User:The Woodburninator/DeadFriend
So there I was, listening to my Juice WRLD cassette on my walkman, enjoying my evening at home, when suddenly I got a call.
It turns out my friend Dave had committed suicide[edit | edit source]
And I'm like, WTF?!
Dave and I have known each other for almost 4 years. We happened to be taking a few classes together, and we hit it off pretty quickly. He and I would hang out with our boys PJ, Tobin, and Squee. I got free pot out of the deal, and he would call me old and he and the rest of the boys would laugh at me trying to dance on his glass table. It was a pretty great time, and we bonded over the years talking about girls, classes, and just life in general.
I remember when the rest of the guys had the flu, so Dave and I were alone at his place that night. We started out doing the normal, but eventually we moved to communicating on a level I'm not sure either of us had ever communicated with anyone else before. Things got very real. He told me all about his dad who died in Iraq, and I told him about my dad who died somewhere in the pacific during World War 2. He told me all about this girl he liked, but who he barely talked to anymore after a fight they had a few months prior. He said he had fucked up, and nothing would ever be the same between them, and it was tearing him up inside. He even brought up how he felt apart from the other guys we hung out with. I told him I always saw him as the leader of the group, and the glue who would keep us all together moving forward, but he just shook his head. "Nah," I remember him saying, "We've been friends for like 3 years now, and I feel like I barely know those guys, and they sure as hell don't get me. Nah, man. To be honest, you're like the closest friend I got in this world, as fucked up as that sounds when I say it, it's true. I ain't never let my guard down with anyone else man, you're a good dude." I wasn't sure what to say. I was honored and wanted to reassure him that the people around him loved him and that he had worth as a person, but then he said something that looking back on it now, should have sent chills down my spine- "FUUUUCK MAN! Sometimes I just wonder if I should just stop all this suffering, you know?" At the time, I thought he was talking about the bowl of hot nacho cheese he had just dropped on his foot, but now I'm not so sure.
When I got that call from Squee, I had to think a lot about my relationship with Dave[edit | edit source]
I didn't realize just how dangerous of a person Dave could be. If he was willing to take his own life, what was to stop him from taking mine? Was I in danger every single time Dave and the boys tossed chips at me while I shimmied and shook my way across his living room? These were the thoughts that blasted through my mind in the moments and weeks after Dave's passing.
Dave had died on a Monday evening. Normally we would have gotten high and played some Call of Duty, teabagging everything that moves on a Monday night after supper at the dining hall, but it was a week before finals and we all wanted to study, Dave included. Squee was sobbing when he told me, and I'll admit I cried a little too. In that moment, we shared the coming to terms with our own mortality.
"What if one of us had been there with him, man," Squee asked between cries. "Would things have gone differently?" I didn't know what to say. All I knew was that I was happy I wasn't there to find out. Dave had put a knife into his carotid artery. That could have been my carotid artery! My friend committed suicide and I hadn't even realized how dangerous he was. Thank goodness I wasn't there when he went on his murderous rampage.
Looking back at some of our earlier conversations[edit | edit source]
How close was I to death some of those nights, when he had gotten me alone with him? "Do you ever wonder what it's like to die? Do you think it'll hurt?" Chills. Was he threatening me? I guess now I'll never know, but... I know.
"Do you ever cut yourself just a little bit? I don't do it just for the pain, but it's nice just to feel that control. Like I was the one who made that hurt, no one else," he told me one night over a fat blunt we were sharing. I was too fucked up to think too hard about it at the time, but now? Now I see that Dave was truly a sadist. Was he practicing for what could have been his later victims? Was he seeing my reaction, hoping to watch me squirm under the psychological torture he was trying to put my ignorant self through? God, I have so many questions. If Dave were still here, he could answer them for me, but thank goodness he isn't. I would be in some real danger.
That final night[edit | edit source]
Did Dave want me there that night? Well too bad for him. When he finally snapped, and he had no would-be victims around, how terrible that must have been for him. "Friend" he called me, but now I see that he was just grooming me for the slaughter. I'm still alive, and I plan on keeping it that way.
PJ, Tobin, Squee, and I are meant to be pallbearers at his funeral, but I guess they'll be down two friends on that day. I surely won't be there to honor my would-be killer. And now I have to wonder, are the rest of them just like Dave? Are they just biding their time before they strike someone down? Well I'll tell them the same thing we tell our DOTA teammates when we play with a rando and they fuck up, "Cyka Blyat. I fuck your mom, pussy. I hope you kill yourself."