VRMP VRMP VRMP. Wow. I hate that noise with a passion. Every morning it is the same repeating three sounds, the vibrating alarm of my phone against the nightstand that drags me from my sleep. These same vibrations wake me up every day, although I do not always manage to stay awake; depression makes it hard to get out of bed in the morning. I might get up at 8:30, although I can be back in bed by 9:00 if I am not feeling it. Although this morning I decided to get up. The blinding light coming from the blinds that I forgot to close the night before were a strong motivator.

I started out my day as I would any other, turn shower, wait for water to heat, step in shower, water is cold. Every day. After my slightly chilly shower, I forced myself to eat breakfast. I hate breakfast. I threw together a bowl of cereal, grabbing whatever cereal box was closest, filling the bowl, and drowning it in milk. I took it over to my desk, careful not to dump the milk on the way there . I powered on my computer, and was greeted by the familiar slow hum of fans spinning up which let me know that despite my normal luck, the computer was going to be kind to me today.

While I begrudgingly eat my cereal, I check up on the news as I usually do before I start the day. Since I tend to not get out much, I try to keep up on current events as much as I can. My fingers dart from key to key, faster than most, although not nearly as accurate despite the years of keyboard usage and multiple typing classes. I read up on the eens of the last few day, nothing interesting to me, so I decided to check up on Steam, my gaming platform of choice, and the main communication between me and my friends.

After typing the password that I must have entered around 400 times at this point, I quickly went to check who was online at this house, it must have been about 10 at this point, not early, although considering my friends’ sleep schedules, it might as well have been dawn. I was surprised to see that my friends list was populated with activity, not normal for this kind of day, perhaps it was a day off for some at the school nearby my home, and they were playing some games to celebrate their freedom.

I began to notice a pattern among  the names of my friends, that had all changed, and they had something in common. Almost every name had RIP or we miss you, or something along that llinee. Perhaps I was out of the loop on some joke. I quickly opened up a chat with an old friend of mine, Julian.

“Hey man, what is up with the RIP going on, did I miss something?” I quickly tapped out.

“You didn’t hear?” His reply seemed to indicate I was out of the loop.

“No man, what's going on?” I tapped back at him, curious at this point.

“Jacob died last night man,” he typed back quickly.

“OMG, what happened???” I typed back, franticly looking for the date, hoping to see that it was the first of April and I had somehow lost track of time. Only to find that It wasn’t and I hadn’t.

Over the next hour, Julian filled me in on the events of the previous day. Apparently, Jacob’s mother had been having some severe mental health problems, and around 7:00pm the previous day, had shot Jacob, and after attempting to resuscitate him, he had passed away in the night.

This was unbelievable to me, Jacob had such an impact on my life, he had been the one to recommend online school to me, the one who had shared so many nerdy conversations with me in the 6th grade, one of the only ones who could understand the anxiety I felt every day. Me and him were not always close, but we certainly had a lot in common, similar interests in media, similar health issues that had made school a challenge for us both, leading us both to online school so that we could get an education without having to put so much stress on ourselves. We had played games together on the internet for the last year. I thought back to the previous day, how I had been upset with him because he had not been responding to my chats to him, now realizing that he must have already been dead at that point.

It was so surprising to me that he could be gone, that someone so similar to myself, so young, with so much potential could be gone. I had spoken to him 2 days previous, we had talked about how we were both upset with a change that had been made in a game we both played, to think that it was the last conversation that he and I could have ever had, such a stupid one. He was gone.

I struggled over the next few days to come to terms with the fact that a life can be so fragile, someone with so many things to look forward to can be gone without any warning, and the fact that a life had been lost and so many people who will never know him was always clawing at me; that so many people could never meet him, never hear him laugh at a dumb joke, never see his goofy smile, the one that had been covered in braces since the day I met him. He was gone, and I would never again be able to look past how fragile we all are, how much potential we have to do things that can be lost at any moment without most people even noticing. We are all so small in the grand scheme of things, and yet one person could have such an impact on my life that I could not imagine where I would be if not for them. It is truly terrifying.