Another Lost Life, When Will It Stop?

As has been floating around the blogosphere (more in depth here and here) and news yet another gay teen has tragically taken their own life.  One could easily spend pages and pages condemning those who bullied and ostracized him, the teachers, principals and school that did nothing to stop it, the pollutions and social opinion makers who spew such toxic anti gay filth from their mouths on an almost daily basses, and how they have the blood of his death and deaths of many more before on their hands.  Yet no matter how true that is those that are easiest to blame and those that hold so much responsibility are also the ones that don't give a damn ether, yes they may fain dismay, shock or regret for a few moments but then before one can even blink their eyes they will be back to their despicable ways.  Yet this tragic loss also brings to light so much more nastiness, nastiness that is if not even more despicable at least as despicable as that which lead up to this horrible out come.

As it is that even in his death, like many others before the insults don't stop with his passing, but continue to be piled on even after he can no longer even attempt to defend him self from them, but even worse then those of the anti gay crowed, are those of utter contempt and willful ignorance and lack of hart from those who try to pride them selves as being more fair minded. (and even gay and allies them selves) Those would be the hateful bashing comments of the victim for the unfortunate way out of the darkness that he was driven to and chose.  Bashing him for "giving those who hate him what they want instead of being strong" of "taking the easy way out" etc.  As if it was not bad enough that he was constantly bashed when he was alive, at least then he could attempt to defend him self, now he can't even attempt to defend him self or try to make those supposed allies of his understand why. 

(please play this music video, it really dose encompass the emotions of being at the unfortunate point of a depression)


They viciously attack him as  if what he did was some how actually the easy thing to do as if he was weak and did not fight, as if he should have simply should have taped in to some mysterious power of strength and that he decided not to.  To these people I say that they should be totally ashamed of them selves, as they imply that there is an easy way out of what was obviously a crushing depression, as if killing ones self is easy, it is faster then say alcohol/drug addiction/abuse as a way to try to escape such a devastating illness, nay disease as depression. I mean to say that suicide is an easy way out is almost total and utter stupidity or willful ignorance which is even worse.  There is nothing easy about contemplating your own death about how to bring it about, about what the last thing that you want to say to all those in your life is, there is absolutely nothing easy about it; this is something I know very well as I have been to the point of planing how I am was going to kill my self and mentally going over the suicide not more times then I ever care to remember let alone recount, and I would never say that it was easy, I would say it is one of the hardest most frightening things one can experience in their life.  Yet they don't stop with the absolute reality detached idiocracy of suicide being an easy way out.

No they go on to bash and pick apart the victims for being weak, for not being strong enough, as if they never even tried to fight.  They act as if depression is some how a weakness and a personal failing of the victim as if they did not fight to get threw it until the tragic point where they no longer had any fight left in them.  Depression is like a monstrous cancer yet unlike a victim of cancer we blame the person that suffers from depression for suffering from it.  They tell them to simply "get over it", "just be happy", etc like they have never thought of those things and have and are not trying to "get over it" or "just be happy" which is like going up to a cancer victim and telling them "just don't have cancer" it just dose not work that way and to act like it dose is to be almost criminal ignorant!! To say that someone that fought depression for so long was weak is just so totally despicable.  They had the strength to hold on and fight for so long as the monster of depression slowly smothered the joy out of their lives, it's slimy tentacles crushing their soul until they where dead inside.  Yet they struggled threw each and every day putting on a brave face for the world, trying to live as normally as they possibly could, while inside they died bit by bit! To imply that is weak is to defy reality, it is to ignore the fact that they had more strength then just about any other person imaginable to be able to fight their way threw every day slowly dieing inside.

It is shameful the amount of ignorance and toxic assumptions that still run rampant around depression (and mental illness at large) because this ignorance and these horrible assumptions are what puts such a heavy stigma on those who are suffering threw theses problems, and they lead to treatment by others that is anything but supportive or helpful.  This willful ignorance leads others to only make things worse, as they ignore cries for help, as they dismiss them off hand or even heap disapproval and guilt on those cries for help just further compounding the problem.  Yet even as a community that statistically has a higher percentage of problems of this nature, we are no better then even those that seek to do harm to us, and quite clearly inflict it as well. I mean just look at the message that those bashing this kid are sending to others including quite possibly other kids who are going threw the same things who a struggling what are we telling, we are not telling them that they are strong that it takes immense strength to keep going like they are we are telling them that they are weak. Instead of acknowledging that they are actually some of the strongest people that they are heroes in their own light for the fight, the war that they are wagging, we tell them that they are weak which translates into not good enough, not strong enough, that is not the message that we need to send.  The message that we need to send is that they are in fact immensely strong, that they are heroic for fighting this battle with the monster that is depression, that because they have this heroic strength they can get help and they can fight their way threw it, to see the day light at the other side no matter how far away it seems to be.

(Please if you are in a dark spot listen to this P!nk song, it speaks truth!)

This is an issue that must not be ignored not only with in the LGBT community and not only with youth but with in all of society and with in all age groups.  But as a community we need to put even more effort into ensuring that there are very real resources, resources that can be used by these kids, not only to help them fight the bullying its self.  It is great that we have so much material directed at parents, teachers, administrators and politicians, that's important but we need it directed at the victims as well, to give them tools to use so that they can have power them selves.  We also need to have far more materials about fighting depression and how to over come it out side of just suicide hot-line that these kids and young people can use, self help techniques that they can effectively use especially if they don't have access to or can't get access to a professional like a physiologist(or a psychiatrist) so that they can have tools to help them in their fight against the depression with often turns out so destructive whether it be suicide or drug/alcohol abuse.  We as a community need to provide these recrosses in manners in which they can be accessed and understood by those that need them most, so that when we tell them how heroically strong they are we can give them tools to use that strength to keep on fighting to get to the other side intact. 

I normally would say sorry if I offended any one with this post due to the strong opinions that I have expressed, but in this case I don't apologize because I think to do so would imply that somehow the positions, and beliefs that allow this to continue and quite often at times compound it are acceptable would be not only counter productive and wrong but a lie.  How ever I do thank my readers for sticking with me threw this and I hope that it has given you somthing to think about.