Blame it on Me

Um, its depressing yes, recently looking up upon what is the most caused cases of suicide. Yes, it does deal with suicide, and yes, it hasn't realistically happened, but some parts (such as the friend being left alone on her birthday) and her suicidal tal

      I remember that night just like I remembered the time that I refused to shed any more tears. Never, ever did I think she would do something like that. I saw the signs, I saw them all, but I was sworn to secrecy, and I thought that if I just took it, and tried to help her solve her problems with this depression she was feeling, it would be okay! Of all my miscalculations it had to be this one, it had to be the thought that she would someday get better with my help. 
 
      But I never saw it that way, and when I figured out the truth it was too late, she had already made up her mind. That night seems like a far distant memory that never seems to fade. And the pain it causes till this day, is still unbearable. And slowly, as my eyes close for the very first time in weeks, and my mind seeps into the thunder rumbling outside and the rain pattering on my window, I sink into the memories that I have been refraining to bring back ever since that time.
 
      ...That horrible time...
 
      It began a month ago, where school was an everyday thing; my friend Alyssa and I were in our first year of High School, nothing too unusual. But that week we were feeling very off, not only was I feeling depressed to no end, but Alyssa was too. But she was always happy, and she only told me of the things that happened in her home.
 
      As I have discovered, since we were ten, her mother seemed to deprive her of her only childhood she knew. With no family to turn to, she turned to the only people she could think of, and that was us, her friends. And for that very, long distant time, she was independent. She came to us when she needed to cry and we swore to her we would always be by her side. And I kept my promise, the others didn’t.
 
      While we grew up together, we drifted to different schools and we drifted apart. Alyssa and I were the only one’s left in our group. We had friends now, but we couldn’t trust any of them. Both of us were damaged from the departure of the others. But we had each other, and weeks grew into months, and there were times that I saw Alyssa beginning to smile again.
 
      But there was one time that she scared me. I had been sitting at home looking through my sum of books when the ring of the telephone screeched on. With a jolt of fear my body jumped and my head whipped over towards the direction of the phone. Seeing Alyssa’s cell number on there I made my way over towards the phone and picked it up.
 
      “Hola!” I called out, as my usual greetings towards her.
 
      “Melody...” the soft voice of Alyssa whispered out. My mouth immediately pulled down at the edges, my eyebrows knitting together.
 
      “Alyssa, are you alright?” I asked, but I knew it was not.
 
      “I can’t do it anymore Melody!” she suddenly cried over the phone, my heart seemed to rip in half as I heard her aching voice break. “I can’t, this life, it’s not worth living when all I have is screaming here and there. I just can’t take it anymore!” She cried out. Her sobs were heard, but her voice was now becoming even slowly it no longer shook she was mellow this time. “I’m saying goodbye only to you Melody.”
 
      Hearing those words come out of her mouth, it just tore me in half. Alyssa was my friend, and she would leave me like this. No later I was crying on the phone with her, prolonging her plan. And throughout the whole time I was praying:
 
      Please, help me, please! I beg of you just help me, to help her. HELP HER! 
 
      And as I fooled myself with my belief, slowly things began turning it around. The foolish act she was about to pull was now becoming less and less as I convinced her that I needed her that she was taking the easy way out. She listened, while I begged, begged for her life, begged for mercy that she wouldn’t ever think of that again.
 
      After that incident, she spoke no more of that, but the few days she came to school her sadness was seeping through her mask, and I began to become more and more worried of the outcome in her condition. I just couldn’t imagine what was going through her head, and so I waited, and I comforted her as much as my words could.
 
      And just as the moments where everything seemed hopeless she began smiling again, but I didn’t know, that, that was a sign where things started to go all down hill again. One day, she mentioned the incident that had happened, and she made me swear that I wouldn’t tell anyone about what happened. And trying to be the good friend I was, I said I swore. And that was my very first mistake.
 
      Days passed, and the light in her eyes, the smile that I knew was coming back to her face. I didn’t see a sign of depression she once had, and she showed me the poems she wrote that were now free of death, everything that I remembered of how she wrote was gone. But that was the sign of planning. A sign of where, when, and what time her death would take place.
 
     November came and went, and December quickly came into view. Her birthday was coming up, and that was just the month she called me. December 24, Christmas Eve, she called me. It was late that night I was half asleep. “Hello?” I asked; I didn’t even bother to check who it was.
 
      “Hey Melody, its me, Alyssa.” Her voice giggled over the phone.
 
      “Oh hey!” I smiled sitting up in bed. “How are you birthday girl?” I smiled looking at the clock seeing that it was 11; she still had an hour to go.
 
      “The usual,” she seemed happy, “my families still out, I’m home.”
 
      “Oh, well that sucks, do you want me to sneak over there?” I asked, laughing a bit.
 
      “No!” she cried, and I was startled to find that she was serious about this. “I called you for a reason.”
 
      My stomach lurched forward, “What’d you want to tell me Alyssa?”
 
      “The last time I called you, you talked me out of it, I just wanted to let you know that this time there’s no way. I’ve planned for a couple of months now you know...and I just want you to be over the phone when I do it.” She spoke, almost sheepishly.
 
