I know, this is yet another serious topic, but it's on my mind and I need to speak about it. This is not a rant. This is something entirely different.
Lately, many people have been talking about a certain girl who killed herself recently because of bullying. Her name was Amanda. Amanda Todd.
You all know where I'm going with this now probably, but let me continue.
You can look up this girl's story on Youtube - if you do, you are a lot less cowardly than me, I absolutely can't stand that kind of stuff and I can't bring myself to watch her video - but it explains why she killed herself.
Long story short, the girl made one mistake. A foolish mistake, certainly, but nevertheless she only made one serious mistake. And no one ever forgave her for it. She tried to continue on, but everyone - bully is not a strong enough word. It's disgusting what they said. They told her to kill herself. They told her no one loved her. Everywhere she went for sanctuary, the vicious comments followed her. And after she was beat up by a group of them, after her father found her in a ditch, she went home and she drank bleach in an attempt to end her life. She was rushed to the hospital and she lived.
Instead of taking this as a warning sign and trying to make amends, the people told her to try again. The vicious words continued. And eventually, when she couldn't take it anymore after many ways of trying to distract herself, she hung herself.
She is gone from this world. She never got another chance. She ended her life believing that no one loved her. It's absolutely horrifying that this happens in the world that we live in.
This girl never got a chance to make it up. She never got a chance to live her life - she had so much potential. I never knew her but I know she did, because everyone does. And now she'll never get a chance. She'll never get married, she'll never find her calling, she'll never..... live. And it's not her fault, not really. She was trying to escape. It's the people around her that drove her to it.
She had no one.
I just hope that she finds more peace wherever she is now than she ever did on Earth.
But I respect her because she had the courage to put her story up where everyone could see it. Because though I like to tell myself otherwise, we do need to be aware of this. Only by awareness can we ever deal with it.
I am spouting realities here that I myself am in denial about. I am surprising myself right now.
The thing is, suicide is never something to be taken lightly. It bothers me when people say things like "Oh, if this happens, I'm going to kill myself." And I admit, I'm guilty of saying things like that. I did. But I don't, not anymore. Because it's real. It's not showing dedication or commitment to anything. It is ending one's own life, because hope does not exist anymore. You don't turn to suicide when you just happen to have had a bad week. Because it will get better. It always gets better. And it may take a while. But it does get better, I promise. Meanwhile, find someone you can talk to. Talking makes it better. I know - when I'm feeling bad I have plenty of people I can turn to, because I'm lucky. And they are lucky because in return they know that they are always welcome to talk to me, and they do. If not a friend or parent, there are hotlines that I would urge you to try. Sometimes it's even easier when you don't know the person.
The reason I'm blogging about this issue is because it is very close to me. I have two friends in particular, who both suffer from depression and bipolar disorder, and anxiety I think also. Last year, one of these friends would get drunk with her friends, and then try to kill herself in her drunken state - thank god she never succeeded, though she still cuts herself. My other friend, for as long as I've known her, has always said that suicide and cutting was a coward's way out, and it was selfish - and I tended to agree. She would say that you needed to be strong, you needed to build a mental backbone. And I respected her for saying these things, because she had horrible horrible issues and I had absolute respect for her and for her way of thinking. And then, about two weeks ago, she told me that she had attempted suicide ten times in the previous two weeks. I was in shock. And I cried. Because I love this girl. She has been my closest friend for years now, and she has told me more than once that I saved her. Have you ever heard that? That you saved someone? It feels like nothing else. And then she told me about the attempted suicides. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that things had gotten that bad. I couldn't believe that she thought no one loved her, and I couldn't believe that she was serious. Not only was my best friend trying to remove herself from this world, as if she were a stain on the Earth, but I had failed as her friend. And people try to help her, they tell her - beg her - not to do these things. And she pushes them away with annoyance, saying they don't understand, not believing that anyone could care about her that much. Her friends, including me, ask her how they can help - they want desperately to help her. I don't know what I would do if she succeeded. And she says that no one can help her, and changes the subject. She treats it like it's nothing. She sees a therapist, and she's been to the mental ward of the children's hospital. None of it seems to have shown any significant improvement, and I don't know what to do anymore. She won't let anyone help her. So I sit at home, praying for her safety with tears in my eyes, because that's all I feel I can do.
Do people understand that once they make the decision to kill themselves and they actually succeed, it's not a second chance at life? Because it's not a second chance at life. People get a second chance at life in the life that they started. But ending the life you started doesn't give you another one. It doesn't work that way. And I am frankly baffled that suicide is such an issue in this generation - sure, we feel depressed at times. Of course we do. We're human. But that is not an excuse. We were all born to become something, like I said. It doesn't matter what - writer, mother, wife, whatever. We can choose what to become. But everyone on this earth is meant to become something. And I do think that if we cut ourselves off midway through life, we never truly become what we were meant to become. If the journey is cut short then how can we truly get to the destination?
My point is that if people would simply give their lives a chance that a second chance would probably reveal itself eventually. And I understand that I can't understand. I've never been told to go kill myself, I've never made such a critical mistake as Amanda Todd did. I've always had people who love me. I've been lucky that way.
But I also know that nothing is made to last. It may seem like forever and a day until the people who oppressed you and made you feel so horrible are out of your life. But I promise that it will happen. You just need to be patient and wait. And I promise you that if you do, you won't regret it. Because living is good. The human experience is good. Because we need to know what sadness is to appreciate happiness. We need to know what hatred is to appreciate love. It's all part of the human experience.
Suicide.... and I feel wrong saying this in the light of Amanda Todd - but it is selfish. Selfishness is human, of course. But suicide is very selfish. Because nothing you do only affects you. You cannot isolate an action so that it only affects the ones you want it to affect. If you kill yourself, thinking that no one will be affected by it, you are wrong. Can you imagine what the parents of Amanda Todd are going through right now? In fact, this whole community has been shaken to its core because of Amanda Todd's tragedy. It didn't only affect her, not only her family. This whole community knows about it, and this whole community is shaken and some are sobbing and some are angry and some are being on the opposite end of hatred because they were the foolish ones that said those things to her. It's not just her family, it was everyone around her. And it will be the same with everyone. Because everyone knows someone, and that someone knows people - don't you see that people are made in chains? When one chain link shakes, so does the whole chain. And when one chain link disappears, the chain inevitably breaks, and it may take a very long time for it to repair itself.
That was all I wanted to say. Death is awful, but suicide is the most horrifying thing I've ever heard of. So, without further ado, a poem I found online that I find....... insightful. Scary, but insightful.
And as it doesn't belong to me, here's the link.
This has all been on my mind and I had to write about it. Thank you for reading, because unlike most of the other posts, this one is actually meaningful to me. If you read this, thank you. Just thank you.
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