It was a cold dark winter evening. The sky was as black as the ink of my pen. I was doing my homework and it was already Midnight, it was late that day. I was nearly done when I heard my phone. I thought to myself, who would text me that late? When I read the name I already knew that the relaxing evening wouldn’t stay like it was.

For about a year, I was talking to that guy. Nearly every evening we talked about the same topics; Depression, Suicide. He was depressed and didn’t want help. Nearly every evening he told me what made him happy, mad, or sad that day. Listening was the only thing I could think about to help. I listened to everything he told me. How the love of his life dumped him, how much he hated his family, that he always did everything wrong and that he wanted to kill himself. I even listened to him telling me how stupid and what a bad person I was, that I would make everything worse and that I should just die. More than once I did my best to protect him from suicide. And this evening was one of them.

He was mad already when he texted me. Saying, that he was ending friendships and that I should just stop talking. However he texted me and I knew what was going on in his head. Because of all the times we talked about that before I was harsh, knowing that he would hurt me with the words he would say if I would ask and trying to protect myself. I did what he wanted me to do and went on with doing my homework.

Of course that wasn’t right from his point of view.The problem with depressed people is that they often say the opposite of what they want. Whatever you do, it won’t be right. Either you don’t care about what they say or you don’t do what they really want.

Only three minutes later he texted me back. “Do you want to say anything before I kill myself?” I could hear the words again and again in my head. I answered just a few seconds later but it felt like it was an eternity. “Please don’t do that.” That was everything I could say.  

The first thing I had to do was ordering my thoughts. I went through this many times before but it always confuses me. He wanted to end his life, right now. And I was the only person who knew it and who could keep him from this stupid mistake. From our talks before, I knew he had everything he needed to commit suicide. Weeks before we talked about how he wanted to do it. Pills. And I knew he had enough.

It’s the worst feeling I ever had in my life. This moment, when you know you have to do something, you know that something really bad can happen and everything you can do is texting and calling. However he declined my call. At least I tried. The only thing left was texting. Some messages took him minutes to read and to answer. Every second waiting for him to check his phone scared me more and more.  My parents were already sleeping and I had no one to talk to. I was alone.

I started crying. The pressure to keep him alive was awful. I texted him the whole time, asking questions to have him respond. I needed to know that he was still there. That he was still alive.

“Why don’t you just let me do it?” he asked. “You always want to help me. Why don’t you help me with my biggest wish?” I couldn’t believe that he asked me that. He wanted me to let him kill himself and just watch quietly. I couldn’t do it and I didn’t want to; I was not sure if he would ever understand that. “You selfish girl. You just try to make yourself feel better. You don’t care about what I want.”

And the worst part is, that you really start to think about it. All the time I helped him, more than one year of daily texting, I knew it was a mental illness. However words like this hurt me. Nowadays I still think about them. I was and I am questioning myself. Maybe he said the truth; maybe I was selfish and maybe I made everything worse.

Anyway, I didn’t give up. I texted him again and again. He started to argue. He told me that I did everything wrong, that he wanted to kill himself even more because of me. I let him tell me the worst things. I just listened, happy because he was still alive, and sad because of what he said.

I had to save him this night and tomorrow it would be at least a little better. Tomorrow would be a new day. However I was only a little girl, soon to be 16, sitting in her living room, crying and despairing in the middle of the night. If you never felt the immense pressure you can’t imagine how it is. Knowing you are the only one keeping someone alive breaks you. It breaks you in that moment and you will remember it the rest of your life.

I looked at the time. It was 1 o’clock in the morning. I knew I couldn’t do this any longer. I was exhausted. Not because of the time but because of his thoughts. And my thoughts. I was about to lose control over them. Thinking I wasn’t good enough; thinking I was the problem. I needed help.

At 1:30am I finally had the courage to call his sister. I had to try. If she was still awake she could talk to him, in person.

I was lucky. She was facetiming her boyfriend when I called her. His sister knew about his depression and helped me a few times before. I was happy to hear her voice and that I could tell her everything. How I did my homework when he texted me, that we’ve talked for the last 1 and a half hours and what he told me. She promised that she would talk to him and that she would text me afterwards. One minute after we hung up I got one last text message from him. “I HATE YOU!”

For a long time I just sat at the table. I couldn’t tell for how many minutes. I was just sitting and thinking about what happened. He was save now, wasn’t he?

Finally I remembered my homework. I still had to finish history. My teacher would yell at me if I don’t do it. My brain didn’t want to focus on the world war second. In the war there where people dying. How would it be if he would die? It would be my fault. I wouldn’t have been good enough. Or maybe I would’ve tried to hard. Maybe I was the reason then. I could never forgive myself if that would happen.

His sister texted me 30 minutes later. I already gave up on my homework. Maybe I could copy it from my friends the next day, maybe not. I didn’t care anymore if she would yell. I read the message. “Thanks for calling me. I talked to him and I’m gonna talk to our parents tomorrow. I’m so sorry for everything he said to you. I hope you have a good night.” I wanted to answer a simple thank you when I saw the notification. 5 new messages on whatsapp. I opened the app. The blue circle next to his name meant that the messages were from him. I opened them carefully. As if that would help.

“How dare you.”

“I hate you so much.”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

“You are the worst person I’ve ever met.”

“I hope you sleep well and dream sweet. I couldn’t if I was you. You shouldn’t be able to sleep. You should just want to kill yourself. You should KILL YOURSELF. Good night.”

He was right. I couldn’t sleep at all that night. But at least he was safe and that was all that mattered.