Second semester begins, everyone is full of excitement, ready for a fresh start. However, even with all the buzz in the air, a shadow hangs over campus. In recent months, we've had several suicides that have plagued our campus, innocent people who feel like they have no way out. So I ask what's next? What are we doing to stop this? In a world where bullying, social pressure, and educational expectations remind us all too often that we are doing not nearly enough, it's easy to fall into the hole of depression and self-doubt. It's even easier to keep those thoughts to yourself, so not even the people closest to you know what's really going on inside the mind.
Maybe you knew these students, maybe you had seen them in a massive lecture hall but never really talked to them. Maybe they were just names, but I bet at least one person you know and love is struggling far more than you realize. And yet, very few of us would take the time to reach out, check in or dig for a deeper response. We get wrapped up in our lives, lost in a sea of juggling impossible schedules, massive amounts of stress and social obligations, that we don't always realize when something is off, or how serious a bad week might actually be for someone.
Sure, ASU, like many universities, holds an event or two a year, to shine some light in the darkness that is the conversation about suicide and depression, but we need to do more. We need to speak out, remind ourselves and others that there is no shame in asking for help, speaking up, or not being fine. We need to pay attention, slow down, take time to really check in with friends and family.
It seems funny to me that something so common is so taboo in conversation as if even just talking about it will upset the carefully created culture of "I'm fine." It may have started out as joke, because whenever anyone asks how you are, there is a 90% chance that you answer with "fine", but it makes it all too easy for those who are struggling to hide in plain sight. Why do we fear having an honest discussion about what we are feeling even with those close to us? Would it really be so terrible if when a friend asks how we had been doing we told them we were struggling or that life was a little dark right now? We all share in this struggle yet we all seem to believe that we are the only ones who are going through the roller coaster ride called living.
We raise money for terminal illnesses, diseases with no cure, but depression, a disease like so many we battle to stop every day goes largely untouched. Why? why has this become something we just accept. Do we accept cancer? Aids? Life-threatening deformities? No, so why do we just accept that suicide is part of the world? I bet many students here don't know that ASU has a counseling service for students with accredited staff available every day. Or that the CM's and Community Directors in our dorms are trained to listen and refer you to the right people if you need to talk to them. All of these things that have been put in place to help us, yet most of the 80,000 people attending this university don't even know they exist.
So in memory of all those beautiful lives that have already been lost, and the ones who are struggling today, talk, start a conversation, let them know they aren't alone so that we don't wake up to another story about another beautiful soul gone too soon. Let's start a positive conversation, let's start a movement, let's stop excepting the cynical views of the world and do something about it so maybe one-day stories like these will be a thing of the past. This shouldn't be an accepted reality.
Life is hard but no one should ever feel so hopeless as to cut their own so tragically short.
