crying uncontrollably, thinking about how there is SOMETHING she could’ve done to keep you here.

Your teachers? They’re wondering how such a sweet and innocent person would want to end their life. Your friends? They are upset and mad with you because you have done something so selfish for yourself, which hurt others. Your parents? They can’t help but wonder where it all went wrong.

No matter how low your life gets, it will never be so bad to the point you need to end your life. The pain isn’t going to just go away. It’s going to get passed onto someone else, and it will be worse. The pain WILL go away soon enough. Everything WILL get better over time. Do not look for a permanent solution for a temporary problem. The temporary problem will pass, but a permanent solution remains and has repercussions. Like a pebble dropped in a pond, the waves of influence will expand beyond any consideration.

But these thoughts are rational, and you are in a state of irrationality. You must decide today not to take action when in the midst of irrational thought. Have someone to call and share with, someone you can trust. Someone whose opinion you respect, and who will lead and guide you through the times you can not see clearly. That is what suicide prevention hotlines and SOS tiplines are all about, helping people make decisions while their thoughts are clouded with emotion.