The So Called “Cowards Way Out”


Living in a village with a population just over 2,000 and a graduating class just over 40, you’ve seen a lot of these people your whole life, and even outside the community, you’ve known your close friends for a long time. Whether you grew up talking straight til’ the end or you just started talking recently, losing someone is always hard. What is even harder than losing someone is finding out that they took their own life. A beautiful life was cut short because a single action that could have been worked out but wasn’t, because someone left, or even if they just felt alone. Regardless the case I have to much experience in this topic. Two of my closest friends took their own lives, and not a day goes past where they don’t pop into my mind. Cooping is hard but finding the right supportive structure between friends and activity really do help get you through all of the pain you feel inside and out.

When Mr. Rodriguez came and told us the news of Chase passing I was shell shocked. I could not bring myself to believe that my sister and I’s best friend committed suicide. Walking down the bull that summer to hear Ms. V talk about how much Chase meant to her and what a free spirit brought me back down to Earth and I totally broke down, I was a complete mess. The thing that helped me the most was all of the lives Chase touched. That night when I came home from a walk to try to clear my mind, I saw all of his friends from my school at my house. They were all hugging, crying, and laughing while discussing all of the crazy stuff Chase used to do and say to people. Being fairly young I went up to bed early and awoke to a pleasant surprise. All of those people slept over at my house and were still comforting one another. This wasn’t that last time I was going to need a support group as strong as the group of characters Chase brought to my door. May of last year I got a phone call telling me my best friend, Mandi, had just died, and that she too had killed herself. That next day at school my close friends saw the happily go lucky personality that is myself turn into a quiet, lonesome shell or a man. The staff and students rallied to bring me back up to par and then some. My Athletic Director told me to just relax by another teacher I was close with and take the rest of the day off, then a few of my friends came down from class and comforted me aswell. If it wasn’t for the love and support of all of them I don’t know where I would be today.

Where a supportive structure of friends lacks is a way to release your anger and pain physically. That’s where weightlifting really picked up for me. I began running more that I ever have, I raised all my maxes in all four core lifts, bench, squat, deadlift, and power clean. This new found strength in my body really allowed me to be more calm and collective with others while trying to explain to them what I was going through mentally and emotionally. Just before Mandi took her life, I fractured my fibula in my right leg and thought I would never be able to make it to the Kohler Deadlift Record set at 500 lbs. After hearing of her passing I worked harder than anyone else, not for me, but to do it for Mandi. All I wanted after they left was for them to be proud of me and I hope to this very day that they are. My troubled past year gave me the strength to not blow up at my friends, keep my school work on track, and complete my the school year with two certificates of honor awards for academics during the final quarter.

I don’t blame them from the pain I was put through, but instead I look back at the time the wasted with me and how much they really meant to me. Without them, I don’t know what or who I would be, and to be perfectly honest I don’t want to know that side of me. I love being able to wake up in the morning and see a man looking back at me in the mirror and having no regrets on what I have done in my life and the routes I have chosen to take to reach where I am today. In the famous words of the late John Wooden, “Peace is comfort as I ponder, a reunion in the yonder, where my dearest ones are waiting for me there.”