I remember sitting in a high school classroom and hearing a girl come over the intercom. I've heard plenty of morning announcements in my life, but this one stood out because about halfway into what she was saying she began to choke up and I could hear her crying. She was talking about drug addiction and depression. Not her own though, it was the one year anniversary of her brother’s drug overdose.
At the time, I’m not sure her message truly resonated with me. As I’ve been getting a little bit older and maturing, my perspectives changed. I had friends in high school that would cry for other friends and I had no understanding of that at all. I’ve become much more selfless in the past year alone and I too started to feel pain for other people’s mistakes. As I reflected on this moment of this girl crying over her brother’s suicide I thought about how much his action affected her and the rest of her life. Not just her, but their parents, friends and every person’s life that he would have impacted if he did not make that decision.
Sometimes when I hear about someone’s suicide I would think, what if I could have been there? At the very deepest, darkest moment in their life right before the action and somehow give them hope. I’ve seen posters around SCC entitled “I’m Glad I Failed,” about students who attempted suicide and survived. I wonder if everyone failed at taking their own life that at some point they could get to the place in their life where they could say, “I’m Glad I Failed.”
To anyone who has been there or know someone who has I just want to encourage you that no matter how hopeless or how painful the world and your life seems at the darkest hour that life is too beautiful to end prematurely. There are too many great experiences to go through and joy to partake in to let something that seems like an enormous problem ruin it. Suicide is ultimately selfish because you are not letting others experience the joy that you give them. If in the moment you decide to not perform the action, 20 years down the road you will most likely see that problem that seemed so huge will really look so minuscule. Dark hours come in everyone’s life, they make you who you are, but the good times in life outweigh the bad times so much more that no one can afford to miss out on them.
