Vinnie's Story

It's been four years to the day since my brother took his own life.

My brother, Vinnie would be twenty-one now, probably living in the countryside, all cooped up in front of the fire with a book in his hand. But no. He's gone.

Vinnie loved reading, he always had a book in his possession, sometimes two, but no matter what he would have a book with him. You would find him reading whenever he could, wherever he could. I remember once, I found him at the back of the garden where a deep hole is (I don't know why there is a hole, there just is), I remember finding him sitting in it reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I was only eight and to see him sat in a hole was hilarious, it was so random that my eight-year-old self, giggled on end for days following.

Vinnie couldn't stop reading.

It made him happy.

Or so I thought.

Despite the bright smile on his face which revealed his crooked teeth, deep down nobody knew of the sadness he felt. We didn't have a clue until we found him in his bedroom, stone cold with all of the life in him gone like a light had been switched off.

The doctors said he overdosed on the pills my dad had to take for his arthritis. Dad couldn't bear to think that the tablets he was taking to help him, killed his eldest child; his only son. He stopped taking them for a while and his arthritis got even worse, Mum had to force him to take the medication. "Vinnie wouldn't want this," She'd say to him, "He'd want his dad to get better."

I didn't know much about depression or suicide when I was twelve. It wasn't until Vinnie died that I even knew what depression meant. As soon as I could, I researched it and the causes, effects and ways to get help. I wish Vinnie knew of the ways to get help.

Every night I would cry and yearn for my big brother. I would lay in his bed, clutching his pillow which smelt of his body spray and the gel he used in his hair. I would live in his shirts and hoodies just so it felt as if he was still there.

I couldn't bring myself to believe that he was gone. That my big brother who was supposed to protect me from danger, from the bullies at school and the world around me, was gone and he wasn't coming back.

I still don't.

I don't think I ever will.

For months, Mum and Dad ransacked the house trying to find a reason for Vinnie killing himself and the deep sadness he had experienced. They couldn't find anything.

As much as my mum wouldn't stop crying and couldn't bear to even utter his name for months, I think my dad was worse when it came to coming to terms with Vinnie's death.

After not finding anything, he began to shout and grow angrier and angrier with everything, even when he misspelt a word in a text message. He would go ballistic. It even went as far as him claiming that my brother was "attention seeking" and that he died so that people would "feel sorry for him." I will never forgive him for that even though I know that people grieve in different ways.

I was the one to find out why.

It was coming up to the two year anniversary of Vinnie's death and for a strange reason, I found myself in the hole in the garden with his copy of To Kill a Mockingbird pressed against my chest. I hadn't been there since before he died.

It was then that I noticed a slash of browning paper tucked beneath a rock in the hole. I tugged it out and noticed that it was an envelope with my name scribbled on it in Vinnie's small, joined-up writing.

In confusion, I carefully pried it open and slipped out the letter which read:

To my baby sister, Nia,

When you find this I will be gone. I really didn't want to leave you guys but I felt as if this was my only escape. For years I have felt as if I was trapped inside of a bubble which detached me from everyone else and as the days went on the bubble grew smaller and I couldn't breathe properly. Like I was permanently holding my breath.

It wasn't your fault. Or mum's or dad's. It was my own. I caused this all and it all became too much.

I want you to know, Nia, that if you ever feel down, like your life is being sucked out of you, talk to someone. Don't do what I have done. You have your whole life to live. My time was up. I love you all so much and I want you all to move on with your life and live them to the fullest. If you fall, get back up and carry on. If you fail, keep going until you don't. Nia, promise me you won't come after me, not until you're old and shrivelled up anyway.

I guess you want to know why I felt like this.

The truth is, I'm gay.

I like boys and people didn't like it. In school, people found out and called me horrible things that I won't list because you shouldn't hear them either. I was excluded from my friends because they found it 'weird' and 'not normal'.

I couldn't take it. Being gay caused so many problems in my life to the point where I didn't see the point in living anymore.

I didn't want to hurt you, or mum or dad, but I couldn't stay anymore.

Just remember I love you and I never stopped loving you. I just didn't love myself anymore.

I'm sorry,

-Vinnie x

That's right. My brother killed himself because of some homophobic kids at school that made him feel worthless and unnatural!

I bet you didn't know that 5,000 LGBTQ adolescents take their lives each year and 500,000 LGBTQ youth attempt suicide every year.

Did you?

But, do you want to know what's ironic?

A boy that ridiculed my brother for being gay has come out as bisexual recently. He is accepted by the people that pushed my brother to suicide.

Such, horrible, disgusting irony that makes me feel sick to the stomach.

I often wonder if he was in my brother's situation, where he was not accepted, if he would follow in my brother's footsteps.

I don't wish death, depression, or suicide on anyone, not even those who were horrible to Vinnie but what I do wish is this:

That all homosexuals are accepted in society, that they are equal to heterosexuals. That no more suicides are because of sexuality and bullying that is because of a person's sexuality.

My name is Nia, I am sixteen years old, I was twelve when my seventeen-year-old brother took his own life. Don't let someone else go through what I did.