Dear diary,
It's just such an easy intro.
I want to clarify that while I know I could've prevented it, I also know I'm not responsible for the death of my friend. Although I didn't come to accept this until about 3 months later.
Writing it out 3 months doesn't seem like a lot, but they were hard, long months. Laborious months where I was a doing 8 people's work on a senior design team, trudging through my other rigorous engineering course load, and working at an internship while bearing the weight of my friends death.
During this time my hair thinned, my skin grayed, and my weight fluctuated like a damn yo-yo. I thought it may kill me, although not in the same way it killed K.
Years before this semester I had decided no matter what I wouldn't commit suicide, or maybe couldn't.
I was young - too young, the first time I ever seriously contemplated suicide. I was 10, about half way through the fifth grade with a relatively normal life. About 6 months prior my family had moved from the place I grew up to a much much different place. I guess this is about the time I learned I was socially different to say the least and I didn't have any friends, was minority picked on by one person at school (most people are, but usually have a friend for support), and I was overall unhappy.
I didn't know what suicide was, but I kind of wanted to die. I mostly didn't want to be so sad. I don't recall if I weighed my options or anything but I didn't want people to notice until the right time, so I decided to stop drinking water. I continued to eat so my parents wouldn't notice and I knew due to the water in food that it would take longer. I also remember thinking that it wouldn't kill me - that I would collapse and wake up in the hospital, but that if it was that severe things would change. (I like to think I was a very smart kid - intrinsically interested and devoted to school. Although as an adult I find it curious how many of my childhood behaviors could be symptoms of autism. Not just because i was a weird awkward kid but because in my adult life I've been told that I seem to "be on the spectrum.")
3 days into my water strike my mouth was dry and my throat burned. That night I drowned my whole dinner in gravy so I wouldn't choke eating it. After dinner I did something I don't normally do - I went through my piggy bank. It was where I kept all my money, as well as any small or interesting keepsakes that fit into the slot, which was almost exclusively arcade coins and foreign change that at some point or another I had found. I knew every single thing I kept in there, down to the number of pennies. Instead of finding that a siblings had snuck in and "borrowed" some money, I found a new coin.
A double sided angel coin, and I cried. I cried for hours. I knew right then that I would never die by suicide, and that it was God who prevented me from doing so.
Although, it didn't stop me from contemplating it later. Despite the weight of this story, and the angel coin I still have, there was another incident in high school with a similar moral.
38Please respect copyright.PENANAZM98Y04yFt
I suspect I'll get into it in the next chapter, but don't worry dear reader, I haven't forgotten that I'm telling these stories to tell another story about the death of my friend.
Hopefully they are worth your time, but either way they do feel good to write out and are absolutely exhausting to think about, which helps to get some sleep or calm down from a manic state. (We all get those sometimes, right? I am genuinely curious.)
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