Hi, my name is Rene Relick. I'm 18 years old, fresh out of high school, and trying to get into college. Well, trying is not the right word. Failed is the correct word. From kindergarten all the way to the end of high school, family and teachers alike have always called me a brilliant and smart kid. I have potential, a lot of potential, or so people say. But all I do throughout life is fail.
I'm a disappointment, really. Even though I always understood subjects perfectly and could participate in class, I never found myself doing work, studying, or taking time out of my day to improve myself as a student. I procrastinate and use my school days as a time to have fun and talk with friends, or people who would call me a friend.
Starting from the age of five all the way to sixth grade, I could only maintain one friend, one good friend. But eventually, he left the school, and I was left alone for the majority of sixth grade. The term friend can be interpreted in many different ways, but the way I see it, a friend is someone who genuinely cares about you and has no problem being around you. Real friends check in on you and make sure you know that you are wanted.
The people who would call me a friend are people I consider associates. They are people I do not talk to outside of class or outside of school, for that matter. They are people who are only friendly toward you because they are good people who enjoy positive interactions. Throughout middle school, I had plenty of associates. I was always the third, fourth, or fifth wheel of any group. I never talked to anyone unless I was spoken to. I never attempted to overstep any boundaries, and I never had the ability to get close to anyone, because most people had no interest in talking to me.
I was only included in groups because I always had something interesting to say. Like I said, I'm a smart person, and believe it or not, middle schoolers find nerds interesting, even when they do not look or sound like nerds. I'm a pretty normal guy. My parents call me handsome, but what parent does not? I think I'm a solid seven, but I would not kiss me if I were a girl.
Speaking of girls, let's talk about high school.
My freshman year was no different from the school years before, but someone caught my eye. She was not the most beautiful girl, nor was she the most popular, but she was perfect for me. See, I do not care about looks or status. I base my opinion of people completely on personality, and she had me hooked because she felt different from everyone else.
I decided to talk to her, and boy, that was the first time I ever felt like someone was not talking to me because they had to, but because they actually wanted to. For a year, we remained friends. I would not say close friends, but I knew she was a good friend and a good person. The year after that, I decided to get closer and closer. We started dating at the end of my sophomore year, and I loved her.
She made me feel complete. She made me feel like nobody was capable of loving me for who I was, and that I was actually bearable to be around. She said things to me that I took as truth because I was blinded by love. She said she loved me, and that she loved and enjoyed so many things about me, and I felt so special and lucky that someone could feel that way about someone like me. I truly thought I had found my lifelong love, but things started to slip faster than I expected.
Though I did not know it then, in retrospect, it all made sense. She lost interest in me. She gave up on me.
For multiple weeks, we struggled with simple communication. She did not understand me as well as I thought she would, and she ended up withholding a lot of her thoughts and emotions from me. Though I do not talk unless I am spoken to, I am a very verbal person. If there is a problem, I will try to resolve it with words before actions, but clearly, she thought otherwise. Anytime I tried to get something out of her, she would dodge it. She said she trusted me, but she would rather tell her friends and talk to her friends about her own issues, putting up a mask of happiness in front of me instead of actually trying to fix the problem.
She never cared. People say she did. Her best friends said she did. But they are only speaking from bias. If she cared, she would have tried to fix the situation. If she cared, she would not have tried to end it so quickly without a conversation. She tried to do it behind my back. She tried to play me for a fool who would never figure out her intentions.
We broke up, of course. Throughout the breakup, she kept telling me how she did not want to do this, and how bad she felt. But that did not mean she cared. She was only really concerned with how the breakup would make her feel. If she cared, she would have said more.
I saw signs of the breakup before it even happened. Three weeks before, she would lie about her schedule and what she was doing to avoid talking to me. Two weeks before, she was actively trying her best to avoid physical touch and interaction with me, even going as far as to ignore me. It really made me sad, knowing how one-sided the relationship had been the whole time. I was the one doing the heavy lifting for the most part. If there was a date, I was the one who planned it. If we hugged or held hands, I was the one who initiated it. I gave her many gifts, not because I felt obligated to, but because that was how much I truly loved her. I just loved spoiling people, especially the people that I love.
In return, I got nothing but neglect and disagreement. The only time she ever gave me anything was on Valentine's Day, and even then, it was not because she wanted to. It was because she felt obligated, like she needed to avoid looking like a bad girlfriend for giving nothing in return.
She was never ready for a relationship. What she really wanted were close, platonic connections. She put more effort into spending time with her friends, planning things with them, going out with them, and especially comforting them than she ever did trying to improve our relationship. I would waste time and money trying to build chemistry, only for her to spend even more of both on being with her friends.
She never genuinely tried to understand how I was doing. She would say, "How's it going?" take the first response at face value, and move on. She never sat down with me, never tried to talk things through. She placed me below her friends, while I placed her above myself. That was not a healthy choice.
Still, I had faith in her. I thought she would change. I thought she cared about the relationship. But she never put in any real effort. And when I asked for even a little, she got mad and accused me of trying to compete with her friends. That should not have even been a conversation. I believe your partner should matter more than your friends, and even then, I was only asking for more time with her.
As time went on, it became more and more obvious that she did not even want to talk to me anymore. She never started conversations. She barely acknowledged me. But she had no problem being affectionate with her friends. She acted more like a passionate girlfriend toward them than she ever did toward me. She would initiate conversations with them, hug them, be close to them, while I had to fight for her attention.
No matter how many times I told her I wanted her to feel comfortable around me, she would lie to my face and say she did. Her actions said otherwise. She acted like two completely different people, then blamed it on being "bad with interaction" and only good with people who were "easy to talk to."
You're probably wondering why I say she never wanted to talk to me again.
Before me, she dated another student, my friend Nico Robinson. He went through the same thing I did. She started the relationship, treated him poorly, then ended things and said she wanted to stay friends. But by "friends," she really meant strangers.
The change was brutal. I understand that people need space after a breakup, but she did not just take space. She erased him. She ignored his existence completely. It hurt him far more than it ever hurt her. For her, it was temporary. For him, it stayed.
And then she did the same thing to me.
She broke up with me, said she felt bad, but never cared about how it affected me. She moved on quickly, blurred me out of her life, and never made an effort to interact with me again, no matter how hard I tried to end things on a good note.
She left as quickly as she came. She wore this mask of being a quirky, misunderstood, lonely person, but underneath, she was just confused and immature. She never truly understood what it meant to care about something. To her, emotions felt like a game.
She used people as emotional anchors, as crutches to keep herself from feeling alone. And while some people say that is what friendships are for, there is a difference. She could throw people away without hesitation. She had no problem discarding someone's feelings as long as she got what she needed and walked away without guilt.
I am not saying she should have put me above herself. But the way she ended things, the pattern she repeated, and the way she treated others showed me who she really was. Even people she considered close were not fully comfortable around her. That says enough.
She gave up on me.
The same person who once said she loved me more than I loved her gave up on me.
Sorry. I got off track. But that whole situation still sits in my head, even a year later, because it has everything to do with where I am now.
Back to the college thing. My grades slipped. My GPA dropped to a 1.6. I failed. I could not get into college.
My only real friend, Nico, died in a freak accident last week. His house collapsed in the middle of the night.
My parents kicked me out. I am currently homeless, looking for a job in a world where everyone seems to be looking for one.
I have no friends. No job. No family. Nowhere to go. Just a few people who say they care about me, but only because they feel like they have to, like it is something they should say before it is too late.
So let me reintroduce myself.
Hi. My name is Rene Relick. I am 18 years old. I flunked out of high school. I live in Portland, Maine.
And this is the reason why I'm committing suicide.