Suicide Prevention Day

According to Wikipedia, World Suicide Prevention Day is observed on September 10th every year. (I guess I missed it by a day.) This is a topic I have written about (suicide) because so many senseless deaths occur when people feel the hopelessness that hate produces.

I stole this picture from Zathyn Priest's FB page. I think it is all TOO common that people in the world "want to die." Why is that? What is going on in the world that causes a person to desire an end to it all? I don't know, and I don't understand it. BUT, I can surmise that the rising resistance and hatred pointed toward homosexuals is a large part. After all...

If these youths are on the streets because of family rejection, it does and WILL produce a hopelessness that leads to contemplating suicide. From my experience, and I am NOT an authority on much of anything, youths, whether 12, 13, 14-18, or 18-28 (these ages are not inclusive), often need love and guidance as they navigate this thing called life. Life is not easy for any of us. Is it? Throw in inexperience, hormones, and bad decisions and being young is not much fun. And if you are homosexual? And if you are rejected by your family because of it? How much harder does life get? We are not like animals who give birth and abandon our young to forage on their own. We are supposed to nurture our children and teach them how to live as adults. Life decisions are not easy. Start with school... SCHOOL is not easy. Ridicule, teasing, peer pressure, conformity, all play a part in a teen's life. Some resist it. Some find strength to overcome the pressures that middle school and high school produce, but some do not. SOME, start to drown in it. If they are lucky enough to make it out of their teen years and stumble into the adult work world, how does a young person survive without a support network of family and friends? I DON'T KNOW. Think about YOUR life if you had no family who loved you for who you were / ARE. Who do you go to with questions and seek for comfort at the end of a hard day? I fall to family and friends. 

Dispare drawn from hatred and rejection builds inside, often unseen. A constand struggle to get to the next day can often hit a wall and suicide becomes the "logical"answer. Release fromt he struggle. Release from the pain of rejection can seem so very logical even if those caught in the aftermath sit around wondering "why did they do that?" WHY? Sometimes there is no real logical reason. Sometimes it happens spontaneously when pain becomes a gigantic monster eating the person from the inside out. Suicide happens all the time. So what's the answer? I don't know. I'd say LOVE, but that seems trite.

LOVE is the answer for lots of things, but LOVING is not something we do easily. Do we?

Rejection can come in all forms. When a son doesn't live up to expectations, when a daughter gets pregnant all too early, when a child falls in with the wrong crowd parents can and do reject them with their disappointment and sarcastic comments as much as kicking them out onto the streets. Sometimes rejection doesn't result in homelessness. Sometimes the youths are still under the parents' roof and feel the ridicule through looks, touch, and silence. 

I write about suicide in When Love is Not Enough. Is it a hard read? Yes. Will it make you think? Yes. Will it answer all the questions as to WHY? No. I don't have all the answers. I can only create a picture of some of the reasons and some of the why? But through this book I have touched lives with questions. Readers have and still do e-mail with gratitude for this story that touches on the very same topics they live on a daily basis. People DO contemplate suicide, and some resist the temptation to execute it. But it is difficult. Some out there CUT. Why? Ask Darian Weston. Not sure there is a bottle answer for many of life's questions. People have differing pain levels, and thresholds of tolerance. What some might find the strength to overcome, others will feel it is way too much. My question is: Are they alone? And are they alone because their parents, their flesh and blood, wouldn't accept them for WHO THEY ARE? THAT is where the real tragedy starts.

The Cost of Loving is the sequel that details the aftermath of suicide. How it can affect the people who are left when a person dies. Do I have all the scenarios? No. This is fiction and my brain is finite. Do I answer all the questions in this book? No, I still have book 3 to write. Do all the actions of the characters make sense? I think they do. Are they logical reactions? Maybe, maybe not. I think people often react irrationally when hit with the death of a loved one. Will it all get ironed out in the end? I hope so. 

The Cost of Loving is still sitting at #9 on Dreamspinner's Best Seller List. I guess that means people are still buying it. Buying DIRECT from the publisher is WAAAY better for me as the author. There are more royalties involved. And they have things in stock almost always! Case in point, AMAZON was "temporarily out of stock" on paperbacks of The Cost of Loving. This is not good for me! How do people buy it is it is not in stock. It is basically their fault for not ordering enough from the warehouse. My advice- buy direct from DREAMSPINNER! :D

I guess that is my rant and ramble for the day. I have grammar class later AND a test. LOL. I hope I do okay. 

The death of my friend recently has had me thinking a lot on tragic death of youth. (He was 27). I worry that he was depressed due to family rejection of the "you still live in my house" sort. Not on the streets, but still feeling the "words" of rejection and hatred and disappointment for who he was inside. Very tragic.

Peace be with you,

Wade