All this talk about suicide is really hard. I have had two of my great friends kill themselves within the same month. It something that sticks with you and it's something you will never forget. I went back through every conversation I had ever had with them and thought about everything. Their favorite songs, colors, what they wore, their tattoos. I remembered the good times but mainly, after they did what they did, all I can remember is the bad. I close my eyes and instead of seeing good ol' goofy Bobby smiling and laughing, I just see him lying there. Instead of Charlie all tatted up and crazy eyed like he always was, giving me a hard time for being the only girl chilling with the boys, I picture him under a white sheet.
The hardest part of everything is knowing I could have helped one of them. Charlie was at my house the weekend before he did it. He asked if he could stay and I told him he could for as long as he wanted. He came up to me and my mom and said "I need to get out of my house. I'm going insane." I could tell he was sad but just figured he was having problems with his girlfriend... God I was wrong. The worst part, the gun he used to kill himself with, he tried selling to my step dad. And he was going to buy it but said, "Nah I don't know what I'd do with it." And when Charlie told him just to take it anyway, he said no. I don't mean to but I'll always hate him for not taking that gun away from him...
Everything around you shatters when someone takes their own life. It seems wrong and unnatural. None of us make it out of this world alive. We all have expiration dates, but we usually don't control them. In a way I understand it. At least from Charlie. He was always the type to play by his rules. He ran everything in his life and nothing could stop him. I see how he would choose to do the same thing with his death. People see suicide as a cowards way out, but never in a million years will I ever call them cowards. They looked at their life and didn't like what they saw. They didn't see how it could get better. I'm not condoning suicide in any way, all I'm saying is I love these men and I will never look down on them because of the way they died. People judge people who have committed suicide. They call them weak and selfish, but it take courage to look down the barrel of your own gun and it takes courage to hold a handful of pills in your hand and KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that this is the end. It's not what's right and it's not what's accepted but I will never judge them.
I may cry and I may fall apart into a million little pieces, I may look through pictures and listen to old songs that remind me of you, I may lay in bed some days and not want to get up, I may look at your house every time I pass it and, just for a moment, see you sitting on the couch with your daughter on your lap. I may forget you. I may forgive you, but I can tell you both right now, I'll always see you as what you each are. Intense, crazy, funny, sometimes dumb, sweet, loving, beautiful, tough men.
Rest in peace Bobby Sanders & Charlie White.
Janaye Campbell
WHS
Wickenburg, Ariz.
Janaye, I am sorry for the loss of your friends and I also agree with you. I don't believe that people should judge those who decide to end their lives. It's their life to live, and if they don't want to live it anymore, it should be their choice, and their choice only to end it. It almost sickens me the way people hold grudges against those who commit suicide. I mean how could someone hate someone else who was in so much pain that they had to kill themselves? I understand the sadness death can bring, expecially intential death, but I don't think that people should be so concerned with how the death affects their own lives, over how life brought the person to death in the first place. I guess people can be a little selfish and thickheaded. But anywho, I'm sorry about your firends, and though it might hurt sometimes to remember them and look back on the memories you shared with them, I hope you never forget them. I'm sure they wouldn't have wanted you to.
ReplyDeleteShayna Innocenti
WHS
Wickenburg, Ariz.
My uncle and aunt killed themselves within a week of each other. My uncle hanged himself, and my aunt blamed herself for his death, saying that he had asked her for help and she denied him it.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, I hate what they did to themselves. Sometimes, I hate what their decisions did to my family. Most of all, I hate whoever and whatever pushed them past their breaking point, past that line you should never cross. I wonder what would have happened if Danny had gone to someone else or Jillian hadn't been drunk the night he asked for her help.
Danny and Jillian were two brilliant, lovable, outstanding people who somehow hid their pain from the world. To me, it was the wrong choice, though I will never know why they did it and hope that I will never feel the suffering they went through to get to that point.
But after all that, I will never hate them for their decision to end their lives.
Lucy Randazzo
WHS
Wickenburg, Ariz.