You Live and You Learn

When I was twelve and you were thirteen, we were both living in Hell. It was eighth grade, freshman year for you, and we both felt the presence of our mothers’ keenly. That could have been what bound us together, or maybe what tore us apart. When we met a year earlier, I was not paying much attention in our class about stranger danger on the internet. By that time, I had already amassed 500 followers on my private Instagram account, and was regularly encountering the pits of the internet.

I understood the danger of the internet to be that bad people had access to good people, and that I had to be careful when talking to people who were older than me. What I didn’t understand was that the real danger, for me at least, was the tantalizing promise of connection. I wanted so badly for someone in my life to show me it was okay to be myself. And the internet provided.

At first, I posted about my day without the bad parts, the way most people did. I posted about the tv shows that I liked, the books I was reading, the songs that gave me hope. The internet listened, and rallied around me. I love that show! They said. You’re just like me! It felt so unbelievably good to have someone tell me I had good taste, or that I seemed smart, or that they were refreshing looking for more posts from me.

Eventually, I started messaging with some of the people who posted the most frequently on my page, and for the most part, they were all very kind. Effusive with praise and all so young, just like me. They were so excited to meet someone who liked the same characters they did, who was just as into the bands that they were. For the first six months or so, this was great. I didn’t have a lot of friends at school, and was just as likely to be sneered at as smiled at, so the positive attention was incredible. But six months in and my now friends were feeling more comfortable calling out the large bags under my eyes in photos, the fact that I responded to text messages and DMs at all hours of the night, or how I never actually said anything about my family. So they poked and prodded until I gave them morsels of the truth. My mom is an alcoholic, I said. My sisters don’t like me much. My dad’s not around that often. Exercising honesty cut me open, an airing out of the wound. My friends were very supportive, and in return they told me about their lives. I think I might be genderfluid, I’m scared of my dad, I’m avoiding real life.

For the most part, people shared as much as they wanted to. But as time passed, people started to notice that I gave decent advice for all kinds of situations, and started coming to me when they had problems. I would get rocky friendships, issues with significant others, people discovering their sexualities. Most of which I could solve with some version of “communicate” or “take your time.” But I noticed at some point that I was starting to attract people who had more serious issues. Abuse, sexual assault, self harm, and mental health issues were all things that people would come to me with. I came to realize that there was a reason all of these people were spending so much time on the internet, and it wasn’t because they had great home lives.

In the beginning, I felt like I was making a difference, like I was really helping people. But the further in I got, the worse it became. I looked up one day and realized that I was talking someone out of suicide five days a week. And it was tearing me apart. I had so much going on at home, and the place that had been my safe haven was becoming just as bad for my mental health as real life.

I met you at the start of it all. You were one of the first people that I bonded with. We both liked the same bands, and made edits of our favorite characters to their songs, and we could stay up for hours at night just talking on the phone. Until one day you confessed to me that you were having problems with your mom. You mentioned that you were pansexual, attracted to anyone regardless of gender, and I was supportive of you. But you said that you had tried to tell your mom, and she didn’t take it well. She was religious, you said, and felt that your sexuality was a sin. You didn’t mention her hurting you physically, but I could hear the pain in your voice just the same. It infuriated me. I cared about you so much and was so worried for you. I knew first hand how hard it was to have the people in your life who were supposed to love you treat you with disdain. You cried on the phone some nights, told me about how you were starting to hate your body, the dresses she put you in, the way that you looked in the mirror.

And then that first night. I will never forget. It was late at night for both of us, and you texted me, you awake?  And I said, you know I am. You told me you were scared, and that you needed my help. I said, anything for you! And you sent me two pictures, one of each of your bloodied arms. You said, I cut too deep and can’t stop the bleeding. Please help. I was only twelve. I didn’t know what to do. With shaking fingers, I googled “How to stop bleeding deep cuts” and google said, “If this is an emergency dial 911.” I briefly considered it, but truth be told I was too scared, and I didn’t know your home address. So I scrolled past it to the instructions. Put pressure even when it hurts, elevate the wound, and wrap it with sterile gauze. In the minutes between your texts all I could imagine was you, thirteen and alone in your bathroom, trying not to cry out as you pressed down on your arms with an old t-shirt because the gauze was in your mom’s bathroom.

That was only the beginning. I began to get messages from you most nights saying that you were thinking of doing terrible things. How badly you wanted to self harm, how badly you wanted to die. I stayed awake for days at a time trying to talk you off the ledge. But I had a lot going on at home myself. There were blowout fights between my mom and my sisters, my mom disappearing for hours or even days. I was fighting thoughts of suicide myself, and only slept for a few hours at once. But I always made time for you, because I had come to love you.

One night, I saw that you had texted me and asked if I was awake, and I pretended to be asleep. I ignored it, and went to bed, exhausted. I had come home from school that day to all of the doors to the house being locked. I tried banging on the door, but my mom had been drunk and passed out on the couch, so she didn’t hear to let me in. I had to pop the screen off and climb in through the laundry room window just to get inside. My mom was moaning in pain in her sleep. And then you. It had been day after day of suicidal ideation, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I checked Instagram. Your mom had posted a black screen with a caption stating that you had taken your own life the night before. It’s hard for me to describe what happened next, because I don’t remember much of it. I suppose I went to school that day. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened, other than the guidance counselor at my middle school. I had been seeing her every Tuesday for the last couple of months, but nothing had truly come of it. I had come to her, months earlier, and said that I couldn’t sleep at night. I was getting maybe two hours a night on average, and it was making it difficult for me to stay awake during classes. I had explained to her that I was so anxious about what was going on at home that it made it hard for me to sleep at night. For all that I came to her at least once a week crying my eyes out about my mom being in rehab or my sisters hurting me, she never called any authority to report what was happening. She just said, “I’m so sorry Ed, would you like a tissue?”

So weeks before your death, I came to her again and told her about you. I said I was worried you were going to commit suicide, and that I wanted to involve the police. But all she would say was, “Well you don’t even know this person is real, so don’t worry too much.” Even though we had been friends for over a year at that point and had many, many voice calls. It still guts me that I tried to ask for help. I didn’t just try once, either. I mentioned you in every session for a month, my concerns and how scared I was. But it didn’t seem to matter.

I hardly had the time or space to grieve you. I was part of the basketball team, softball team, drama club, newspaper club, and in the advanced math classes. My days were like spent shells– a bang at the beginning and useless at the end. Rarely, I cried. It all felt so unfair, and the guilt I felt in the face of you was unbearable. I could have saved you, I thought. If only I had stayed awake longer, made myself small and shoved it all down. Over ten years removed, and I can safely say that I was never going to save you. I was a child playing as a trained adult. What you needed was beyond the scope of what I was capable of. And for that, I have to forgive myself.

We were kids, Faith. Neither one of us should have been experiencing the trauma that we did. I’m so sorry that you had to die for me to realize that my life was worth saving too. Getting to know you for any length of time at all was my pleasure. If there was anything that I could go back in time and change, I would love you harder, look longer, laugh brighter. Life is only worth living because we get to share it. Thank you for everything.