When I was in 8th grade, a kid at the high school I would later attend committed suicide. He was a gay student who felt completely ostracized and hated and figured the only solution was to end his life. It was tragic.
When I was a Junior in high school I had this habit of writing essays to think through things, much like I am doing here on this blog. One time I wrote an essay about how stupid committing suicide is. (Essentially because people still have something to contribute and can make positive change in the world. Or something. It was a long time ago.) I thought it was very well written and gave it to my English teacher to review because I was pretty proud of it.
She didn’t give me any feedback. Instead during the last period of the day I found myself called to the guidance counselor’s office. Sitting in the office with my favorite counselor was my English teacher. The counselor started asking about thoughts of suicide and depression and how life was going. I was very confused and then very annoyed at my teacher for “telling on me” because I had no depression, no suicidal problems, honestly barely anything bad in my life.
I have to apologize. Having now gone through a suicide risk with my wife, I understand why my teacher did what she did. Thinking about suicide is a sign of suicide. And now instead of being mad at her or feeling annoyed, I am so grateful that an overworked high school teacher would take the time to care enough about an annoying, disruptive high school student to call him to the guidance counselor’s office to make sure he wasn’t thinking of committing suicide.
Thank you Mrs Jorgenson, even though you’ll never see this.