My older step brother committed suicide when I was in my sophmore year of high school, and he was a senior at the same school in 2012.

When I first met him, he did seem like a bit of an oddball, but I liked him. We would stay up late at night playing Xbox and talking about girls. I still vividly remember the night Halo 3 came out and we stayed up all night beating the campaign on the hardest difficulty. He was a close friend to me, we would always be together and he would always listen.

When my family moved to Virginia he starting changing. He became very socially awkward and didn't seem to have many friends. We slowly stopped talking to each other even in the house until it got to the point where we would hardly mutter a "hey" when seeing each other. I didn't have anything against him, it just seemed like he was getting depressed more and more every day. I know he went to see a counselor, but not much more than that.

One day I heard shouting from the basement, I figured it was him getting yelled at for something he did. As I listened more closely, I heard that it was more of a whining cry. I went down to the garage where I found my step-dad crouching over him as he was on the ground. I noticed blood pooling around my step-brother and thought he had hit his head. Then I noticed one of my dad's pistols on the ground from when we was a police officer, and it hit me.

The first thing I felt was denial, it was a dream, no way this was actually happening. As I started to accept what had happened, I felt angry. How could he do this to us, and leave his own father to find him like that? Then I started to feel guilty, and I still do because I know to this day, if I would have just stopped him in the hallway and asked what was up he would still be around. I miss you Cody.

How I feel about people who commit suicide in general, I feel like it's a huge mistake, and the ones who love you don't deserve to go through such a harsh grieving process. I don't feel like suicide from depression is selfish, but it is still a dumb mistake, and there are so many better options.