… there is no way to turn way from it, but we are often poorly prepared to deal with it, especially when it involves teenagers. Face it: adults like it when teenagers finally learn to hide some of their emotions. Maturity = knowing how to leave other people out of your bad shit. We reward this behavior and we model it by building and maintaining a Barbified and Kenified culture. But every now and then a kid goes too far for their own good and, not to shock you or anything, but the morgue is not the appropriate place to have “that conversation” about life.
I’ve been lucky. I was never particularly suicidal, nor were any of my relatives as far as I know. As I was growing up, only two people I knew killed themselves and a few tried, but they were not people I was close to. I once had to drag my roommate off the roof of a building. I have a very close friend now who was very depressed and suicidal as a teenager. There have been times in the past when we would go somewhere and he’d point out a spot that he had sat for a long time contemplating suicide. It was always a high place, over a road or a train track. It is rather chilling to hear such a thing while standing there looking at the spot.
So now, today, a friend of mine has someone in her life who is in a state of depression and need but who is living in a setting where there clearly is not enough support, so she is intervening, or at least, trying to. She, my friend, happens to be a blogger. So like I was saying to Lizzie the other day at dinner, “If you hang around with a blogger, you’re going to get blogged.” (She gave me a dirty look.)
OK, so this blogger has decided to share this with others for obvious, and good reasons. I want you to do me a favor and take some time off from reading my blog, and visit this post:
Then go find some teenager and give them a hug. But make sure it is a teenager you know and that the hug is appropriate.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
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Read and commented.
Me,too(read and commented). I’ve been down Depression Road,and done all of that. Not as a teenager, and I never thought of suicide. . . but still. . . .
Anne G
oh, I’ve been down that road, and do I ever wish I’d have had someone to help me through that shit…
granted, I did eventually manage to pull myself out of that swamp by my own bootstraps, but at the cost of dropping out of High-School. I’d really have rather graduated, but better alive with a belated GED than dead and on the Honor Roll.
Thanks for this Greg. I visited, read and commented.
Having a very strange and ultimately still very confusing relationship with depression, I really appreciated Stephanie’s post. I have printed it and sent it to someone who really needs to read it, not so much for herself – but as a reflection on how she is dealing with situations that could well head in that same direction.