Suicide Awareness Month

Every year when this month rolls around, people start an important conversation. Suicide is the tenth leading
cause of death every year. That is 47,000 people who take their lives annually. Instead of pushing away those
issues and deeming them as too uncomfortable to talk about, a real conversation has been going on the last
couple of years. People started to talk about their stories and others encouraged it. This is something that I
am really proud of. As a society we are deciding that it is okay to not always be okay. We are saying it's
okay to admit it and get help when needed. Now, we aren’t perfect and we still don’t understand everything
about why someone would choose to end their lives. There are so many reasons and it is impossible
for us to figure it all out. 

There have been four major people in my life who chose to leave. They chose to leave the ones that
they love because they felt like there was no other way out. One was a friend that I grew up going
to the same dance classes with and shared seats on the bus. One was someone who I had “dated”
when we were ten but really we were just best friends at the time & grew up on the same swim team.
One was one of my little sister’s best friends and one of my good friends. And the last one was one
of my favorite middle school teachers who was also my little brother’s soccer coach. 

I understand that every single one of these people were in situations where they didn’t feel like
there was any other way out, but I will never understand why they chose to leave. I wish we
would have started the conversation earlier. I wish they were still here.