http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/16/health/ohio-suicide-cluster/index.html
The headline of this article reads, “6 teen suicides in 6 months in 1 Ohio school district”. I know there are many in this world for whom this headline is easily skipped over or even disregarded as something irrelevant to their lives. Unnecessary information. Not worth their time. For me, this is the information that has consumed most of my thoughts the past few months.
I have been thinking about suicide a lot recently. I have been thinking of these kids in Ohio and a young girl in Florida and the three kids last year from a school district close to my home and friends I have known personally and friends I still know… and I worry about. I have been thinking about school shootings and the opioid epidemic and bullying and loneliness… and what all these phenomena have in common.
Too many sucides. Too many innocent school children. Too many! Too much! And why? I hope that I am wrong. Please! I hope that I am wrong… but for too many reasons I see in this world, I think we are all about to witness a meteoric rise in every one of the above mentioned phenomena. And not ONLY in America, but worldwide.
Recently, I created a t-shirt for a student I worked with last year who faces some difficulties as she makes her way through high school. She reminds me very much of myself at the same age. The t-shirt is very simple and has just one sentence, “I CARE.” printed across the front. I simply wanted to give this student a permanent reminder, independent of any decisions she makes or consequences or results or anything, just a reminder that I care. About her. As an individual. Wholly deserving to be cared for just because she IS! Not just today. Or tomorrow. Not for a year. Not until the end of high school. But ALWAYS. No matter what.
I also created this t-shirt as a reminder I would never “let her go”. She has told me she will never graduate high school. Graduation will never come because she will be dead. Suicide. I do not have many reasons to doubt what she tells me. As a fifteen year old, I remember, very vividly, knowing that I would never graduate as well. I also planned to be dead by the time my high school classmates celebrated their graduation from high school. I did not die, and I do not want my young friend to die. I don’t want anyone to ever feel this is a viable option, but I also am not naive enough to know that this is ever possible. The world can, and will, be a cruel and desperate place for us all at certain times in our lives.
I can honestly say I am alive today because I have had people, amazing people, throughout my life, but especially at that vulnerable time when I was 15 and wanting to die, who were unwilling to ever “let me go”. Never an option. Not even considered. Not for a moment. Even though I did everything possible to make them change their minds. I yelled and screamed and cursed and raged and rebelled and did so many things that should never have been allowed. It mattered not. They cared. And because they cared, I am able today to care for others.
This is a memory I will never forget. One spring day I walked onto the melting ice of Lake Winnebago with the intention of never coming back. As I walked onto that ice, the only thought that kept running through my head, again and again, was of my mom crying at my funeral. I didn’t want my mom to cry.
I am alive today because I have been lucky enough to always be surrounded by people who care about me. I know, on a very personal level, what it means to know there are people in this world who care. I also know there are too many people in this world who do not experience this security, who are desperate to know that someone in this world cares. Kids, friends, family, lovers, colleagues, whomever… and these are the ones I can not stop thinking about… the ones who dominate most of my thoughts.
Maybe I am just wasting my time. Who am I to think I can do anything to prevent someone from choosing to take their own life? Why do I think, against all odds, I can do something that might curtail school shootings in America? Or help to alleviate opioid abuse? Or bullying? Why do I waste so much of my time searching for answers that might never come? I simply can not help it…
I care.
A Grateful Life 