remember that email?

You know...the one about the boy who sees the other boy carrying all his books home from school on a friday and he goes and helps his carry them and they strike up a conversation and end up best friends ... and flash forward to graduation and the book carrying boy is valedictorian and he talks about how this specific day he was going to go home and kill himself but for the grace of this random boy who helped him with his books and talked to him?

Well...that happened to me tonight. I was at home up late (obviously) drinking a beer and working on a baby blanket for my brother and I hear these voices outside. Well, my first instinct was to hide myself (I am near detroit) so I turned off all the lights and i opened the door with the phone in my hand so i could hear what was going on and call 911 if i needed to.

It was a groups of kids in the middle of the street. Talking to one specific who was prolly drunk and was crying over some chick who is supposedly having his kid. So, once the initial worry was over and I knew nothing bad was going to happen, I watched as they tried to talk this kid down and then watched as they all left him to walk home (i guessed) Then I saw him walk over to a tree in the field across the street from my house and heard him screaming in agony. I remember that scream. I made that noise many times in my life. Like my life was over and no one understood.

I walked out of the house and sat on the porch. I think he saw me. He screamed again. I walked slowly towards him (he was across the street) and said something like "hello....I'm not triong to interfere...but I'm here if you need to talk to someone" I continued to walk across the street towards him. When I got close to him he broke down and started crying. I asked him if he wanted a beer or something and he followed me over to my porch and then he handed me something and asked me to throw it away. When I walked in the house to get a beer for him (and me) and a smoke I set what he had given me down...it was shoelaces.

So we sat out front and talked for awhile. Nice kid. 21. In love with a married woman. She told him tonight she's having his kid. He's devastated. He thinks he will never get anyone better than her. I told him he's young and he deserves a thousand times better. He deserves to be number one in a woman's life. I told him not to deny his child and to take care of it like a man....but to get away from her as fast as he can. He deserves better (don't we all?) at one point he tried to hit on me telling me I was beautiful and said something explicitly sexual. I told him to stop. I'm happily married and I love my husband and I'm just trying to help him.

And that's when he told me. (remember the email?) He told me that if I hadn't walked over there when I did that he was planning on hanging himself from the tree across the street. granted it was shoelaces and he prolly couldn't have succeeded...but he was thinking of it. And when I called out to him and walked over there to see what was going on....I stopped him.

So we talked some more and I think I made some sense to him cuz he calmed down. He just left about 10 minutes ago to go sleep in his car. And I walked inside the house and started to cry. Cuz what if I didn't walk outside to see what was going on? What if I had just gone about my business here in the house? or worse been asleep?

I've been there. I have been to the bottom where life doesn't seem worth living. And I thank the gods I was able to talk a young boy thru those thoughts at least for tonight.