Writing in this journal has been therapeutic for me. It has allowed me to open up, to be able to talk more about myself more than I have before. I don’t know if many people realized this but I don’t talk about myself much or open up as freely as most people do. I hold back a lot of thoughts and emotions that I have towards others and myself around me. I wish that people could know me more than they do. My only reasoning for not opening up is that I was sheltered growing up and didn’t “live” as much as most do. I was inward with my emotions and there were very few people that I felt I could talk to about them.

The subject of this entry is about me opening up and this is what I want to do. I want to get something off my chest and this is the only way I could do it. This month is the fourth anniversary of the suicide of my friend, Priscilla Sulieman.

What you have to realize about me is that I never really had anybody close to me die. The closest thing was my grandfather when I was 7, but I was never close to him. Up through high school, I was so sheltered and unaware of the world that I did not understand death of anybody close.

I meet Priscilla in my freshman year of college, in 1996. She was only 16, being very intelligent rising past some grades in High School. She was also very beautiful, being Middle Eastern and Caucasian blood, with long thick brown hair, olive skin, and big brown eyes. I was thinking of asking her out but she was too young! For the next two school years, I had a few classes and labs with her. She always gave me a smile when I said hello. I knew she would go far.
But I never really hung out with her outside of class as much as in class….which I regretted.

It was in August of 1998 that I heard the news that changed my life. Most of the people I knew from college, including Priscilla, lived in Northern Virginia, while I was here in Charlottesville for summer vacation. I kept in contact with my friend Andy by email, who also knew Priscilla. It was one day that I received news from Andy that Priscilla had committed suicide. No one knew why she did it, and I never found out how she did it. During this time, I was home alone while my parents were away on vacation. I was so numb from the news and did not have anybody to turn to. I was depressed all that week that I was alone….I did not know what to say or think. This was the first person that I knew that had committed suicide.

When I came back to school a few weeks later, I asked around with the others on what happened. No one knew why she did it and how she did it. The school had a memorial service for her at a local church. It was packed when I got there…so I had to stand at the entrance. They had people who knew her best talk about her and prayers. However, I never found out why she did it.

Since then, I wonder if I could have done something to change things. I know it is naïve of me to think I could have changed things. But I wonder if I was some how closer to her, could I have been enough of a friend to help her out. This thought has plagued me since then. I lie away at night, trying not to forget her… what she looked like, her smile, her laugh. But then a morbid thought turns to what happened the day she killed herself. I see her in her bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror, crying her eyes out, and then deciding to end it there. I don’t know how she did it so I keep thinking of the many ways that you can kill yourself. It haunts me at night when I try to sleep. So much that I can’t help but weep sometimes that it puts me to sleep. But I don’t want to forget her.

Since that time, I tried to make the effort to be involved with friends’ lives. I want to be there for anyone who needs help. However, I am conscience of a dilemma that I have made for myself… that is thinking of how much involved in my friend’s lives. I don’t want to push myself into someone’s life because I feel that I would turn him or her off from being a friend. On the only hand, I don’t want to just disappear from the scene and wait for someone to come to me. I worry about being forgotten and then I would lose that friendship. So it has been my solution to barely be visible to those that I have called friends, trying to not do so much or so little with them, by just sending the occasional email or joke to them, saying that I’m still here.

So here is my therapeutic remedy. I do feel better opening up on this. It has been weighing on my chest for the past few years. For those that are reading this, I hope you understand the weight of my story and understand me more. I know some of you have been in this same situation. My advice is never forgetting those close to you. Be there for them, for you never know when it will be the last time you see them.