Back when I was 14, a freshman in high school, something happened that has and will forever stick with me. This was not something small like a fight with a friend or parents, or a failed test, or even an experience with drugs or alcohol. No, this was different. I'm refraining form using the ever-popular word "bigger" because that's not necessarily up to me to decide. I can't decide whether the loss of the family pet or a grandparent is "bigger" because there is really no comprehensible way to decide or compare the two. I'm not even 100% sure why it's a term we use other than for the purpose of describing the size of something. Perhaps it is just a coping mechanism we use to deal with our problems. But, no matter how one looks at this event, you cannot expect someone, especially a 14 year old to simply overlook it.

    It was the night of February 16th, 2010. I was up in Tahoe, in an apartment on the backside of Heavenly, a ski resort on the lake, with my good friend Stephen Milowe, his family, and his older sisters boyfriend, Keenan Pope. I had been sick the entire time I had been up there, so my days consisted of watching the mediocre-at-best show "Middle Men", a two season TV show that I'm confident was written by people that find even the simplest of all common puns hilarious.Sometime around 8 o' clock at night I got a call from my friend Royce Wintermute. "Hey did anything happen to Peter?" he asked.
    "What? I'm not sure. Why?" I responded.
    "Uhh. No reason. I just heard a rumor but I'm sure he's fine."
    "Okay, I'll check". I said

    Then I hung up the phone and sent Peter a text. It's funny how when something big (there it is again) in your life happens you can remember every detail, down to conversations and text messages. That's how I know the previous conversation is accurate. But I digress. Peter Kolenda is the person that Royce was referring to. Peter was my best friend, hell I had been best friends with the kid since as long as I can remember. He and I went to pre-school togethor at the Sleepy Hollow Nursery School. Since then he was home-schooled up until 4th grade, when he came to Brookside Upper Campus. He was put into my class. This was like the best thing in the universe. From there he made a bunch of friends. That was one of many things Peter was good at, making friends. By the time we graduated, he was arguably the most like kid at the school. Then, when 6th grade came he went back to being home-schooled while I went off to Whitehill. Around seventh grade he moved to the city, where all of his siblings had either gone or were currently enrolled at SI. From then until that night he had been home-schooled until high school when he continued the family tradition of going to Saint Ignacius High School.

    So I sent Peter a couple text messages. The casual "whats up" just to see if I could get a response. I had figured he may have broken an arm or something, so I just wanted to check in. Having not gotten a response after a little while, I decided to call his phone. It went to voice mail, so I left a message. "Hey Peter, just wanted to know if you wanted to hang out sometime later this week. I'm on a break so I'm good to go anytime after Thursday."

   Shortly after that, the phone in the apartment rang. Todd, Stephen's dad, picked it up. He then handed it to me with a rather emotionless face. It was my dad on the phone. "Hey what's up?" I asked.
   It was then I heard the words that have haunted me to this day. "Tripp. Your friend, Peter Kolenda, did in fact commit suicide."