It’s 3:17 a.m. and all you can think about is death. You haven’t even slept for the past four days. All the struggles you face and all the battles you have fought have brought you where you are today. But you are still fighting those battles, and you get a little bit stronger every time but not enough to defeat your demons.

Fixing your hair, putting some chapstick on, pulling down your sleeves , you get out of the car. You grab your backpack and start walking to school. You see people stare. It’s 90 degrees, and you pull on your long sleeves some more, thinking they all know what you did for the past hours. They can see it in your eyes. They have seen the cuts on your arms. She’s a freak. She cuts herself. She’s suicidal. All the same statements, but they don’t know how low you have to go to make those “cat scratches” over and over again.

You get to second period when you get a panic attack, and it just gets worse. You sit in the nurse’s office trying to calm down when the nurse needs to take your blood pressure and asks you to roll up your sleeve. You start to freak out and beg her not to.

After you calm down, you go back to class when some boys purposely run into you and call you names. You run to the bathroom. I need to be good enough, you think as you slide down the wall, bursting into tears.

You live a pretty good life. You make okay grades, you have quite a few friends and your family is still together. You should have no reason to want to hurt or kill yourself. But maybe it’s not about the grades. Maybe it’s not your friends or your family. Maybe it’s about yourself. It’s about how you don’t believe in yourself, how you think you’re not worth anything.

Wiping your tears away, you get up. You open the stall and nobody is there. You slowly walk out of the stall and walk up the the mirror. What is so wrong with me? Why am I like this? I don’t want to be like this. You walk out of the bathroom when you run into someone. You realize it’s your friend Chris. He asks you what’s wrong.

You just stand there. He asks you again. You still don’t talk, and that’s when it clicks. He goes up to hug you and you just lose it. He tells you that everything will be okay, and that he is there for you no matter what. You start to think that maybe you don’t need to die just yet. Maybe all you need is a friend right in that moment.

There is a metaphor I’ve heard that about how a person fell down a hole. A few people walk by and don’t help the person out. A friend stops and jumps in. The person questions why his friend jumped down instead of helping him out. The friend says “I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.” I like this story because it shows that people do actually care. Sometimes they stop what they are doing just to help you. We can all be that friend.

Students all over the nation are fighting these battles. Students in our very own classes are fighting these battles. Cutting, burning, starving or taking pills to find an escape. You never know who is currently hurting, so it could be your best friend, someone at your lunch table or even your next door neighbor.

I always hid with a fake smile, fake laugh, a fake “I’m okay.” Then I found something out. We all have our ups and downs in life, but if we overcome them that’s what makes us stronger for the next struggle. People who are struggling sometimes just need a friend.

So remember, there is a lot more to a person than you think there is. To help a struggling friend, encourage them to take their mind off of the negatives and focusing on the positives. You can also join them in activities they like to do or in some of their interests.

If this is you or someone you love, call these suicide hotlines: 1-800-SUICIDE or 1-800-273-Talk.
In order for them to shine, you have to help them get out of the darkness that they are in.