After the summer of 2002, I went to University to study psychology. It was the only thing I liked, and it turned out to be a fun year, because I soon had a group of friends I hung out with. Of course I had my eye on several girls, but I never really made contact. I was very preoccupied with myself, and I couldn’t focus on my studies, so I regularly failed my exams.
Sometimes I would meet up with friends from high school who had dropped out and were now again in the exam year of school: Frank and Chris. We would go into town, eat a burger at McDonald’s and go to the arcade to play air hockey. We had a lot of fun! One afternoon in November there was an extra lecture, while I had arranged to meet Chris. He never had a phone with him, so I couldn’t call him either. That’s when I made the (wrong) choice to go to my extra lecture, because I was way too afraid of missing something. And I kept Chris waiting. I hoped he would figure it out and go home. In the evening I called him and explained. He sounded a little down. I closed with: “Well, then I’ll see you soon!” to which he said, “Maybe!” I didn’t quite understand this, but I assumed that “maybe” referred to “soon…”
A few days later, one evening, Chris’ mother called me to say that Chris had not come home. I knew he wasn’t always comfortable in his own skin either, and he had mentioned it, so I immediately became worried. The next morning, while I was in college, I called his mother, and she told me that the police were with them, having the bad news that Chris had committed suicide. He had started walking on the rails from the train station, and was caught by a cargo train at night. I was really bewildered and had to think back to our last phone conversation. Told some people who were there and then sat outside for a while to think. When I went back inside, we were just getting a sociology lecture, and what was it about: about suicide! I don’t understand why I stayed until the end, but I felt empowered by my friends there. It was scary to travel back home by train then. In a neighboring village we gathered with some friends. Only a little later did the grief come. After a few long tears, I had already processed and sorted it all out before the funeral, and at the funeral I addressed the audience with the words that I was at peace with it. !!! The speed of it all was almost surreal. But that was in me, everything went fast and had to go fast. And so everyone has their way, I noticed.
I didn’t make it through my first year of college.
