Utmost Care

When a dangerous situation comes by, what would you do? Would you react and hope for the best or panic and be another mess?

I've had the chance to make some new friends as of late, only for my experiences to end with complete disappointments. Although I can go over all the details and make this extra long, I'll try referring to one event at a time. In this case, it involves a teenager (16) and 4 young adults (ranging from 18 to 23). We've hung out and became well-acquainted while pouring our hearts put to each other during each hang-out and understood one and another's personal life and hoped for the best. At a random point, two of the young adults create a small group in hopes of doing big events and getting more friends and doing an activity that would be more fun and hopefully a bit profitable. The others were fine- in fact, overjoyed, and signed up immediately. A date was given on when the signups and in-person inquiries would happen and everyone with an immediate relationship said yes while others changed their responses when the date approached.

Suddenly, the underage friend disappears from social media and the eldest one noticed, informing the others with worry. It's a fad nowadays when social media users go away, the reasoning is always because of problems at hand, or as they now call it: "needing a break." This creates an alarm, not because she was missing a little event that was planned for a month's notice, but because everyone was worried for the girl as no one was able to reach her. One of the friends contacted her father the day of the event, as advised by an online friend and received word that she was at work. To our relief, we were able to relax and move along.

After the event, however, the girl gets in contact with a few of us, one at a time, explaining how she was in the hospital for overdosing to one person, how she was caught and assumed for overdosing and had to self-admit because of her parents to another friend, and just plainly being in the hospital to the other while the last friend received no word. The subject was too sensitive, especially for two of the young adults as they hold personal experience and are aware of the procedures that a person who overdoses can NOT have electronics, including phones, and not anyone from the family can visit the patient's room without an authorized personnel to supervise. Unfortunately, later in the day, one of the friends uses a social media app that automatically updates where friends are at and the location given about the girl did not say hospital. It actually said her work place and later, a different city, causing the group to get upset. This caused confusion and concern on why the story wasn't adding up, but the youngest one insisted her experience was true.

Distance grew between the friends as they were wary and left her with her story, only for her to grieve and contemplate committing suicide. She made her attempt aware indirectly through a few posts later and caused us to react and contact proper authority figures to handle the situation. The youngest took it as a joke and insisted that our attempt to ensure she wouldn't harm herself was apparently "an attempt to worsen her situation." This brought anxiety and worry among the friends and they decided to minimize contact with her as the situation didn't lessen. The youngest soon complained about one of the adult friends informing her father and she tried retaliating by playing a victim card, expressing sorrow in her posts on social media.

By now, the situation has yet to be resolved and more problems came in with possibly false accusations and sudden assumptions, causing discomfort among the other friends who are acquainted with both parties. Unfortunately, things have only begun and a resolution is far to come.