EPT
Over the first 6 weeks of college life, I had lost 15 pounds. Call it the "Freshman -15" if you will[1]. I wasn't sleeping regularly. I was missing meals. I was malnourished, weary, and overall just gasping for air. At times I was my cheerful self. At times I was brooding. Other times, I was perhaps even a bit depressed and desperate.
As evidenced by my writing, I have come out in one piece, though perhaps a bit dented. I would probably be marked with a "20% OFF!" sticker had I been a box of cereal. I digress. This story isn't about me. This is about a girl. A girl whom I met during the one of the darkest hours of my still short life[2].
She was a charming girl. Well liked by many, hard working, and cheery. Jet black hair, touching her shoulders, tied back in a pony tail on half her days, and let down loose on the other half. Short stature, perhaps even petite. Big, expressive, black eyes, emotive and curious. Bronze-skinned, of Philippine descent I believe. Her faced crunched up expressively when she laughed, and it made all of us want to laugh too.
She was an engineer. A Chemical Engineer. Chemical Engineering is considered by many students to be the most academically demanding discipline at the college. Many of the would-be graduates would surrender, one by one, over the next four years. They would usually become Operations Research Engineers or Economics majors, destined for the inevitability that is Wall Street.
I would often tackle the week's assignments in the small library near my dorm room. 3 long tables, each flanked by 10 stiff, wooden chairs, separated by walls of bookcases. A circle of sofas, with two coffee tables. Its tranquility would be occasionally interrupted by the stressed shriek of a fellow student, or the unmistakable clanking of the heating system - a surprisingly welcome sound, given the bitter cold of the North East. The winter of 2003 would become the harshest winter in 100 years.
It was in this womb-like place that I met this girl. Mutual suffering, I have since learned, is often the bond that ties us together the strongest. This library was one of my two places of communal suffering, the other being the Physics department problem set session room. The latter was a true Iron-Maiden for me, as I didn't understand half the things that were happening in the class, and had to depend on more enlightened classmates and my above-average skill of BS'ing science exam answers.
The usual suspects in this march of sorrow included a witty and dark featured Canadian, a tall and well built Chicago-man with refined taste, a lanky and good natured German major, a hyper-studious and kind-hearted giant from Guyana (also my roommate), this girl, and myself. We met one another in this small library. It started from small talk, perhaps about what textbook they were grinding over so vigilantly. We'd eventually come to share laughs together, a welcome respite from the nightly grind.
My roommate, like this girl, was also a Chemical Engineer. I thus had direct second-hand insight into how brutal their curriculum was. The class work, lab work, and home work combined into a seemingly unconquerable grindstone. As a student with zero passion or understanding for Chemistry, I could not see myself ever being successful in their position. To this day, I have infinite respect for Chemical Engineers.
As the fall semester winded down, I had somehow managed to salvage my academic term. On the social front, I had started to grow apart from this group of library misery-mates, and hung out more and more from the inmates of the second (Physics) slaughterhouse. As the Spring semester came and went, I only saw the haphazard gang, without a doubt my first group of friends on campus, in passing. I would see the girl from time to time, around the quad, at the library, or in the cafeteria. Just a hey, how's it going, but not too much else. She seemed a bit weary, but all of us were. For a student body with a disproportionate concentration of academic overachievers, it had been a reality check. So long, valedictorianism, welcome to our house, mediocrity.
Summer barged in through the front door, and broke down the kitchen door on the way out the back. It was September 2004, and we were grizzled veterans.
Many students had stayed on campus over the summer, toiling away in labs. I'm sure some ambitious ones even had internships over the summer. Me? I didn't even know that students were supposed to do that in order to prepare for life after college.
It was the first week back on campus. A week devoted to moving heavily objects, reacquainting with our battle-torn comrades, and reminiscing over our memories of 365days prior. The girl I learned, had spent the summer on campus, working in a lab in the Chemical Engineering department. I was hardly surprised, given her studious and diligent nature.
I had moved across the quad from the previous year, and found myself in the same building as her. She was on the second floor, and I was on the third. Again, I saw her in passing, maybe said hello. Maybe it was in the courtyard, maybe it was as we passed one another in the stairwell.
Between 2003 and 2007, three students' lives ended tragically short. One drowned off of the coast of Florida. Another lost the battle against Leukemia. The third one took their own life.
This last one, shocked everyone. The timing, the person, its nature. Everything conflicted with each another. To this day, I can't wrap my head around it. I still want to believe it didn't happen, because it just doesn't make sense.
The one her took her life, was the girl.
The beginning of a new year. Meeting old friends. Meeting new friends. Cyanide.
In her bed, alone.
My roommate was crushed. Studying the same subject as her and living near by, his friendship to her was orders of magnitude greater than that of my own. And it showed itself in reverse, as our respective emotions reversed polarity. I found myself more confused than sorrowful, more regretful than tearful. My roommate's friendship with her, much more meaningful than mine, turned its teeth on him.
Over the next months, it was painful to watch him suffer. He was visibly affected. I could see it in his eyes, vacant. His mouth, less expressive. His shoulders, un-animated. In the service for and by her many friends, it was he who took the stand to talk about her life and their friendship. I didn't attend. I couldn't handle it. He, carrying infinite more emotional burden than I, could. I was weak and cowardly. I still am. He wasn't.
There was no will. No message. But all of us knew deep down, what had happened.
Expectations. Internal. External. Pressure. Stress. Endless work. Endless misery. Unachievable.
Despair
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Dear friends,
I can't cope with this kind of loss. If your life is dark, and you need something, anything, even though I know it's excruciatingly difficult, please, please let me know.
5 years after this girl took her life, I went through the most difficult time of my life. I was able to extricate myself with the help of others who tolerated my brooding, and by having recited to myself over and over and over that if things became unbearable, I could drop everything on the ground, abandon all responsibilities, throw all expectations into the gutter, and just leave.
I don't dare say that I understand your pain, your troubles, your worries. I don't even blame you if you want to end it all. But before you take your last breath, give me the honor of talking to you over dinner. Because the pain I will feel by walking with you, doesn't even come close to the pain of losing you.
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[1]"Freshman 15" is a term used to describe the weight gain typical of a new college student.
[2]At that point, this was the deepest I had fallen.
Crossposted from my main blog
