If Michelle Carter was my friend when I was considering suicide, I would have killed myself

In 2014, Michelle Carter called and texted her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, ways he could kill himself and encouraged him to do so. There really is no other way to put it, no way to twist it.

I’ve been following the Michelle Carter trial in Taunton, Massachusetts, and as someone who came very close to committing suicide multiple times, I am disgusted. Because I know that if someone is second guessing suicide, it means there’s a part of them that definitely doesn’t want to go through with it.

Growing up, I struggled with what was going on inside my head. I grew up with anxiety problems and had to debate eating in the morning for fear of having my stomach growl throughout all of school, or ending up in the bathroom and throwing everything up. My anxiety caused me to question my relationships with others, even with my family. I didn’t know if my friends or family really cared about me at all. I knew something was very very wrong, that I shouldn’t be thinking of things the way I was.

I hated myself and I hated my mind to the point I wanted to end it all.

Conrad Roy’s mother comforts one of her daughters during the trial (Photo by Pat Greenhouse/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

My parents hid the knives in the kitchen sometimes when they knew I was getting worse. There were many times where I held a knife in my hand and was ready to kill myself. The summer before college, I felt as if my high school friends had deserted me completely. If it wasn’t for my family, especially my father, I would not be here today.

But even when I was at my worst, moments from killing myself, there was a part of me that didn’t want to end my life.

Because I thought there was a chance that everything would get better, that things would sort themselves out eventually. But eventually was not going to help me in those moments. That’s where my family came in. My father would stay up with me just to listen to me rant, or take me on walks and let me talk about what was going on inside my head. Then when I got to college, he continued to do just that, even if it was texting me to say good night. All he wanted was for me to feel wanted and cared about.

If I didn’t have that type of support, I wouldn’t be here.

What Michelle Carter did was abuse the relationship she had with Roy. She knew what power she had over him. “I’m keeping him alive basically,” she wrote to Samantha Boardman, a classmate of hers in June 2014.

Sure, Carter may have played the role of supportive girlfriend at times, but she did not in the end when she encouraged Roy to end his life. If she truly gave a damn about Roy, she would have stuck by him and wanted to help him.

What Michelle Carter did makes me sick.

Some people scream “Do it already,” or “Bet you won’t!” when they see someone ready to jump off a bridge. Carter is one of those people, but to an extreme. It may not have been said in person, but what she texted Roy clearly still had just as much influence as if she was talking to him from a foot away.

Carter texted him, “Hang yourself, jump off a building, stab yourself idk there’s a lot of ways,” and “You just have to do it.” Later she would tell Roy to “Just park your car and sit there and it will take, like, 20 minutes. It’s not a big deal.”

Killing yourself is a big deal.

Carter was on the phone with Roy while he was killing himself, and, according to texts she sent Samantha Boardman, when “he got scared,” she told him to, “get back in the fucking car.”

After his suicide, she put together a baseball tournament in her hometown and pretended to be an anti-suicide advocate.

When someone is questioning ending their life, they don’t need someone encouraging them to do so, they need support. It doesn’t matter if it is said face to face or through text messages. Words are words.

Teens have gotten in trouble for cyberbullying others to the point of suicide. How is this any different? This is worse. Carter wasn’t supposed to be some mean girl at school, she was supposed to be his girlfriend.

No one wins in this case. A kid is dead, and Carter is the reason he’s gone.

@TheTab