Tonight a friend posted the following in group that I'm a part of:
"Have you ever noticed how ugly society is? How much kids are bullied? How the self harm and suicide rate has raised a tremendous amount since our parents were kids? It shows how horrible most people today are.
Everywhere you go there's bullying.
Before you joke about "killing yourself" or "hurting yourself" think of how everyone else will think about it.
If you're joking with a friend in class and you say "oh I'm gonna go home and hurt myself" out loud, thats more than wrong. You might not even know, but someone that heard that may self harm, even the friend you said it to. Self harm and suicide aren't things to joke about, they're real and mostly a result of bullying!..."
She said some more, but that section got me to tears because that's what happened to me last year in English class, mid-October. A classmate did their current event on teen suicide/harm. A friend looked over at me because I had recently admitted to it via letter to her and another friend. But she was brought to tears because our class was joking about it. Even the guy next to me, who's not known for bullying, said something in remarks to self-harm and it was obviously a joke that I didn't take so lightly. We later talked that night because I took the initiative to talk to that girl. I found out that she too, was a cutter. I didn't tell her about me, but I reassured her and she said something to me. She told me that if you were to guess three people in our grade that self-harm, you wouldn't get it. And if you were told, you wouldn't believe it because they seem to be doing alright.
I told that guy this that later that night. He guessed five people and they were all friends of that girl. I told him that I didn't actually know, but I did know one other person. My heart was pounding after I said that. I thought for sure that he'd know. He asked me if I would tell him who it was so he could help them stop and get through it, but I couldn't do it via Facebook chat. I agreed on telling him the following night in person. It was going to be hard and I knew it. I knew it was going to be next to impossible. But my best friend at the time told me that he wasn't bullshitting me. He would be there and she figured that he was the best person to talk to.
When we met up that night, our entire class went to the bathrooms and him and I walked off a little farther away. His friend tried to talk to him, but he told him that it was private. I couldn't tell him, so he started guessing. I looked down at the ground as he guess every girl in our grade, when finally he looked at me and said, "No, it's not you, Chelsey, is it?" That had to be the worst thing because he knew what he'd said and that's not an easy thing to have to do. To tell a friend that you're patching things up with that you're not the happy, enthusiastic person that everyone expects you to be. But he understood.
When I had basically lost my other three friends because of this, he was always there for me. The other three were there for me, but we never talked about that. They didn't want to talk about me not being okay when he was okay with me calling him in tears regularly. But this just opened my eyes.
Not everyone can stand up and tell a friend this, not everyone will tell people that what they're saying just isn't okay, but we do now. Me, him, and her. We make sure that people know it's not cool because when you're sitting in a classroom with every classmate making self-harm or suicide jokes, it isn't funny. It sucks because it feels like they're targeting you, like they may actually know about what you do or what you think and they're just trying to push you over the edge.
What you say does matter and it does affect people negatively as well as positively. It just depends on how you say it or what you say. The last thing a friend wants to hear is that the person they love is thinking about taking their own life or cutting. No one should have to go through that and no one should have to feel like they're being targeted because of it. Just remember that what you say or do does have an impact and in the end, the impact that you may get could be the announcement over the intercom about that girl you called fat or the boy you harass in the locker room took their own life. And the worst part would be when your name is mentioned in that suicide note.