Magnus G. once walked down a congested hallway in high school, the hood of his jacket covering his charcoal-lined emerald eyes and bleach-colored, swooped hair, just to avoid the possible death glares he would come across from those who ridiculed him for how he dressed and who he loved. Having felt alone in a world that not only snubbed homosexuality, but also those who faced mental instability as well, he saw he had nowhere and too few to turn to for help inside the school.

Once a boisterous, enthusiastic, sweet hearted, adventurous child with a happy early childhood, he forcefully grew into a shadow of a person whose true personality only flickered so dimly. A personality that was a faint star shimmering during the darkest night compared to an extreme sun flaring dangerously at noon over a desert. In its place formed a desolate, agitated, overwhelmed, petrified, innocent persona inaudibly crying out and pleading for freedom against the harrowing realities it never asked for.

Plagued with schizophrenia since the middle of the ninth grade, already dealing with massive bouts of depression since the fourth grade due to the death of his mother and absence of his father, and isolating himself with a thick cloak of paranoia, there were very few, overall, he allowed to pass through the concrete-steel meshed wall safeguarding his heart. However, he questioned those few and their affection for him of any degree.

So what does a young man, who not only hated himself for being the way he was, but second-guessed those who cared about him deeply, do when the mental and emotional destruction wore him until he was incapable to block out the demonic voices that wreaked havoc on his already fragile mind?

He does every possible thing he can find to suppress them, or evict them entirely.

Magnus eventually did eliminate them. However, he also left behind the soulless shell of himself, as well, in a puddle of blood and a river of the crimson streaming from a deep wound to the neck.

He was only 16 years old at the time of his death. What makes this paper hard to write, though, is the fact that he was one of the greatest friends a girl like me could ever ask for.

So here my question: What is the worth of one human soul that has, still is being, or will be lived; although we as people feel that that one should not be present, conceived, or even alive?

My hope is that a life is a priceless thing, considering the fact that it is something that is irreplaceable.

Yet, why do we feel that some lives are not worth considering as precious things? Babies are a blessing, but there are laws that allow having them killed because they are the wrong gender or the mother of the child does not want to take responsibility for them. In spite of that, is that not why we have adoption? To place a child we do not wish to care for or are unable to care for, in a home where a couple, who were unable to conceive one of their own, can love them.

Is it wrong for people to have the right to be happy too? Not with just themselves, but whoever they wish to marry. If they are, why are there laws forbidding same-sex marriage? We have the right to love and have someone love us also. Just because it goes against religious teaching, I thought we were all supposed to be born with the same rights.

All life, big or small, is worth something, to someone, and by the look of it all, it seems many people lack the common sense to respect that.

With the little respect, the world is losing valuable lives each day to suicide, drug abuse, isolation, because we feel the lives are just one out of millions of others on the world.

Now, I am not saying we should befriend every person we meet. What I am saying is that we should acknowledge him or her for who they are, remembering that they are as human as we are, and recognize that they are capable of as much as we are; and we are capable of changing the world if we tried.

No one should feel they cannot turn to anyone when in search of a friend, and nor should they have their lives cut abruptly because someone did not bother to think that he or she would be a cherished person.

After trying to understand my best friend’s death, I can somewhat comprehend why he did what he did. I started to get the impression that he felt I was the only one who could see beyond his forbidding exterior, and know that there was an incredible, yet helpless, person struggling to be free of a long battle with depression and hysteria. That mirrored through his green eyes, there was an exhausted and fatigued fighter ready to surrender in order to fight no more.

With that, I am happy that Magnus is no longer hurting and I do not blame him for how his life ended. However, I consider myself lucky over the fact that I have gotten to know a great person such as him.