      My eyes widened, “Wha-what are you talking about?” I stuttered. Suddenly, something clicked, “Alyssa, no! Don’t do it, no!” I cried out the tears already pricking my eyes.
 
      In the background, I heard something click, something being loaded. A gun. “Melody, I’ve told you before that I can’t do it anymore. My parents forgot my birthday, everything’s wrong. This is the best way I can get out from it all, be free. Melody I want to be free! Free of all problems...of all tears, I just want to be a kid again, I want it to be just how it was when I was smaller, when my parents treated me like a human...and not like some robot that they think won’t fight back. Melody! This is my way at getting back at them. No one will care when I’m gone, so everything’s going to be okay in the end!” Her voice didn’t even break.
 
      “What are you talking about?” I screeched, “I care about you Alyssa, I’ll care if you leave me! I’ll care!” I cried. The tears had already trickled down my cheek and I started sobbing on the phone.
 
      “And I’ll always be with you, no matter where I go. Its just too hard for me now.” She spoke so calmly, it scared me, it frightened me to death no words could possibly explain. The fear of even thinking about her pulling the trigger almost killed me if she wasn’t the one who was about to pull it on herself.
 
      “No! Don’t do it, please! I beg of you, I can’t live without you; you’re my best friend! You can’t leave me like this!” I cried. I slid off the bed my legs, arms, and body was shaking.
 
      Please, help her. Please help her!
 
      But, when I prayed to help her, I didn’t mean for her to hurt herself, to make her pull it.
 
      “I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it, I’m done!”
 
      “Alyssa...you’re joking! This isn’t real, is it? You’re just doing this joke on me, aren’t you?” there was no answer, and I knew it was no longer a joke that I hoped it would be. It was her life. “You can’t do this Alyssa, please! You have just as much strength as I do, and I’ll give you mine if I have to just please...”
 
      There was a grieving silence over the phone, and then, “Good-bye.” And as my body fell to the floor the gunshot was fired. My eyes were still widened, and the tears poured down my face. It was ironic really; I could picture her body lying in the same position I was in. It was ironic, how she was dead, and I was dead on the inside now. In that single moment, everything was gone from me.
 
      My home...my dreams...my beliefs, my soul, my mind, body, and in all that it was eating me. Pulling my strings, lifting me up like a puppet, telling me to go this way, saying things I didn’t want to say, making me cry, making me think Alyssa was dead, but she wasn’t.
 
      This...instigator, was controlling my thoughts. And I lay there for a while thinking that all that happened was a dream, that the dead silence on the phone was nothing but pure madness. But... the annoying ‘beeping’ coming from the phone woke me up. And I laid there, my body shaking again.
 
      “No,” and I repeated this word over again, “NO!” I finally screamed it bounced off the walls and that’s when I went mad. “NO!” I screamed again, getting up to my feet and slamming the phone into the wall. “NO!” I lashed out and through my dresser down, my hair whipping into my face. “NO!” I pushed chairs down in my room slammed things up against the wall, tore my close from my closet.
 
      Something inside of me whispered into my ear. Doing this won’t bring her back. But then something else would whisper in my ear, but it’s the only thing that helps to make things seem real. And it was true. The crashing the hits, my cuts that I was suffering, it all made things seem real.
 
      My door swung open as my mother and father stood in the doorway. My dad was the first to approach, grabbing my wrist and pulling them behind me so I couldn’t move. “LET ME GO!” I screamed, the tears falling, my heart ripping again, as if the memory of it all caught up like a racecar beating another.
 
      “What do you think you’re doing?” he roared out, shaking me like I was crazy.
 
      “I...I...” tears were springing out again.
 
      “Well!”
 
      My head limply fell to the side and I didn’t move for a moment, “She’s gone...” I finally said staring at my telephone set, as it lay motionless on the floor next to the picture of Alyssa and myself.
 
      “Who’s gone?” he said softly, loosening his grip on me. I still did not move.
 
      “Alyssa...she called me...she shot herself.” There was a gasp of shock, and then my dad slowly set me down.
 
      “Go call the police!” he finally said as he rocked me in his arms.
 
      “The next few days were a blur; people blamed me for what I did. Her parents said it was my fault for letting her die, and I thought it was my fault too. Just letting her go on suffering like that, it was...I wasn’t a good friend to do that. It was my fault, even if she would have hated me for a while for letting out her secret, at least she would be alive.”
 
      “And, do you honestly think she would have been happier if she didn’t kill herself?” I nodded my head to the newscast woman in front of me, as the studio of the news station was quiet, besides the same rain that had been going on for a couple of hours. 
 
      “I honestly think she could have been a lot happier. With the help she could have gotten besides me, she would have been much happier.”
 
      “And, do you have anything to say to the people watching now?” I looked up slowly at the camera; I could feel my eyes well up with tears.
 
      “One thing.”
 
      “What would that be?”
 
      “Blame it on me.”

Author's Note

Some things I have experienced, some others are fictional. This is a way that I'd like to keep up the word to other people.