Emma and I had been best friends for as long as I can remember. We were those annoying girls in middle school that were always together. I’m an only child but I never really felt like one because I had her. Emma was the nicest person I had ever met and she had the biggest heart in the world. One time when we were about 12, right after Christmas, Emma took all the money she got from her relatives, spent it on food and blankets, and gave it to the homeless people in the city. We live about an hour outside of Boston so it was easy, but I just don’t understand how a single person can be as generous as she was, especially at her young age.

She was always the easiest to pick out in a room full of people from her huge white smile that stretched from cheek to cheek. She was always laughing, talking, dancing, singing and all over the place, but in a good way. She was just so happy. Emma always felt the need to be perfect, to be the best and judging by her social media accounts, she was. She had always been hard on herself, that’s why she felt the pressure to be perfect even though nobody else was.

Emma was the star soccer player at our high school and by senior year, broke the record time for the girls 400m in track. She received scholarships from schools around the country for soccer, but one, an Ivy, didn’t want her for her skills on the field, but her speed on the track. She ended up going to The University of Pennsylvania to run instead of soccer. It was here at UPenn that she started to struggle. She saw all her other friends’ posts on their accounts and it seemed like they were having the time of their lives and started to get jealous. She started to change in those first few months of college. She also started to regret her decision on going there and regret her decision of running track.

We kind of fell out of touch for a while, just because we were busy, which is why I hadn’t noticed her depression until she came home for Christmas. How could my best friend and the nicest person I know be depressed? When she was home, I knew something wasn’t right. She wasn’t the happy Emma that everyone knows and loves.
One of our all time favorite things to do together was go mountain climbing, so I thought I would take her and try to cheer her up or at least figure out what was going on. She was acting a little strange when we got there. She barely talked to me the whole car ride and now she was avoiding me? She was at least 10 feet higher than me on the mountain and I tried to catch up, but she was just too fast. She just kept climbing and climbing. But then her foot slipped. Our eyes locked when she was in mid air, and I had never felt so useless. There was nothing I could do to help her. I watched as she plummeted down the steep mountain side. I started to wonder, I knew that Emma had been depressed, but I didn’t know if she was also having suicidal thoughts. I guess the real question is, did she really miss a step on that mountain, or did she take her life on purpose?