I feel like it’s only necessary to talk about this now with everything that’s been going. Suicide is something that people not put on the back burner but still avoid in a way.

People tend to avoid the situation because it is a frequent problem that happens a lot nowadays.

Between young children killing themselves due to bullying or due to the pure fact of depression and anxiety, suicide is the second leading cause of death in children between the ages 12-18. More teenagers die from suicide than cancer, AIDS, birth defect, the flu, chronic lung disease pneumonia combined. With that being said, you see so many stories of middle school kids committing suicide due to bullying, but why is nothing being done to stop the bullying and prevent it? One reason is that kids do not talk about them being bullied at school or the school system does nothing about it and justice is not served.

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the Logan Paul incident: a famous YouTuber was in Japan and went into a well-known forest for local residents called the Suicide Forest in which people go to kill themselves. In Logan Paul’s case, he was filming his experience while walking through the Suicide Forest where there is no trespassing due to the fact many are known to kill themselves. Logan Paul films everything he does and then posts it to YouTube.

Now, we all know once you post something on the internet, it is there forever no matter if you delete it or not.

Logan Paul made the mistake of disrespecting the privacy of a man who went into the Suicide Forest and decided to take his own life, but it doesn’t end there. Logan Paul then decided to laugh about the situation, maybe unknowingly maybe not. It’s safe to say it made national news and it should’ve - suicide is no joke and definitely isn’t something to laugh about.

After his “apology,” YouTube made him stop making videos for them for about a month.

Then another video surfaced, his “come back” video. A month after a “mistake” as some call it isn’t nearly enough time to think about what you’ve done and how it affected people. Does a grieving parent who lost their child to suicide only take a month to grieve the loss of their sweet child? No. Just because an apology was made does not mean it was sincere.

Now let’s get a little personal. Being someone who struggles with depression and anxiety myself, I know how much of a slap in the face it was to see that cringe-worthy video and how someone could be so heartless about their actions and words. Seeing how careless some people are about such a serious situation is like a punch in the face for people struggling every day with suicidal thoughts. Being someone who struggles every day and has had friends kill themselves, it hits home because unless you’ve gone through it and experienced it, you never really know what it feels like to lose someone in that form and to know how heartbreaking it is to know you couldn’t do anything to stop it or help.

For anyone struggling, what other people say and do doesn’t define you and your struggles.

For my best friend In the sky, I’m so sorry there wasn’t anything I could to help you and change your mind on your decision, I miss you so much every day. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about you and what you were going through. I visit your memorial when I'm feeling low and down and when it's not snowing insane amounts like it is this year. I love you to the moon and back.