Junior year, I was contemplating suicide. I was growing tired of holding all the anger and rage inside to protect others. Even though most of those people I felt at the time weren’t worth protecting. It was the same thing over and over again. I felt worthless, and like I didn’t belong in this world. I felt I had more in common with the honored dead than the current people around me. When I’d think about it at home, the farthest I would ever go is grabbing a large kitchen knife. I would always look at the knife and think to myself “Is this the right choice?”. Questions flooded into my mind. “What would happen to my family?”, “What would happen to those I cared about?”, and so on. As those questions circled in my head, I always put the knife back. No one knew about these thoughts.
I thought about suicide at school too. The school windows were like latch doors on rooftops. You could open them to almost a ninety degree angle. The only thing that kept from being opened too much was a screen cover over the window. Turns out the screen weren’t as secure as it could’ve been. There were eight little tabs that held it in place.
I went to the window at the back of the classroom and slowly moved the tabs so they weren’t holding the screen in place. Some of the classmates asked what I was doing. I would say “nothing” or “nothing to worry about”. I told them that so they wouldn’t suspect what I was doing.
The school was a two floor building. The window I was at was almost ideal for the end I sought. On the ground floor near the window I was working on was a doorway. On the other side of the doorway, there was a large concrete slab then grass. Part of the concrete slab was under the window I was working on.
The plan was straightforward; get the screen off, open the window, go out the window head first, and hopefully hit the concrete. The resulting contact would snap my neck, killing me instantly.
Of course, I didn’t get past step two before my teacher noticed. “Whoa, Ian what are you doing?!” exclaimed my English teacher, Mr. C. At this point the screen was off and against a wall, while I had my hand on the handle that would open the window. “Getting a better breeze,” I replied knowing it was a lie.
Everyone in the room looked at me in silence. At that moment, I felt if I fell out that window, there wouldn’t be screams of shock. I was certain, if I fell out, I would hear cheers as I went down.
I changed my mind at that point. If I died then, I figured it would give them satisfaction to be rid of me. Now I think they would have wondered what drove me to do that, while they were too ignorant to understand that they, my classmates, were the reason. They left me to rot, suddenly they’re in shock.