I always thought suicide was simple. I was taught from an early age that it was wrong, period.

It was never the answer. There were always other options, always other ways out. Suicide wasn't

an answer. See, my parents are deeply religious. I don't mean that their cultish were crazed

zealots or anything like that, but they hold very seriously to biblical values. Because of that,

they always saw the commandment of Valchal Nautil as applying to suicide as well as murder.

They taught me that ultimately, they're the same. Suicide is no better than murder because it is

the murder of yourself and an abandonment of hope. They taught me that no matter how hard things

got, they could never get that bleak. I wish I could have been that naive, but I wasn't. It was

seven years ago to this day when I was told that I had a terminal brain tumor. I was only 19 at the

time, still living with my parents, as I worked my way through community college, and anyone

could see that things were rough already. My dad had just been fired from his job. We were behind

on payments for our house. I barely could scrape enough money to pay for each semester already,

and I knew that this news would break them. We couldn't fight this, not really, trying to keep

their son comfortable as he slowly died would just suck them dry. At that point, I was also broken

emotionally. I had just lost my girlfriend of three years to a car accident, and my closest friend

had moved across the country a few months earlier. My parents and I weren't getting along very well,

and when I was told the news, I couldn't have felt more alone in the world. I had thoughts

suicide was simple. Then, I thought it was the answer. It was a week and a half after I found out

when I decided to kill myself. My death was inevitable anyways, and this would help them in the

long run. The decision made me surprisingly calm, and I knew exactly when, and how to do it.

My parents both worked on the weekdays, and they left the house empty. All I had to do was circle

back after I left for classes, when I knew they were gone, and I'd be good to go. I knew my dad

...