First of all, I can't believe another year is over. When you get older, time feels longer but at the same time, I can remember things that happened at the start of the year like it was yesterday. I didn't think I would be here talking about the same thing again but, here I am. Last year in December, I got word that one of my classmates passed away and a few days later I found out that he had actually killed himself. It actually affected me a lot, even though I didn't know him as closely as some other people. I don't know why but the whole situation made me see life so differently because I was forced to acknowledge that being young does not exempt you from the inevitable fate that awaits us all.
For the next few weeks the world just felt different, like his absence had a presence. I started thinking about our times in class, how he would always be laughing and making jokes too early in the morning, in french class when we would read aloud and he would pronounce all the words wrong or in math class when we were all talking about where we wanted to go at the end of the 2 year diploma and he said he wanted to go to MIT.
A year later here we are and yet another young person has lost their life in this way.What makes it sadder is that at our age we've barely lived what could be called a meaningful life. Most of our time has been spent at school which in retrospect is only one portion of our entire lives but at the moment it feels like everything. I think about all the things they're not going to get the chance to experience, new music from their favorite artists, all the new theatre-filling movies, a food that would have been their favourite if they got the chance to try it.
I can't imagine the pain they must have felt in their last moments. Searching for a reason to keep going, grasping for straws. A person to talk to, a pet. And I guess they felt that in that moment they didn't have any of that. It may have been true.
I commented something under a video a while ago "As long as you're alive, you still have a chance." I got a few likes and someone thanked me. It's such a simple statement but it's something that a lot of people don't realise until they hear it. For me it was when I saw a video someone made saying that we are allowed to start over as many times as we want. I had this plan for how I thought my life would play out and it went nothing like I expected. I had a picture of who I thought I would be and I wasn't that person and it ruined my sense of worth and 'purpose'. Life is like that sometimes and it feels awful.
I find that people kill themselves because nobody truly sees about them while they're here. Sure they will listen the first couple of times but suicidal ideation is an everyday ordeal and people eventually stop being willing to put up with you. I know because I've experienced it myself. Paragraphs of messages left sitting in someone's inbox for days. Expressing my anxiety issues and then being left out for having anxiety. Going weeks with nobody reaching out to me unless I do first. My own parents not speaking to me about anything beyond school.
On my 16th birthday, I was going to drink a bottle of bleach. I had had enough of the crying and being ignored and nobody listening. I only didn't do it because I was scared it wouldn't work and I would have to get my stomach pumped and it would hurt. But the next day, I felt a little better and I didn't want to do it anymore. People live with the pain for as long as possible but on a whim that pain can turn into an impulse and end with them dead when maybe all they needed was a break. Or maybe they wanted to be over with it all. They saw no point in life and its endless list of meaningless things to do so they opted out, in which case, I hope they got the peace that they were searching for.
All this happening has made me start asking myself questions about my purpose. I'm trying to find it because I see now, you can not live a life where things just happen to you and you aren't going anywhere. If I'm going to be alive for a while, I can't keep living my days just waiting for them to end. I've been living that way for a long time and now I feel closer to death than ever.
