Her name was Lyla (name changed). She was only 12, going to Class 6 with me; not perfect, but a great friend and my neighbour. She didn’t top our class or get certificates every now and then, definitely not the brightest of the lot, but not everyone can be bright. What her parents expected of her was always on her mind, troubling her; she had to be smart, had to top every time. They went about it the wrong way, upbraiding and sometimes threatening her and comparing her with her brother.
What neither Lyla nor her parents really appreciated was her extraordinary talent; her silky, amazing voice and her special gift for sketching real life images. That final exam, she studied extra hard — she always worked hard though the results never showed — but her grades were a shock. She got the lowest grades in class while her brother topped the school. She didn’t speak a word when she saw the wretched results, just looked down and was quiet on the ride home. The next morning, her parents would know her results too. But the morning never came for her, for the dawn was a nightmare — my best friend was no more. She left a note to her parents, “Please don’t hate me. I tried to study hard, I’m sorry.”
Her parents never got a chance to tell her that they loved her. She would never become a pop singer or a famous artist like I’d always promised her she would, only because she decided not to give herself another chance.
Though we learn a lot of good things from the media, these unwanted ideas also get planted in our minds from the same source. Many of us are exposed, unintended, to matters relating to everything since childhood, and it does have some control over our decisions. So when even the slightest of challenges arises we think that suicide is the easiest way out. For the record, it is not.
Everyone has ups and downs in life, every new day will present us a new and challenging problem and at some time or other all of us will feel, "Why am I even here?" Many of us may have been driven by these tempting thoughts of permanent escape, but only the strong among us have the power to overcome them. Real victory is learning from our downfall, not falling for it. No one can be anything without sacrificing something and learning from the hard times. Lyla had so many striking aspects to her character. I know that, had she chosen to live, she’d have soon realised how foolish she might have been.
Suicide is a dead end, not an escape. It’s not a video game where you can restart after losing a life. We’ve got to brush off the difficulty and get back up. No one can help us but ourselves. Don’t ever think of killing yourself. You deserve to live.
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