It was around 2:00AM. I was lying in my dorm room with the lights off. My roommate was fast asleep, but I found myself unable to fall asleep at all. I was depressed and looking for a means of help. I find myself in search for this a lot. So, I reached out to a phone app that I was familiar with – Talk Life. This app is for people with depression and anxiety to go and find comfort from others with the same issues. I used to use this app almost every day during the worst moments in high school, and it was rather comforting to download it again. So, I sat on there and made a post. I have no memory of the said post, but it was probably something simple and to the point. Just so people realized I was online again.
After a while I got a direct message. It was a person whom I never met – which was common – but they asked for my help. Knowing me, I am a push-over for helping people even when I am in no shape to help myself. So, I put my problems aside and replied to the message. It was from a young boy named Rudy. He was scared and did not know what to do, and all he wanted to do was die.
I dealt with conversations like this many times in my past. So, I reassured him that he was not alone and that I would stay up with him to make sure he was okay. I did not mind; in fact, it helped me to not focus on myself for a small bit. In our conversation, I decided that telling him about my old friend Michael.
Michael was a friend that I met at the start of eighth grade. He was happy and hilarious. I remember him having a bad lisp, which only made his voice more memorable to me. We saw each other every day during our STEM class. We were building a bridge together. Halfway through the year, Michael stopped showing up. At the time I did not have his number and had no way of communicating with him, so I just assumed that he had missed a couple of days. However, one day during lunch, my principle came up to the microphone. The room went silent since we just dealt with the death of another classmate, Ryan, just a month before. Ryan passed away from a serious case of the flu that developed into H1N1. I figured it was just another update on his family, but I was terribly mistaken.
My principle told us that Michael would not be making it back to class. He attempted suicide a few days ago by inflicting a gun shot wound in his stomach. He was on life support for a few days, but it was not enough to keep him alive. I was stunned and could not move. It did not seem real, and to be honest it still does not. All I can remember after that speech was my friend Alex screaming. We had to escort her out of the cafeteria.
I told Rudy that his life mattered and that there are people that cared about him. He would deny that by saying, “it would be better for them if I was not here.” This was false, and I made sure he knew that. Someone else’s suicide never gets easier. I will always remember Michael and I still wish that he was here. “My mother is another example,” I told him. She lost her brother, Gary, to suicide when she was seventeen. Gary was only nineteen when my mother found him. To this day she cannot listen to “Gary Come Home” from Spongebob Squarepants without breaking down.
I decided that my best option was to distract him. So, I had him tell me stories about his friends and his family. He told me that he lived with his mom in South Africa. They had a nice house, but nothing special. His friends were nothing special. Something happened between him and a friend, but I never got a chance to hear the entire story. All I know is that he witnessed her death.
By around 7:00AM I had him calmed down. The conversation became more positive and friendly. I told him to give me his Facebook, so we could keep in contact and possibly video chat sometime in the future. He was happy to do so. It was not until then that I saw what he looked like. He had gorgeous brown eyes and puffy brown hair. He was a young kid at around the age of sixteen. His profile picture was of him with a nice golden tan from begin outside a lot and he a body of an avid gymnast.
We did not video chat right away. It was about a week after that event that I asked him if he was okay with it. We talked for a while, but it was not enjoyable. He was sweet and funny with this beautiful accent, but he was drunk. I thought it was just a reason for him to calm his nerves, but he revealed to me that he had an extreme drinking problem. I went into a whole medical spiel about how alcohol is terrible for you and that it was no way to cope with his problems. Rudy just flashed me a charming smile and nodded. Of course, he was not listening nor, did he care to.
We talked for months after that. Almost everyday in fact. He soon became my best friend through my freshman year of college. We both had problems and we did our best to help the other through anything. Sadly, he fell again. I knew it would happen at some point, but he fell to a severity I was not prepared for.
It was around 10:00PM on a Sunday. It was the day before my first freshman finals. I just got back from having dinner with my roommate Amanpreet. I put on my makeup prior to going out and I was feeling great with myself. I had just gotten over a tough breakup and was trying my hardest to be positive and move on.
I got a call from Rudy. It was not a video chat, but it was just his voice. This struck me as odd since we never talked this way, but I answered with a happy, “Hello!”
“Deanna, I did something stupid.” He sounded out of breath and scared.
Immediately I went into protective mode and wanted to know what had happened. I told him to call an ambulance no matter what it was and to call me back if he could to keep me updated. I sat on my bed for about ten minutes before I got another call. Rudy managed to call an ambulance, but he would have to wait about a half hour for them to arrive. As to why, I have no idea.
Rudy explained to me what happened in quick short breathes. I could barely understand him, but I managed to piece together a coherent story. He cut both of his arms from his wrist to his elbow and stabbed his eye. He was lying on the floor of his bedroom. I told him to stay on the phone with me until the paramedics arrived. I tried my best to keep him awake. To this day I can still hear him say, “I can’t breathe,” over and over in my head.
I sat on that phone for thirty minutes, and I managed to keep him awake. The doctor told me that he would not wake up for a few days since he lost so much blood, but he was going to be okay and that they will make sure that he calls me when he wakes up.
So, I waited for that call. Of course, I was not going to sleep that night, and I went to my finals the next day exhausted. (Luckily, I still did well since I prepared days prior).
I got a call from Rudy a few day later. He was doing alright, and he was going to see a psychiatrist to help him through his problems. His eye was fully healed, though he would never be able to see out of it again. I told him that because of my own problems I would not be the best resource for help, but I would be there if he needed me.
For a while Rudy was doing fantastic. He got a job and started to regularly talk about his problems to professionals. It was not until after his seventeenth birthday that he started to fall once again.
I got call after he broke his shoulder on purpose, I got a call after he tried to hang himself from a ceiling fan, and I got a call after he overdosed on his medication. After that last call I could not handle it anymore. I was stressed and anxious and was having panic attacks on a regular basis. At times, I would not be able to leave my room because I was so scared. It had seemed like my disorders were all coming back with a vengeance – my agoraphobia, overactive panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. If I was to get another call or message from him that would throw me into a worry, I would have to cut contact with him for good.
I talked to him for the last time on April 10th, 2018. I simply got a message of, “if I call, don’t pick up.” I knew exactly what he meant, however I asked why. “Deanna, just please don’t answer if I call.” I, of course, had no responses to these messages, but I tried to pry hoping that I would be able to keep him from hurting himself. He sent me a huge paragraph telling me that he wished that he could have done better. He wished that he could have made me smile one last time, and that he was sorry that he could not be better.
I knew I was going to get a call from him at some point, but I did not want a goodbye. So, I decided that it would be best if I left. So, I blocked him on everything. No goodbye, no sorry. I just left. There was no way that I would have been able to help him. I was falling into a pit, and it would be no help if I was destroying myself.
I can say that I am better now. I am back on my two feet and I am sprinting ahead in life. I will keep doing my best for his sake because I hope Rudy is facing the world the same. I will never know if he is still doing fine. I will always remain in limbo on whether he is still alive. I hope he is, and I hope he is thriving. I guess the moral of this story is to make sure that you yourself are okay. It is easy to lose yourself in trying to help another, and you break down. It is okay to step back and focus on yourself. You too are important.