Cause and Effect
What makes a person want to do away with themselves? To commit suicide? There is not just one answer. Many things can do it. But I'm going to tell you a story. A story about a girl and what caused her to commit this terrible act. Her name was Kathryn Gorman.
When Kathryn was in elementary school she was very shy. She didn't talk to too many people. She had only two friends in the world: Sarah and Hollywood. Sarah lived next door to Kathryn. Sarah wasn't a very good friend. She would take Kathryn's cupcake at lunch, copy her answers on tests at school, and sometimes trip her in the hall just to get a good laugh. Kathryn would put up with all of this because Sarah would protect her from the scary people that lived in their neighborhood.
Hollywood was Kathryn's yellow labrador. She named that because her mom once told her that's where all the movie stars lived. Kathryn dreamed of someday being a movie star. She wanted people to want to be around her, to want her autograph, and to walk on the red carpet with people shouting her name. But the fact was Kathryn was not a movie star. She was just a young girl living in a poor neighborhood with her mom and dad.
One day when Kathryn was ten years old she came home from school to find her parents have a fight. This was really nothing all that new. She took Hollywood outside and hoped that her parents would calm down. Kathryn hated when her parents fought. But Hollywood helped her take her mind off of it. She played with him in her backyard trying to block out all the shouting and sounds of breaking glass. It started to get dark when all the fighting finally stopped. She heard her dad slam the front door close and speed out of the driveway. She was almost afraid to go inside, but it was getting cold out. She walked inside to find her mom crying and holding a bottle of Jack.
Kathryn never saw her dad again. Pretty soon she and her mother moved into an apartment complex. She had to get rid of Hollywood. Now Kathryn really felt alone. She didn't know anyone and she went to a new school. She didn't even have Sarah anymore. Her mom wasn't any good to talk to because she always had some sort of drink in her hand.
The years went by, Kathryn and her mother moved around a lot. This was mostly because of her mother inability to keep a job and pay rent. Kathryn was in high school now. She was a junior. She still kept to herself but now took up the habit of wearing a lot of fey clothing, eating less, barely sleeping, and generally feeling very downcast. Now her only friends were a portable cd player she stole from the Wal-Mart, and a notebook in which she wrote. Writing was her new escape. Escape from the constant torture she got at school from her peers for being "weird." From her teachers for not doing her work. From her mother-in Kathryn's opinion-for just being alive.
Kathryn hated the way she lived. Living with her alcoholic mother in that rundown apartment. Being yelled at every single day by someone for something that she had-apparently-done wrong. She cried almost every night. She longed for an escape. She knew there was a way out. She had no friends, and might as well have no family. Why not end it now? What was there? She's thought of it before. She's even tried it before. This time, she'll do it right. Before she left the house she put one last entry in her journal:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. *
Kathryn went climbed to the top of her apartment complex. She could see the whole city lit up in the dark. It was the only time she ever thought it looked beautiful. She walked to the edge of the building. She took one last deep breath and jumped...
*exerpt by W H Auden
From Twelve Songs
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