Don't Jump

As a teenager it is required of you to think and question the meaning of life. You spend your years as a teenager desperately trying to break as many rules as possible and then when you’re sitting in detention or in your room you while away the hours thinking about the true meaning of life and what exactly your purpose is. The common trend seems to be that there must be a greater purpose, although you never quite figure it out.

Some people come to their own conclusions that they are happy to live with. Others get themselves into such a tizz that they end up killing themselves or falling into the downward spiral of drugs and alcohol. Some just give up and decide that it doesn’t really matter and that they’re just going to enjoy the time that they have left.

A couple days a go another student from UCT committed suicide. Now as UCT is our greatest rival it would be easy to make some snide comment about the fact that it must be because the University is horrible or whatever. The thing is that there is nothing wrong with the University, well nothing worth killing yourself over. Yes their quota system is a complete mess and true, their rugby team isn’t as good as ours but surely it cannot be that bad?

On a more serious note though, one has to look at why a person would want to take their own life. What sort of situation do you have to be in to make death seem like a reasonable option? Some of you know that I am an atheist and therefore believe that once you die, that’s it. GAME OVER. There is nothing else and while most of you find this discomforting it has a certain level of positivity to it. If this is the only life I am to have, then damn I am going to live it till the very last second that I have.

This makes suicide seem even more absurd, because in my mind’s eye I would rather be living in a horrible life than not be living at all.

I cannot say that I will ever understand the pain or trauma that must be conflicting in your mind to make you want to jump off of the side of a building or shoot yourself, it is something I don’t ever want to understand. What I do understand is the pain that is left behind after a suicide. I know what it is like to lie up in bed at night filled with guilt because, maybe I should have done this, or what if? I know what is like to feel like it might be my fault. And I have seen what suicide can do to families, even those that seem the strongest.

All I can say is that whatever you are going through, it too shall pass. Just keep fighting.

“Hold on, when you feel like letting go. Hold on, it gets better than you know.”

Hold on - Good Charlotte