I just had a horrible thought. What if these kids, these poor, despairing young souls taking their lives in the face of overwhelming persecution, are getting the idea from one another?
Maybe I'm just late on this. Maybe y'all have already parsed this one out. But it goes something like this: a child who has never felt supported or understood, who is being constantly ridiculed at school and harassed online and tortured in between, witnesses the outpouring of love and support and pity and "What can we do differently" and "S/he's a hero" being lavished about his departed spiritual comrades-in-arms, and thinks: "Justin Aaberg has finally found a release from the pain."
If teenaged you ever had that thought, "You'd all miss me if I was gone," you know what I mean. It's quite clear from the fallout that we do, indeed, miss these vibrant souls. Talk about learning the wrong lesson - even witnessing the suffering parents has to have some appeal, to a child who may not believe her parents give two shits about her. A final release from the pain; a clarion call for change; confirmation that you are, in fact, loved. If not for the small fact that you don't get to live any more, I'd almost recommend it.
Suicide is not vindication, under any circumstances, no matter how much it might presently appear so. At least (because my conscience is saying, "Well, it's a little bit of vindication"), it's not the best kind. LZ Granderson knows it. Dan Savage and a host of contributors to the It Gets Better Project know it. (Thanks to Ell Deau for sharing these inspirational links.) The best vindication is to grow into the beautiful individual you are and will be. To take what was done to you and use it to do amazing things for others. To leave the world a better place than you found it. To survive through the despair so you can thrive in hope.
I was tormented as a child. Not to the extent that these poor kids have been, nor for the same reasons*. Although I was schooled in a time and place where intolerance was far more unacceptable than it still is to most of the United States; although I spent most of my schooling years without an online community to bring the torture home (so really, thanks to my neighbors for handling that aspect); I came to know despair fairly intimately. As an adult, I look back on that child with love and sympathy - and I realize that the empathy that drives me to look on this crisis in part as a personal problem for me to help solve is entirely the result of the depredations that child suffered. If I hadn't survived, I wouldn't be here to do what little I can to help. And as we've been told repeatedly, every little bit truly helps.
So pity these other youth, who didn't think they had the strength to continue existing in a world that called them evil and subhuman. But take strength from them, and continue on. Yes, it's a fight. Maybe it always will be, though I doubt it. It's a winnable fight, and the rewards are beyond the dreams of adolescence.
*If you want to know: I was just plain ugly, according to my peers. My society may have largely accepted homosexuality, but it also prized - prizes - beauty above nearly all else. My race was certainly brought up at times, but not nearly as often nor as thoroughly as was the catalog of ways in which I was unattractive.
