I stumbled on a Teen Suicide help blog. I almost became a teen suicide statistic. Three times. In the end, I wanted to live more than I wanted to escape, I guess.

Looking at it, and all teen suicide statistics and whatnot made me realize today that I fit more than the usual number of high risk factors for teen suicide. As a teen, I had a huge load of high risk factors: sexual and emotional abuse by family members and others, drug abuse, rape, blah blah blah. In the face of that, it seems almost amazing that I made it. But I did make it.

If I hadn’t made it I would have missed out on a shitpile of cool stuff: a 30 day trip around the US meeting friends from online, the shop that sells the most amazing homemade ice cream, a ton of sex, the opportunity to spit in the eye of the person who abused me the most, parties and clubs and such, the chance to have my own business doing something I like, friends who actually like me even though I’m “strange,” the opportunity to figure out what I actually think about spirituality and religion, time to create some really offensive art and some really beautiful art, marriage, cats of my own, and on and on. Yeah, the crap came with it, but it would have been a serious downer if I’d missed the cool stuff.

So I have to say this to teens and anyone else considering suicide: Don’t. When you think of it, decide put it off until the next day at least. Then repeat the next day.
Get help or go play pinochle or chow down on ice cream or txt msg 20,000 friends, or listen to music, or something. Most anything else will do, though of course some things aren’t so hot either. But hey, in the end, most anything else is fixable, death isn’t.

Currently Playing: La Copa de la Vida by Ricky Martin

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under depression. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.