The days after Etika’s death’s, it seemed like there was no shortage of spamming the suicide hotline, people telling the mentally ill to tell them if anything’s wrong, to talk to someone, anyone. Posts like “Please, if you need help, if you’re thinking of suicide, contact the sucide hotline, contact someone, anyone. Don’t be afraid to get help,” like it’s going to fix anything. People constantly look for ways to help yet always fail to understand the major point: that they don’t want your help.
It always seems that we’re on a cycle. Society always seems to take people’s lives for granted until it’s too late, until it’s at the final moments, when the pills are already in effect, when you’ve already jumped off the building, when the noose is around your neck, the bullets already in the trigger. All those times that they cried, screamed, prayed for help, and never received attention, and we were all too ignorant to see it until the last second, when the videos had already been recorded, the belongings already found at the bottom of the Brooklyn bridge.
It’s already too late. When you think about suicide, when you’re holding the gun to your face, it’s not just too late. It has been too late. We as a society look back and realize that we failed. We keep saying that there was nothing we could’ve done, and in that we try spamming the suicide hotline in trying to do something.
I’m not here to offer condolences to any families. I’m not hear in memory of Etika. I’m not here to try and remember the good times and spam any more fucking hotlines. I’m here because we’ve made the same damn mistakes too many times.
People say we’ve learned. People say that humans have grown, and we were better than we once more. That in our advancements in science and technology we’ve learned how to fix our everyday issues. Everything’s more convenient now. We can call people from different countries and send people messages from the moon. We can now watch TV shows via your wifi when previously most people didn’t own a television.
Yet in these advancements we’ve placed a less influence on the human self. We’ve stopped emphasizing as much. When we look at people we fail to see the deeper instincts hidden inside. When someone is doing their best to scream for help, every single motion is a tactical issue to try and make us see, we don’t try to understand and look. Instead of looking we ignore. Instead of understanding we condemn.
And we repeat. After Etika died we still failed to see what we did wrong. We still spammed the stupid suicide hotline and we still told our stories of Etika like nothing was wrong. We made no effort to try and fix that tragically increasing number of suicides every year. And with Reckless recently killing himself, I just have to wonder to myself,
“How many more?”
Life’s too short to hold petty grudges over things. It’s too precious to hate someone for saying a political opinion that isn’t yours. It’s too short to tell someone to go kill themselves and make fun of someone for their mental health issues.
Instead of ignoring, let’s listen. Instead of condemning, let’s understand. Because the people around us, online or in real life, they need us. Let’s give them the help they need instead of being the one to throw one down.
Because it just might be the key to making the world a much better place than before.
