This week two Vermont teens at opposite ends of the state have become victims of despair and ended their own lives by gunshot. On Monday, Leah Short of Dummerston (just northwest of Brattleboro), 16 years old, was found at home. On Tuesday 15-year-old Connor Menning was found in a bathroom at his high school in Jericho (central Chittenden County).
Our hearts go out to their families and friends, to the communities they were part of who will never get to see them grow and change.
We don’t know yet what pushed them into such despair that the only way out of their pain was to end their lives. We can — and some will — speculate about bullying, physical and/or sexual abuse, pressures to achieve, shame, homophobia, and other issues as factors. But we may never truly know.
What I do know is that it gets better. Not wonderful all the time, but at least tolerable and sometimes incredibly good — along with some real craptastic times and episodes of personal pain and despair. Adult life is not all wine and roses.
And I know this from experience. The first of my three suicide attempts occurred when I was 13. I was being abused and had been since age 4. And since the abuser was the one who found me, no one knew to ask questions.
Now I’m almost 60, and glad I was not successful at 13 or later. I like my life.
The people who most tormented me in high school are having very tough lives. It doesn’t always work out that way. One of my favorite quotes is this one, from Bertrand Russell:
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
If you know a high school kid, wouldn’t hurt to check in, let them know they are not invisible, that she or he is a valued part of your life, that whatever hurts them will pass if they can just hold on, that you’d listen if they want to talk about it.
If you are a high school kid, it’s probably hard to see a different future. It can look like whatever painful, bad thing is happening now is never going to end. It’s all so incredibly intense. But, please, just hold on. It does get less bad — may even get better. Find someone to talk to who will listen. You are worth the effort it takes to save your life. Death is a permanent end to possibility. Be curious enough about who you will become and how the world will change to wait and see.
Well said.
Very well said, especially the last two paragraphs. We are often so busy that we don’t stop and talk with our teens as they struggle through what can be a very tough time in their lives.
As R.E.M. sang in their song “Everybody Hurts” which is aimed at this exact issue:
“Don’t let yourself go, ’cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes”
I’ve thought about it, myself, but have yet to figure out how best to say it. I’m a lot better with the written word.
A lot of us have been there. Rock bottom. And so many times it’s because life sucks and nobody cares. We would be doing our children a service to make a better world and life for them.