This is Demi and her friend Trenton Cole Bailey Stout. They were best friends. They had known each other since Demi was 2. He was a year older than her. He stayed at their house a lot, it was like his second home, and Dallas was like his sister. They both lived in Colleyville, Texas. As they grew up, their friendship only got stronger. But you see, since Demi was a grade below him, she didn’t know his friends, what was going on, and all that in his grade. Like she said, she’d gotten suicidal thoughts when she was 7, but he got her through it all. She stayed strong for him. She started getting an eating disorder, and he could tell, he worried about her, so he tried to stand up for her, but it didn’t work very well. He was bullied before that, but just in his own grade, after trying to stand up for Demi, he was bullied in both the grade below him and his own grade, making it nearly impossible to have friends, or feel safe. He and Demi were a lot alike, they both struggled so much with peer pressure, bullying, and that type of stuff. One day, the walked to school together, Trenton seemed fine. They had a normal day and went home, hung our for a while at Demi’s house, then he went home. Demi was about 12. Trenton was about 13. The next day, he didn’t walk to school with her, worrying her. But she thought he might’ve been sick- even though he was never sick and had never missed a day of school in his life. She thought about him all day and worried about him. At the end of the school day, she’d still heard nothing about him, no one knew what happened, not his friends, not anyone in his grade, not the teachers, not her friends, which turned her stomach in knots. As she was about to walk home, she got a call from her mom. Her mom was crying, and told Demi that Trenton had died. Demi didn’t believe her and ran home. Her mother hugged her tightly, as the ambulances surrounded her house, and Trenton’s house. She ran over to his house, and she saw his body. She didn’t think he looked like the Trenton she knew. The Trenton she had loved. She fell to her knees crying, and her mom just held her. After a while, her mother explained what had happened. Trenton had hung himself with his belt, because of how bullied he was. Demi immediately blamed herself, wishing she could’ve helped him, even just one little sentence, she was convinced, could’ve changed his mind. And that’s when she admitted to had fallen in love with Trenton. Her first love, ripped away from her. She never got to tell him, she was too scared, but she always wondered how he felt about her, but she would never get to know. That’s what pushed her over the edge, and that first night- she cut for the first time. It felt to het like the pain was flowing out of her, so she kept doing it.

This post is in remembrance of Trenton Cole Bailey Stout.