Desperation Essay

“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem” (Phil Donahue). It was a few days before the start 12th grade and I was desperate. All these negative feelings started rushing in. I started to go into a depression. Not just because of the impending dates of school starting, but because I realized after this year everything changes. My friends would be off to college living their own lives while I hated mine. I was never what you would call a “good” student, mediocre at best. It wasn’t that I was a bad student I just had trouble. In The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir, James Brown goes through desperate times as well.
I had been desperate before, desperate to lose weight, desperate to smoke a cigarette, but never this desperate. It got to the point where I wanted to end my life. I paced around my house for hours, racking my brain to find a way to end all of this pain I felt. For every method I came up with, I found 3 reasons why it would be stupid. I found pills, but quickly realized they would just get me sick and I'd wind up in ICU getting my stomach pumped. I found razorblade’s but quickly realized that would be too long and painful. It was a good thing I didn’t have a gun. I realize that now. I called Ali at some point during the day because I knew if there was anyone who could get me to feel better it was her. She has this thing about her, for lack of a better term. She knows exactly what to say to make me feel better. It’s like she knows me better than I know myself. I spent the entire day and night talking to her on the phone, telling her how I felt and the predicament I was in. She told me how much she loved me and how she couldn’t live if I died. That just made me even more depressed because what I didn’t realize at the time was that there was a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. She loved me. I was in love with her. It got to the point where I didn’t want to talk anymore, I told her I was hanging up and I swore I wasn’t going to do anything. It was around 1 in the morning and she didn’t believe me. Brown writes, “What I want is a chance, any sort of chance…trying to imagine myself as a man going blind” (8-9). This shows that even though Brown wasn’t expecting to be rewriting someone else’s screenplay that’s doesn’t even make sense, he will do it anyway because he is desperate.
An hour or two later my phone rings. I knew immediately who it was. It was the police telling my parents to check on their child to see if he/she is ok. Somehow the police were called and an ambulance was on its way. My dad rushed to my room to make sure I was alive and after he saw I was he brought me upstairs. When I got upstairs I saw my mom crying. I had never seen her cry before. I sat down on the couch and waited for the ambulance. When the ambulance came they put me in the back and strapped me down to the stretcher like I was wounded. My parents followed behind. I tried looking out the back windows to see if I recognized where we were going, but soon got lost. Turns out North Shore and LIJ were full so they brought me to Nassau County Medical Center. It felt like I was in a horror movie. They brought me into the dark and dirty basement so I could talk with someone to see if I needed to stay overnight. I said everything I could to make sure that didn’t happen. There was no way I was staying there overnight. Brown writes, “I’m not trying to be brave. Or stupid…as if it’s a matter of life and death” (50-51). This shows that even though there’s a sniper outside shooting out windows he’s so desperate to talk to the executive that he doesn’t budge.
I went home terrified that night. All I could think about was my moms face when she found out what was going on. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about that day. I thank god that I have someone like Ali in my life. If the cops weren’t called I might have gotten up the courage to go through with it.
Since then I have been going to therapy weekly and haven’t been depressed in a long time. Other than that my life is pretty much the same. I came to terms with the fact that my friends would leave and I’d see them over vacation I also try harder in school now. I realized that even though Suicide was a permanent solution to my problem, it wasn’t the right one. I learned that no matter how down you feel there are always people who love you and want to help you. You just have to look for the help you can’t expect it to come to you.