The suicide of my best friend.
When I was 13 years old, I had to do a recorded speech about a young boy who was dedicated to being a great Friend, teen Dad, grandson and son. A boy who was well respected by most of his community and beloved by most his family and friends. That Boy was my best friend, A brother to me and my best friend died by suicide.
I remember the day vividly it was the 4th of December, his 15th birthday. It was bitterly cold, like the step outside and your breath is taken away type of cold, the type of cold that makes you not want to be anywhere else but, in your home, the type of cold that could leave your hands and feet numb and the cold perfectly describes how I was feeling at the time.
My Best friend’s death took not only my breath, but a piece of my heart away, I really didn’t want to leave the house that day and certainly not for school, the next day and no matter what anyone said or did, I was numb.
I’m so, so thankful I practiced the speech over and over again, because my eyes were so welled with tears, that I couldn’t even read the papers of words in front of me, being here speaking of this has been such a struggle because, you don’t expect to have to do this in a lifetime, but standing here and speaking about it is also so good for our wellbeing, being able to spread awareness is so important because we don’t want the same way that Zach and all the other people who have committed suicide to be the same you also leave, so please, please stay.
Like I said before Nothing could have prepared me to stand up in front of my friends to use my words, to beg them not to let the way my best friend died result in debilitating depression and anxiety, diminish the legacy of caring and compassion he left behind.
But that’s the stigma surrounding mental illness has made us uncomfortable, it’s made mental illness hard to talk about, it’s made us treat people differently who we have known our whole lives. The stigma has forced us to feel shame and guilt about an illness caused by chemical imbalances in the brain that are beyond our control.
My Best friend, He was a soccer Player, he was a player for about 9 years, he stopped playing soccer at the age of 14 because our other best friend got sick and wasn’t able to play sports anymore, so we made an oath that we wouldn’t play or train on the field until he was well enough to play again.
My other best friend was also a soccer player and they played for nearly 9 years together.
And this past July would have marked their 11th year of being friends. — (2023)
At a young age I fell in love with soccer and I joined the team (the prodigy League) that they had for juniors at just 5 years old because at 4 they didn’t have any teams I could join because I was too young. I also stopped playing Soccer to keep up with the Promise I made to Zach and Austin.
In primary school Redbridge (Stanthorpe, QLD) was a place we would also go to when we saw each other, it was our favourite place to stay and sit and talk about a lot of things, especially things we loved or didn’t want to talk about with adults. It was the spot where we would explore, find things and laugh, cry, sing, run, walk and we practically did everything there.
Both of my best friends were good kids that most of us just seemingly desire to be especially my best friend Zach, he was an amazing boy and that same boy, my best friend suffered from mental illnesses and as a result, his family suffered, his friends suffered and I suffered as well, because when someone you love so much suffers, you suffer too and that’s exactly what happened. We knew that Zach was struggling but he wouldn’t admit it, he would zone in and out when we were talking on the phone and we knew that something wasn’t right, but every time we asked him, he would say that he was “fine” or that he was “just tired”, me and Austin did everything we could to try and make sure he was okay and we did everything we could to keep him as happy as he could be.
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I remember the first times I heard the words depression and anxiety; I didn’t believe it; it just didn’t make sense; I really just didn’t understand what it meant, because I was a seemingly happy kid when I was younger, I didn’t understand the words “suicide” or “depression” because the people who I grew up with always made sure to keep me protected from hearing or seeing that stuff, I didn’t really know about that stuff until I was about 12 years old.
The stigma perpetuated our fear and encouraged our silence but the longer we were silent about what we were going through, the more questions people started asking.
14 years old and an amazing boy who was in love with life and treated everyone kindly and respectfully. From society’s point of view, he had everything a boy could ask for, he had a family that adored him and a well-paid job, he was a real role model to many but mainly Me, but what nobody knew is that he was fighting a great depression and a personal disorder that caused him an unbearable suffering, even though he spent many years fighting the hard battle, He Committed suicide.
Zach was My amazing best friend who committed suicide on his birthday in 2021 at the age of 15.
Statistically 1 out of 4 have a mental illness, if it’s not you, it’s somebody sitting next to you. More than 1 million people commit suicide each year, a person commits suicide every 40 seconds.
Suicide is the first cause of death between teenagers nowadays, you could’ve thought that it was car accidents, that’s what I thought but suicide is more than double the rate of deaths by car incidents.
Out of every case of gender violence there are 72 suicides and out of everyone that commits suicide 95 percent of the people who committed had a mental illness, 100 percent preventable.
More than half of the people who have mental illness it arises in childhood. Seeing how official organisations treat suicide, it is no wonder how people treat suicide. People are scared to talk about it, And I can understand this because I was scared too.
I was scared to say that my best friend had committed suicide, so I didn’t tell anyone about it, and when I started to tell people the truth, people looked at me differently, they treated me differently.
Since I talk freely about suicide and mental illness, you cannot imagine the amount of people — friends and classmates — that have come up to me and said that they had also been suffering, and they had even tried to commit suicide. But they didn’t ask for help because they were scared of what others might think.
A year ago, I met a young girl, she was overhearing a conversation I was having with a friend, about mental illness and about preventing suicide. After a while, she came up to me, she hugged me, and she said, “thank you. Today you saved my life.” She told us that she had been suffering with depression for over 3 years, and that she didn’t ask for help because she was scared of what others might think. She even said that she had tried to commit suicide. After a while she told us that she had the strength to ask for help and the hope that everything was going to be alright. I just wish that Zach had heard the same conversation, because maybe it could have saved his life, but not only His life, the lives of all these people who committed suicide as I was writing this.
Suicide is preventable, we just need to change the way we see it and treat it. Something as small as a conversation can prevent it.
Let’s talk to prevent suicide.
