My close friend and roommate committed suicide in my house several years ago. She had a big drinking problem, and was flirting with serious drug issues. I tried to help her and to get her to seek help, but after months and months of crushing emotional strain, I sort of just gave up inside. I grew distant and stopped hanging out with her as much.

One day I got a text from a mutual friend saying that she hadn't heard from my roommate for a few days. This was not abnormal, as she could be pretty solitary when she got in her moods. I insisted that it was nothing, but agreed to humor her.

I don't know how I knew, but I knew she was dead when I walked in the room. I just kind of felt it. I walked in, telling myself I was just being stupid, but she was pale, face turned to one side, body sprawled out on the bed, with one eye half open. I'll never forget her face. I told myself to check for a pulse (I knew she was dead, but I needed some kind of physical confirmation to tell me I wasn't going crazy). She was stiff as a rock, and I pulled my arm back like it was hit with lightning. She was cold.

My father was visiting from out of state, and I woke him up from the guest bedroom saying that ****** was dead. He laughed like I told a joke, and then realized I wasn't laughing back. He told me not to be an idiot, of course she wasn't dead. But she was.

Coroner ruled it a suicide (she intentionally overdosed on inhaling compressed air cans, I think it's called whippets?). She was estimated to have been dead for just over 24 hours by the time I found her.

At first I was kind of in shock. Over time I became embittered with her. That house she was renting a room in was the house I grew up in since childhood. It was my father's house, but he had moved away and was letting me manage it while I went to school. We've since lost the house to the bank, and I've never driven by it since I moved out, not once, even though I only moved two small towns away. It's not the house I grew up in, anymore -- it's the house ****** died in. She took that from me forever and I'll never forgive her selfishness.