We Matter

Aug 31. 2020

So much is going on in the world right now, and up until now, most of my speech­es have been about love, hope and peace for the future. And while I don’t intend to change that, I think I need to get a lit­tle bit more seri­ous.

I don’t think in my entire life I’ve been as sad or as defeat­ed as I am right now. In the week of the Jacob Blake shoot­ing, I could­n’t fath­om the amount of hatred that I’ve seen on the inter­net. I could­n’t under­stand why some peo­ple just have no human­i­ty in their hearts. My heart aches. With every neg­a­tive com­ment, my heart aches. I was going to write a speech about how I get inspired to write, but I just don’t care any­more. I’m so con­flict­ed, I’m so sad, I’m so hurt. This move­ment has giv­en me the chance to give peo­ple who don’t have a voice a voice. This move­ment has giv­en me con­fi­dence that my opin­ion, my life and who I am mat­ters to oth­ers. It sucks that not every­one feels the same.

All my speech­es have been about hope for the future, but con­sid­er this one a PSA to BIPOC, white peo­ple and any­one else who is strug­gling in life.

Sep­tem­ber is Sui­cide Aware­ness Month, and often­times, we don’t con­sid­er the peo­ple who have been there for us or know how pow­er­ful the things we say to oth­ers can be until it’s too late. Every 12 min­utes, some­one in the U.S. dies by sui­cide, and those are only the ones who “suc­ceed.” Oth­ers are self-harm­ing every day, and all of those peo­ple are miss­ing some­thing in their life: love, con­nec­tions, hope.

More than 300 mil­lion peo­ple around the world suf­fer from depres­sive dis­or­ders, and that’s just the num­ber of peo­ple who are will­ing to talk about it. Many oth­ers keep their men­tal and phys­i­cal health a secret, either because of the stig­ma sur­round­ing it or because they’re unable to prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy the symp­toms. Accord­ing to the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, near­ly 800,000 con­firmed sui­cides occur every year, 300,000 of those in the U.S. While these num­bers are not all relat­ed to depres­sion or oth­er men­tal health dis­or­ders, it’s dev­as­tat­ing to think about how often a per­son takes their own life due to uncon­trol­lable fac­tors, includ­ing acci­den­tal self-harm.

That num­ber gets more ter­ri­fy­ing when you con­sid­er that for every adult who dies by sui­cide, there are 20 more peo­ple attempt­ing it.

Now, look at the world today. BIPOC peo­ple are being told every day that they are insignif­i­cant. BIPOC are being killed because of the col­or of their skin. It sucks to feel like the world would be bet­ter if you were dead or if you had nev­er been born. I under­stand want­i­ng to get rid of pain and just be able to live. I have gone through that these past few months.

For­tu­nate­ly, there are a bunch of peo­ple who have not gone through that and hope­ful­ly won’t go through that in their life­time. But I implore you: Don’t be a part of the sta­tis­tics I just talked about.

Whether you’re white, Black, brown, yel­low, pur­ple, what­ev­er, please love your­self, espe­cial­ly in times like these. I know that under dis­tress­ing cir­cum­stances, it’s real­ly hard to lis­ten to those who are try­ing to help, but they have the best heart for you. It’s also hard to keep liv­ing when some­one won’t lis­ten to you, when you’re doing your best to be com­fort­ing or when you’re try­ing to help.

But please, if you’re in that posi­tion, don’t stop try­ing to help. Keep com­ing to protests, show your sup­port on social media, reach out to your BIPOC friends and fam­i­ly. Let them know you’re here for them and you believe in their fight. Tell them to con­tact a sui­cide pre­ven­tion hot­line, encour­age them to go to ther­a­py and reach out to peo­ple with prop­er infor­ma­tion and resources.

It’s nev­er too late to make a change. If you’re unsat­is­fied with the world we live in, let’s fight to change it. Every­one in the world agrees that the end goal is to be in a world where every­one is hap­py. As unre­al­is­tic as you might think that is, I’m going to keep work­ing to make it hap­pen.

Even if you feel like nobody loves you, or that you’re a waste of space, or that nobody would miss you if you were gone, you are gen­uine­ly more valu­able than you know. And I am say­ing this as some­one who has had these thoughts him­self.

We often don’t real­ize the impact we have on oth­er peo­ple’s lives, because if we did, all the neg­a­tive com­ments I see under many Black Lives Mat­ter posts would­n’t be there. We also often don’t see how much some­one loves and appre­ci­ates us.

Let’s tell the peo­ple we love that they mat­ter to us. It could save some­one’s life.

It’s wrong to lose so many peo­ple we care about, no mat­ter the col­or of their skin, because they could­n’t speak freely about how they felt. It’s wrong that so many peo­ple feel trapped by the racism going on in the world that they feel like there’s only one per­ma­nent escape. It’s wrong that there are peo­ple out there who refuse to acknowl­edge those who are going through tough times and refuse to acknowl­edge their strug­gles.

It’s wrong that when BIPOC peo­ple speak about racism, white peo­ple shut the idea down. It’s wrong that some white peo­ple refuse to step into the shoes of BIPOC.

But what­ev­er the col­or of your skin is, there is noth­ing wrong with want­i­ng a bet­ter life for your­self and want­i­ng to be hap­py. I may not be with you right now, but I need every­one to under­stand this.

So please, every­one, we need to get up and make a change in our lives.

Because we have that pow­er.

Because we mat­ter. Because you mat­ter.