Life is a funny thing isn’t it? One day I’m talking some kid into taking the barrel of a gun out of his mouth, and then the next day I’m in the very same situation. Perhaps I should rewind a bit and tell the whole story.

My name is Brent, and I’m a sophomore. I used to have a reputation around my high school; people would come and talk to me if they had problems in their life and most of the time I’d be able to help them through it. The problems varied every time. Sometimes I’d be giving a guy advice on how to ask out a girl, and then I’ll be on the phone with a sobbing girl who has just taken a whole bottle of sleeping pills. I don’t quite know why people started coming to me for advice on their life problems; I suppose it just started happening one day.

Anyways, one day after I got out of my English class, I walked down the hall towards my locker and this boy I’d never seen came up to me. He introduced himself as Marvin; he was very tall, had jet-black hair, and I couldn’t help but noticed that he had a bit of a stutter as he talked. Apparently Marvin was going through some bullying problems and-foolishly-I agreed to help him out. According to him, these bullies were named Alex, Shane, and Luis and they were always hanging out behind the gym during lunch.

Looking back on that day, I realize now that I was way too overconfident when approaching these guys. Without any second thoughts I walked up to the three guys in the middle of their conversation. “Hey, you guys know a kid named Marvin?”

A bulky Hispanic boy who was about twice my size turned and glared back at me, “Yeah we know him. Why do you care?”

“You guys need to leave him alone. I think you’re pushing him a bit too far.”

The Hispanic boy turned to his two friends and chuckled with them before responding, “I think you should get out of here white boy before you do something stupid, okay?”

“I’m not leaving until you promise to leave that kid alone.” Remember when I said I was way to overconfident during this confrontation? Well the fact that I was led me to say “or else.” And those two words turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I’d made in a long time. With no teachers around, the three guys stood up and grabbed my collar to pull me to the ground. The next three minutes were the longest and most painful minutes of my life. I was kicked, punched, and beaten non-stop until the guys got tired of it. I could feel a stream of warm blood coming from my nose down into my mouth. The salty taste of it was what made me realize how injured I really was. My ribs were cracked and bruised, my left eye was bruised and swollen shut, and it seemed like I was bleeding in different places all over my body. Even after lunch was over, I just lied there motionless.

Something about that beating altered my state of mind. I can’t quite explain how, but from that day forward I was not the same Brent that I used to be. I was no longer a talkative person, and when teachers called on me in class, I had a tendency to reply with one word answers. Every time I would walk past those three guys in the hallway, they would always laugh and call me things to the people around them, and they would laugh along. I noticed that Marvin wasn’t around campus anymore. Rumor was that he went home and hung himself in his closet without even leaving a note to give his parents some kind of idea as to why he did it.

When I heard that-even though it was only a rumor-I couldn’t help but think that it was my fault that it happened. God knows what those three bullies did to him after I had confronted them. At home, I didn’t eat much during breakfast and dinner. Whenever my mom would ask why, I would just tell her that I’m not very hungry. I didn’t dare tell her about how I felt on the inside. To be honest, I don’t think I would’ve been able to explain it even if I wanted to. I was in a state of shock from the beating, depressed from the rumor of Marvin’s suicide, and in so much physical pain that it took all the effort I could muster just to get out of bed in the morning.

A few weeks passed and the wounds on my body had healed, but my mental ones were only getting worse. It felt like my initial sorrow was being torn open and expanded to the point where I couldn’t feel any worse. The school year ended, but I wasn’t happy at all. The world around me seemed to be caving in.

I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling one night when my phone rang. While I had no desire to talk to whoever was calling, I felt that I should answer just in case it was something important. I should’ve known that it was going to be somebody who needed advice. This time it was a girl named Alyssa who wanted to kill herself because she felt that nobody liked her. As much as I wanted to tell her that I’m in no mental state to be giving advice on such a topic, I didn’t want to let her down. The poor girl was on the verge of a mental breakdown that would lead to death. I did the best I could, but as hard as I tried, the advice I gave didn’t work, and later that night she died in her sleep from pill overdose.

I didn’t hear about her passing until a few days later, and that was the breaking point for me. Two people were dead and I felt like it was my fault, as if I was some kind of menace on society. Of course now I realize that I was thinking about it all wrong. But there was no changing my mind; I was a bad person in society and I didn’t want to hurt anybody else. My mom always kept a handgun in her night stand “just in case,” and one day when she was off at work, I crept into her bedroom while fighting back tears. Inside the stand was a silver, fully-loaded gun. I went back into my room and closed the door behind me. Walls were all around me and it felt like they were starting to close me in. I knew that if I gave it too much thought I could change my mind, so with as little hesitation as possible, I put the gun in my mouth and gently squeezed the trigger.

The world went white, and that’s the last thing I remember before I died. I’ve put a lot of thought into it, and I don’t regret what I did. If given another try, I wouldn’t have done anything different. The society I lived in was so vile and cruel and disgusting that I didn’t miss it even for a second. I did, however, regret the way I killed myself. That is the one thing I would take back, because my mom didn’t deserve to walk into my bedroom when she got home from work to see my body slumped against the wall with a thick coat of blood behind me.

All I ever really wanted to do in my life was help people, and I think I did a good job. In the end, I ended up putting too much burden on myself and it cost me my life. But I know that I made a positive impact on many peoples’ lives, and that’s all anyone can really ask for, isn’t it?