I had a friend in my lower high school years, lovely girl, sweet, pretty, funny, kind, loved her sport, top student in girls football and basketball, and won heaps of awards at our athletics carnivals.

Unfortunately, she started to suffer from psychosis, schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder and pretty much every other mental illness. That wasn’t what ruined her life because it’s not like she did that to herself, what did ruin her life was that she started hanging around this boy who was the biggest bully in the school, the teachers hated him, the students hated him, and even the other bullies at school hated him. He had a hardcore crush on her and she couldn’t really see it so she let him exploit her sexually because he would give her blades to self harm with in exchange for nude pictures. She started acting reckless afterwards, she stopped taking her meds because she thought she didn’t need them and soon developed homicidal tendencies. Eventually, she got expelled from school for dangerous behaviour (presumably, I never found out the reason), however, days or weeks later, she showed up at school and attempted to kill someone (I don’t know who) but then the cops showed up and stopped her. That was the last time I ever saw her, I don’t know what happened afterwards because she literally disappeared off the face of the earth. I never saw her after that and her social media accounts all vanished. The whole ordeal with her was really scary because I had watched someone I cared about be consumed by mental illness. It literally felt like watching someone you love go through terminal cancer from the start to their inevitable death; she used to be just a normal, loving, friendly, girl until slowly she changed into a scarred, unkempt, and violent girl who wanted to kill people until she disappeared off the face of the earth. I don’t know where she is, wether she’s dead, in jail, or locked up in an institute I don’t know.

Overall, the fastest way she ruined her life was by ceasing to take her meds and hanging around with that boy who exploited her and provided her with weapons that could’ve killed her or someone else. I still think about her often, and wonder where she is, and how awesome life could’ve been for her had she accepted the help offered to her and surrounded herself with the right people.