Stained by Invisible Ink: A Virgin's Suicide Note

ONE

"In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

- Martin Luther King

25/09/2012

To whoever finds this first:

I'm sorry. I was never good at goodbyes. By the time you're reading this, I'll most likely be gone. I'm jumping off Wilson's Bridge at 12:00pm today. I hope the water is as deep as it looks. It wasn't your fault. I just couldn't deal anymore. Below this note you'll find my story. If you feel like knowing what pushed me over the edge, go ahead and read. But be warned; it's nothing if not painful. Those who led me to this will know who they are, but I ask them not to feel guilty. It's not their fault I want to die.

I hope heaven is real.  

Estelle x

ONE

When I started high school, I wasn't pure. Not in the sense that I had been sleeping around with my classmates, but I had my secrets. I had my doubts about reality and my existence, about my necessity in the world and about my ability to fit in. I walked through the gates believing from the very first second that I would be an outcast. No one would like me; no one would talk to me. I would be the outcast again; I would be invisible again. That was probably the moment when I decided that I wasn't going to be ignored any longer, I wasn't going to let what had happened in my past affect my future and I would carve out my own path. That was probably the moment that I decided that I was going to start faking nearly every aspect of my life. I was no longer a shy, quiet girl who spent her days alone in her room trying to decide if it would be more painful to walk in front of a car by 'mistake' or to slit her wrists. I was loud, energetic, smart, beautiful, always smiling and always happy. I was going to be perfect, and pretend to be the exact opposite of the mess that had walked out of her primary school gates six short weeks earlier. I made the decision to cut my ties with anyone who could contradict the character I created. Friends were deleted from phones and addresses once burned into the back of memory so badly that I could recite the steps to their house from my own blindfolded were blacked out. I forced myself to become an entirely new person.

So walking into the gates of my current high school on my first day, I had no idea what would happen. I couldn't go back to my old friends, I mean, they knew me. They knew who I use to be and they would question the change. They would question what had happened to me. And we couldn't have that, now can we? That question alone brought fear to the very centre of my heart. Fear can make a person do things they never would have first thought possible if given the opportunity. It can give them incredible courage, and the will to do things they never believed they could do. Fear brings strength. So with that, I mustered all my fear, my courage and my incessant need not to become the person I had so desperately tried to destroy, and walked into the school gates with my head held high.

To my complete and utter surprise, my masquerade worked. No one knew that I wasn't being myself, because apparently everyone else was. I fell in less than quietly with a group of girls whose personalities were big enough to cover my inadequacies and forced me to enlarge my own personality to match theirs, only aiding in my disguise. We recruited a band of misfits, outcasts and excluded and made our own group. They were perfect for my plan. With them around, no one would be looking at me. I could fall into the back; stand quietly to the side and no one would notice. After a while though, I allowed myself to stand forward; to bask in the glory of the spotlight and put my act on full display. I allowed myself to act the leader, the confidante and the risk taker. No longer was I scared of my act slipping. I had made my place, and like a puppet master pulling the strings, I allowed my friends to believe that their world was mine as well. While they believed that they knew exactly who I was and understood my every thought, I only let them in a slight bit. I never lied to them, but simply told them half-truths. My past was never spoken of in a conversation, the topic always being brushed off like a bug on my shoulder. People came close though. I would never deny that fact. Rosie, a girl of about my stature and who bore a striking resemblance to my reflection was what I would have called my 'best friend'. It was around her that the freer nature of my character was revealed. She allowed me to laugh and dance like I had never done before. But she held no tormented past, nothing of a dark enough nature to allow me to let myself open up to her. She, however, found it all too easy to relay her secrets to my listening ears and I found myself holding her as she cried all too often. It was Sharnae, however, who was the closest to understanding the misery I hid. She was acting too, you see. For how long though, I was not sure. It must have been a skill I picked up, or maybe it was the fact that I just knew what signs to look out for in a person to tell whether they were lying or faking. She had a troubled past; troubled enough for me to feel drawn to her. She craved attention and publicised her trauma to the world. The words she carved up her arms and the eyeliner drawn so thick she must have used a pencil a week allowed her to be what she needed. She was given special attention. Our band of misfits were careful to tiptoe around her. I didn't care though. Sharnae allowed for my issues to go by unnoticed, and that was all I needed. So what if I had to pretend I was just as shocked as everyone else. It was the price I paid for my secrets to remain just that.