This song is a difficult one for me to write about. I think about people I know personally who took their lives because they can't endure the pain of living anymore. I think about famous people like Robin Williams and Yuko Takeuchi (who is so adorable in the Japanese TV series Lunch Queen) who took their own lives despite being at the peak of their entertainment careers. I think about how certain people, from all walks of life, rich, famous, poor, unknown, young and old, all had the same thing: there was NO ONE THERE when they were at the most difficult time of their lives. I think about the time when I was 13 and suffering domestic abuse. I think about that time that caused me to have trigger response whenever someone touches me on the back, or when someone lifts a coffee cup above my head. I wanted to die then, and for solace, I tried to remember the songs from a tape that my mother's then-partner threatened to burn if I didn't stop playing it at home. People can debate as much as they like, but I firmly believe that shaming people for having suicidal thoughts, and people around us who are making suicide a social taboo, have made it more difficult for some of us to be honest about our feelings and talk about it more openly. The world of hustle culture, this obsession with career success and monetary security, has relegated the problem of suicide to therapists, mental institutions, religious entities, and supposedly-convenient phone hotlines, rather than deal with the problem directly. Call me heavy-handed if you like, but this modern culture has turned the suicide issue, which kills millions annually across the globe, into a dial-a-number thing, the way we relegated cooking and eating healthy to fast-food corporations. Sometimes all you have to do is just be there for them. Listen to what they have to say without judgement. Stop imposing your beliefs, whatever they are, as a quick solution to their problem. Just listen. Just be there. Do we have the courage to deal with the confusing, harrowing, and painful reality that our friends and family go through when they find it too painful to live? https://www.instagram.com/p/CZdlA5bpF-T/?utm_medium=tumblr
