You’re 17. You moved around a lot in your younger years, but still in the same general area. The walls and boxes around you changed shape but you generally had the same neighbors. There was some impermanence but not so you’d notice.

But maybe you did. You couldn’t wait to “grow up,” to be in control of your own destiny. Hang your hat in places that feel like home to you, stay when you want to stay, or go when you want to go. You wanted to drive, because to drive was to get away, to be your own person. Choose where to be, what to eat, how to pass the time.

You couldn’t wait. A couple years back, when your dad left to work overnight, you took the keys to the truck left in the driveway and decided you should practice driving. You got the truck stuck in the driveway. Thank goodness – if you’d passed out on to the street with your limited skills you could’ve killed someone. You brought down a world of trouble, but you deserved it. It’s not because you tried to escape, but because you endangered others. I hope you see that.

But now you’re 17. You’re a senior in high school, you’re a licensed driver, you have the blessing to drive that very same truck you almost wrecked. You’ve got a job. You work the window at a fast-food burger joint. You worked late shifts over the summer and met interesting people. One night you met Elvis. It wasn’t Him, to be sure, but He couldn’t be convinced. Now you’re back in school, planning to graduate, and then you’ll be free. Free to go. You likely don’t even care where, so long as you can go.

But you’ve got to graduate, which means you need to keep your grades up. You and your parents are agreed on this – if your grades are suffering you’ll lose access to the truck, thereby losing the job, and your access to your own money. So you need to focus.

You say you will. Hell, you probably meant it. But you don’t. You don’t keep your grades up. The first progress reports come mid-semester and you’re failing – badly. Grades in the twenties and thirties. That kind of underperformance takes a concerted effort. How did you even do that?

But you know what this means. You’re losing the truck, you’re losing your job, you’re losing the means to get “out.” You might be trapped here forever. You might not be able to “go.”

But what’s so wrong about that? You’re fed, the house is warm, you’ve got cable, your own room. You’re isolated, sure; we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere, but you’ve got a powerful imagination. Maybe that’s the problem, though? That powerful imagination poisoned your mind with fantasies of what it will be like to be “gone,” free, elsewhere. Anywhere else.

You know you’re in another heap of trouble. You might be conflating that amount of trouble, because you haven’t endangered anyone else with this transgression, but your fear has taken hold. The fantasies are fleeting away.

So you can’t get out. Not that way. What do you do? Just go ahead and kill yourself? That seems extreme, doesn’t it?

But you do. You kill yourself. You tell a few friends goodbye, not forever, not enough to alarm them, but you make sure the words are said. You get home before anyone else, get your Bible off the shelf, and find a passage that fits your mood. You settle on Psalms 55:

Listen to my prayer, O God,
    do not ignore my plea;
²     hear me and answer me.
My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught
³     because of what my enemy is saying,
    because of the threats of the wicked;
for they bring down suffering on me
    and assail me in their anger.

⁴ My heart is in anguish within me;
    the terrors of death have fallen on me.
⁵ Fear and trembling have beset me;
    horror has overwhelmed me.
⁶ I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
    I would fly away and be at rest.
⁷ I would flee far away
    and stay in the desert;^[c]
8 I would hurry to my place of shelter,
    far from the tempest and storm.”

⁹ Lord, confuse the wicked, confound their words,
    for I see violence and strife in the city.
¹⁰ Day and night they prowl about on its walls;
    malice and abuse are within it.
¹¹ Destructive forces are at work in the city;
    threats and lies never leave its streets.

¹² If an enemy were insulting me,
    I could endure it;
if a foe were rising against me,
    I could hide.
¹³ But it is you, a man like myself,
    my companion, my close friend,
¹⁴ with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
    at the house of God,
as we walked about
    among the worshipers.

¹⁵ Let death take my enemies by surprise;
    let them go down alive to the realm of the dead,
    for evil finds lodging among them.

¹⁶ As for me, I call to God,
    and the Lord saves me.
¹⁷ Evening, morning and noon
    I cry out in distress,
    and he hears my voice.
¹⁸ He rescues me unharmed
    from the battle waged against me,
    even though many oppose me.
¹⁹ God, who is enthroned from of old,
    who does not change—
he will hear them and humble them,
    because they have no fear of God.

²⁰ My companion attacks his friends;
    he violates his covenant.
²¹ His talk is smooth as butter,
    yet war is in his heart;
his words are more soothing than oil,
    yet they are drawn swords.

²² Cast your cares on the Lord
    and he will sustain you;
he will never let
    the righteous be shaken.
²³ But you, God, will bring down the wicked
    into the pit of decay;
the bloodthirsty and deceitful
    will not live out half their days.

But as for me, I trust in you.

It’s an odd choice. You’ve never been terribly religious, that we recall. But maybe you were. You found that passage quickly enough, and it certainly seems to apply. You’re a mystery, never to be solved.

You get your father’s shotgun from under his bed, load it with the first shells you find, and go to the back yard. You sit down on the steps of the new house he’d been building, set the Bible beside you, place the note you’ve written in the pages to mark the passage, and put the barrel in your mouth. You pull the trigger. You blow the back of your head off, but thankfully your face is intact.

You’re dead.

You’re “out.” You’ve “gone.” You’re “free,”

—

We find you later that day. More specifically, I find you. You… don’t look good. I wail. My stepmother cries. My mother cries. My father reads your note and cries. God dies underneath my fingertips as I feel his shoulders tremble.

Soon everyone is crying. Everyone who knew you, loved you. Strangers appear telling us what you meant to them, how you made them smile, laugh. How they loved your laugh, your fiery red hair, your easy demeanor and quick wit. They write poems and tributes. You move the entire town.

You could’ve done anything, You could’ve been anything, anyone. I often wonder what you might’ve been. I’ll never know. You’re a mystery, never to be solved.

It all happened so fast. Did you decide that day? Did you think to yourself a week, a month, prior “I swear to God if things don’t go my way this year, I’m just going to end it”? Did you have alternatives in mind, or just careen down the parkway to “Kill Yourself”? Were there exits along the way for “Talk to Someone,” “Make a Plan,” or “Fucking Anything Else”? Or did you just look at your fate in your hands and think “No, thank you. I’d rather have nothing”?

I wish you’d known. You can talk to someone. You can make a plan. You can do literally fucking anything else. You could have tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. I can’t promise infinity, or next week, or three days from now, but you could’ve had tomorrow. I wish you’d had just one more day – one more day to talk about it. I’d like to think that’s all it would take. One more day, and we could have a nice talk. You’d wake up to a new day and think “I could keep doing this…”

If you’d given yourself one more day, maybe we could’ve had the last thirty years. I wonder what we could’ve done together? I’ll never know. We’re a mystery, never to be solved.

—

If you’re reading this, you can take a day. One More Day. Talk about it, choose to listen, let someone help you make a plan. Try again tomorrow.

I’ll be here tomorrow. I hope you will, too.

If you’re considering ending it all, call 988. Call a friend. Call an enemy, tell them you want to persevere just to spite them. Call me. Take the exit, and give yourself One More Day. It could lead to tomorrow, which could lead to more.

988