text: Hi, this is my first post on here. I'm new to writing short stories so sorry if this is slightly badly written. This story does discuss suicide. Also I'm on mobile so the format might be crappy. It was 4am, I was awoken by the ring of my telephone. It was dark, but I was able to find the phone in my night stand. I checked for the number and it wasKatherine, my girlfriend. I picked up but it wasn’t her voice. “Michael?” The voice said. “Hello? Who is this?” I asked “This is Ashley, Katherine’s little sister.” “Oh hi,” I said with a tired tone, “why are you calling me so early?” She went silent, she didn’t respond. “Hello?” I said. Her voice went broken, you could hear her fighting back the tears, “Katherine... Katherine is dead.” Time stopped. I thought it was a joke for a couple seconds, a very cruel joke. But her broken voice as she said “She killed herself 3 hours ago,” made me know she wasn’t joking. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. The love of my life, the one person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, was gone. She couldn’t have. No, she wouldn’t have. I hung up the phone and got in my car. I drove to her house, I just couldn’t believe she did that. She was always so happy, she was loving. As I pulled up I could see the flashing lights of police cars and a rescue truck. There in the distance, there were the rescue workers putting a white cloth over her beautiful face. It was true. There was no way to lie to my eyes. I walked over to the police car, there was her mom. Tears running down her face, her whole face red, even her nose was snotty. Next to her was her dad, he wasn’t showing emotion but you could tell that was a whole facade, he was trying to hold back his tears. I walked up to them and asked them what happened, I desperately needed answers. Her mother told me her father found her, she was in the bathtub. She had cuts all over her arms and on the floor was an empty bottle of sleeping pills. My sweet Katherine had truly killed herself. RIght there, as I heard them talk to me how she died, I broke down. Men don’t cry but I’ve just lost the most important thing in my life. Ashley walked over to me, she had a paper in one hand and a small ring in the other. She passed me both of them and I recognized the ring almost immediately. It was the promise ring I gave her in highschool a few years back. “Katherine made a note for each of us.” I opened up the note and it read, “Dear Michael, I hope you know I love you. I love you so much but I never deserved you. You were too good for me. You deserve someone better. You gave me this ring junior year of highschool, we promised we’d be together forever. I’m sorry I broke that promise. I loved you so much but I can’t keep living anymore. I was trapped in my thoughts and in my body. I needed to escape. I heard voices telling me I wasn’t good enough, that everything I did was never gonna be good enough. The shadows following me, they were haunting every step I took. Staring at me, judging me. This was the only way for me to escape and be happy. I’ll always love you, Katherine.” I put the note against the chest, and cried harder than I ever did in my life. I said to myself “You deserved the world.” I wish I could have helped her. This was my fault. I should have helped her, I could have saved her but now she’s gone.