The leaves hadn't even turned brown before the first suicide of the year.
At St. Briar's University, the stakes are so high that at least one suicide is expected. In a world full of privilege and royalty, poison and snakes, students are expected to...
"dont you dare look out that window, darlin everything's on fire
the world outside our door keeps raging on
hold on to this lullaby
even when the music's
gone"
(taylor)
>>
THE DROP from the belltower is immaculate.
It is lethal, it is poisonous, it ends in tragedy.
The whole belltower is a symbol of the tragic endings of students and faculty at St. Briars University.
The students took it upon themselves to carve the initials of each new person that decided that enough was enough into a tree, but it is just a ploy to gain sympathy, to keep the cameras on us as students weep in the background and the faculty addresses the nation with the same speech.
If they really cared, then maybe those people would still be alive.
If they really cared, maybe I wouldn't be standing at the top of the bell tower overlooking the sprawling lands of SBU.
It is breathtaking up here. The university takes up 41,308 lush acres of land in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fifty plus buildings dotted the campus, surrounded by tangled green bushes and trees. The SBU river glides through the middle of the campus, the glistening dark waters glinting at me from the top of the tower.
This place used to be my home.
The idea of a pretentious, depressed student jumping off an old pretentious bell tower at a pretentious university has been so romanticized by society, so those seeking the sweet relief of death have the perfect plan: jumping off a pretentious old bell tower at a pretentious university filled with pretentious students.
Somewhere I hear windchimes, but it is only in the background as my thoughts start to take over.
I've never feared heights; in fact I've never been one to fear anything. But standing at the edge of this tower, death waiting below, I feel the uneasiness settle in my stomach. My breathing comes harder than it normally would, my body buzzing due to the spiders that crawl under my skin. I am shaking too, my hands quaking as I push myself up onto the ledge, peering down at the scene below.
No one is around.
You'd think they have cameras on this building to prevent kids from jumping, but they don't. They have cameras everywhere except the place we need it the most.
I wonder if this is how everyone feels before they jump. Or perhaps they feel nothing at all and it is easier for them to make that simple, deadly step
Somehow I imagine killing yourself is harder than it looks.
It is human instinct to try to stay alive for as long as possible. The subconscious and the physical body are designed to keep one breathing until their circumstances become too extreme. That's why the percentage of suicides by drowning or by asphyxiation is very low. Sure, hanging does the job, but so many things could go wrong and it wasn't half as dramatic as jumping off the highest tower in Philadelphia.
If I'm going to do this, I need to do it now, before I lose my nerve. If I leave I will just be mad at myself for not having jumped when I had the chance.
I already arranged everything with the spirit from the girl's bathroom on the third floor of the dormitory. According to her, every person who had jumped from that bell tower is still here. Floating, wandering aimlessly. They wish for revenge, and I am determined to get mine.
I have a list of people to get revenge on. My parents are at the very top of that list.
Some of the people, I just want to mess with, like the students who weren't as bad as everyone else but still did not care about me when I wanted to get in their circle.
Others..my goal in death is to drive them to madness. To drive them to the top of this building, to end up with the same fate I am going to meet at the pavement below.
Because if a multitude of people just all of a sudden start leaping off towers, then maybe society would change and the world would be a better place for those after us.
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