S joined us in the third year, I think. She was very shy and quiet. I don’t remember how she was introduced to the class, but I remember that almost immediately we all turned our backs and continued our conversations unabated.
None of us were particularly interested in her. We all had our best friends, and our little groups that we stayed in. We were only just fourteen, after all.
S sat behind me in the form room. I can’t remember who she sat next to – I think she was on her own. Our form teacher asked my best friend and I to keep an eye out for her, to try and make friends with her.
We tried. S was so difficult to talk to, that it was too easy to fall into private conversation again. We kept trying though.
S had some odd habits that annoyed others. She used to hide behind doors – that small space between a door and a wall when the door is fully pushed back. She picked at the skin on her lips but didn’t pick the bits off, leaving them dangling like little ribbons. She had eczema on her hands but didn’t treat it. She didn’t attend lessons, but didn’t get into trouble. She refused to use her desk or locker and instead carried absolutely everything around she might need. Her bag was the size of a small house and was not much smaller than her whole body.
I wish I could say that we didn’t tease her. But that wouldn’t be entirely true. We didn’t to her face, but we weren’t kind behind her back. She was just so different.
The day that I broke through her reserve and met the real S was a horrible day for her.
Someone accidentally kicked over her bag in class, on the way to the front for a French recital, and an unopened sanitary towel fell out. And he picked it up and handed it to her. He was honestly trying to help. We started to laugh at the look on his face – when he realised what he was holding, he looked like someone who had picked up a bomb.
This, of course, would be embarrassing to most fourteen year olds, but for one as painfully shy as S, it was just too much.
We were shell-shocked at the evident distress that she was in. The good natured laughter that had started rapidly faded away. S turned white, pink and then red in quick succession, and just started sobbing where she stood, hand still out to take the towel. Then she ran from the room.
None of us knew what to do.
I said I would find her, and see if she was ok. I didn’t like French recital that much, so it was for purely selfish reasons I went after her.
I found her in the lower school girl’s toilets. She was standing on the bowl so that I couldn’t see her feet and know where she was. Being shameless, I just climbed up in the next cubicle to check anyway.
She told me to go away. I remember saying that I didn’t want to leave her alone. I said that I would stay with her, but we didn’t have to talk. We were silent for a little while.
Then we started to talk. I’ve never been able to stay quiet very long, and to me the whole situation was funny. She thought that we were laughing at her because she had a towel in her bag. I can remember the feeling of absolute bewilderment I felt when I explained that most of the girls had something like that in their bag, just in case. That we weren’t laughing at her at all, but at our poor classmate who had picked it up.
I got to know S a little better after that. She trusted me. Her mother invited me out a few times. We went bowling. We went to the cinema. We talked.
S was a beautiful soul, hidden away under her shyness. She had a deep and profound faith, a love for poetry and the ability to make beautiful music. She honestly could see into your soul and share your feelings.
I could see all that then. But I couldn’t appreciate it. I was fourteen. Not heartless, not uncaring, but just immature. We were fourteen.
Then one day she didn’t come to school. I missed her that first day, but truthfully, I didn’t give her too much thought after that.
Days turned into weeks and we heard that she had gone into hospital. We weren’t told why. We wrote letters and had collections to buy her flowers and presents. Christmas, Easter, her birthday passed and we were told that she wouldn’t be back that year. It wasn’t possible for us to visit her.
S returned briefly the following school year. Nothing changed much. Her strange habits and behaviours had intensified and she was even quieter. She wouldn’t talk much to anyone at all. She refused to talk about why she had been in hospital. Rumours abounded.
S returned to hospital later that year. I never saw her again.
We carried on writing. We sent cards and presents, but as time passed, the rest of the class lost interest, until it was just my best friend and myself sending her letters.
I left school three years later. We still wrote occasionally, although the frequency was diminishing. I had the excitement of University, my first boyfriend, my first car, a new job to occupy me. S was still in hospital. Sometimes it felt stilted – I used to wrack my brains thinking of interesting things to tell S and not feel guilty that she wasn’t experiencing these things. We were the same age – she must have wanted those things too and she couldn’t have them.
I knew she was in a residential scheme for young adults. I didn’t fully understand why, but I never asked. I didn’t want to pry into an obviously personal matter. She could tell me if she wanted to.
S wrote about a cat she had. I told her about my dog. She’d met him and by this time he was getting old. We joked about which made the better pet – cats or dogs. I swore blind that dogs were perfect, and cats were rubbish. If only I could talk to her now!
In her last letter she told me that she was about to move to an independent living scheme. She seemed so positive and happy. I never did get around to replying to her. I had exams coming up……….
A couple of months later, I received a letter from her parents. They had found my last letter in with her papers. They informed me that S had taken her own life a couple of days before. They thanked me for having continued writing to her and asked me to attend the funeral. S would have been twenty one in the summer.
So I went. My old best friend was there (we had drifted apart years ago) – she had continued to write. My form teacher was there as well – she had stayed in contact over the years as well. Another old friend was there. F was from a different class but we had sat next to each other for two years in maths class – she knew the family.
The funeral was beautiful.
At the house after the funeral, I caught up with my old friends and teacher. F had remained in close contact with the family and told us what had happened.
S had struggled with severe OCD for most of her life. Although she was very happy and excited that she was well enough to move to an independent flat, she struggled with her thoughts after receiving some distressing news. Eventually she returned to hospital, and unable to cope, she attempted to kill herself.
Her first attempt was not successful. S was placed under close supervision, but a few days later, she hung herself in a bathroom. Her thoughts were just too intrusive and persistent for her to be able to cope with anymore and she gave the nurses the slip just long enough to achieve the peace that treatment had not managed to give her.
****
Happy Birthday, S. It would have been your twenty seventh birthday today. I’ll be thinking of you.
