"BENJAMIN NO!!!!!"

Jade Neptune, and a new article on College Suicides, gives us these last two words sent to Ben Salas by a father to his son moments after receiving word that he intended to kill himself that day, April 26, 2023.

In a compelling article titled The Heartbreak of College Suicides, Jade Neptune, a recent college graduate from UNC Chapel Hill, tells the story of Ben's struggles in the last months of his life as well as her own mental health problems that have been with her since at least the fourth grade.

Both Ben and Jade were high achievers growing up, and in their college years. Ben was an outstanding member of the N.C. State Rifle team, planning to transfer to West Virginia on scholarship after his State team disbanded.

Jade has always wanted to be the youngest and the best, graduating from college when she was just nineteen years old, an age when most students are in their sophomore year.

Ben will always be twenty-one. Jade is just twenty, now lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, and hopes to become a writer and journalist.

You can read the entire article in the most recent edition of the journal magazine, The Assembly, found at http://www.theassemblync.com.

In this new podcast, Jade talks candidly about both she and Ben, trying to put her finger on what she views as the most serious mental health problem she has faced and faces even today.

Jade has had anxiety issues, panic attacks, and an obsessive-compulsive disorder, commonly known as OCD. But she says it is loneliness that stalks her the most.

Still, she is a hopeful, aspiring writer, wanting to be happy.