Hamburgers with a Side of Suicide

Suicide is all around us. There's the quick, obvious kind of suicide, with a gun or a rope or pills or a razor. There's also the slow sort of suicide, with cigarettes or alcohol or heroin or promiscuous, unprotected sex that leads to HIV and other nasty STDs. One can't help but watch people destroy themselves and wonder, "How much of this is my fault?"

Are we responsible for the self-destruction of the human race? And, for that matter, to what extent?

Almost exactly one year ago, a boy I'd gone to school with hung himself in his basement. Although we'd eaten lunch together in primary school (having both been lumped into the "untouchables" category that eight-year-olds avoid so effectively), I hadn't said more than "hi" since maybe seventh grade.

Everyone was devastated because he'd never been a bad guy. Everyone agreed that he was one of sweetest people anyone had ever met. He was cool, basically. Why do the good ones die young? It came out that he did a lot of drugs and may have been abused as a child.

That didn't stop me from partially blaming myself. Having dealt with depression since a very young age and having been at the giving end of the "killing yourself wouldn't solve anything" conversations, I wondered if maybe I could have at least delayed his death. But then, no one seemed to have seen it coming. What could I have done even if we'd stayed friends?

A girl whom I mentored last year (she was a freshman and I was a junior) was recently in the hospital for attempted suicide. I told her she isn't allowed to kill herself because it would destroy me. She's on medication and seeing doctors. Apparently, she has all sorts of terrible mental diseases. It wasn't really her fault, she said.

A relatively attractive boy I was once friends with has started smoking. If he doesn't quit, his features will fade into that yellow, papery look. He'll waste an insane amount of money. He'll develop some terrible cancer or disease that will eat him from the inside out. Then he will suffer and die, probably long before the naturally accepted age. He's slowly killing himself and there isn't really anything I can do beyond shake my head about it.

But my mind still can't shake the image of that kid who killed himself last year. If people had been kinder to him in elementary school, if he had made good friends, is there a chance he wouldn't have started using? Would he have fallen into maybe a better crowd? They say there was a note, but only his parents know what it says. What was his final goodbye to the world? Was he angry and hurt? Was he relieved? Was he just crazy?

It's magnified my everyday guilt. I go over everything I say to anyone. I worry if I hurt someone and can't fix it until the next day. But maybe that's how we should live our lives. Trying to stop people from feeling like they're only on the outskirts of society. Giving someone a smile or a kind word. It's not a difficult once you start the habit. They say old habits die hard, but aren't some habits good?

Think about it. Maybe the world could be a little better. Maybe there'd be less premature death. Maybe the good wouldn't die young so much. We just have to learn to see that those people are the good.

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