eulogy for simon d.

He actually did it. Simon D. killed himself. We went to college together. Yesterday I would have said we were friends. Now I don't dare to any more.

We both did our A-levels in English literature. Mind you, neither of us was any good at it; we were in it for the girls. Not that they were interested in us. We would just sit at the back of the classroom and stare at the g-strings escaping from their tight jeans, crawling up their backs, embracing their waists.

We hung out in the breaks and did most of our revising together. We were right miserable, but we were 17 and apparently everyone is miserable when they're 17. We spoke of suicide, all right, but I never thought he'd do it. I assumed some sort of equality between the two of us. I thought we were friends.

I don't mean to say I didn't mean what I said back then, but, you know, I grew out of it. After college, he went to Brighton, and every time when he came back during reading week he would say the same things to me, about how he suffered when other people paid attention to him, or didn't. About how no one knew what he was going through. About how he hated girls. About how he wished he was never born at all. About how he didn't want to be himself and about how every night when he went to sleep he feared and hoped at the same time that he wouldn't wake up the next morning.

I stopped seeing him then because, frankly, I thought the force of habit had reduced our friendship to moaning, and neither of us really needed that. Now that he fell off Brockley bridge, I realise he meant it all along. Every word.

I let him say all that. I was probably the only person who knew about his feelings. And all I did was agree with him. And eventually even I rejected him. I'm sorry to say Simon D. and I were never friends. We were miles apart from the beginning. We might have thought we were similar souls at one point, but we were never on the same wave length. Never. And when this dawned on Simon D., he had to take his life to let it get through to his only friend.

It makes me sad to think of it, and I cried for him when I read the news last night. My sympathy goes out to his bereaved parents and his sister.