Say it out loud
Last Wednesday I had my first public speaking engagement with the Student Focused Teacher Led Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas. I’ve been trying to process the event ever since. I keep sitting down to write, but I can’t find the words. Please bear with me as I try to find them now.
Before I began speaking, I was terrified. I have been in front of audiences many times. I began doing theatre in high school, and continued throughout college and after. Then I discovered improv several years ago, and performed and taught for several years. I always get nervous when I’m on stage performing, but this was different. When I do a play, it’s scripted. I’m not speaking my own words, and the character is most certainly not me. I know exactly what words to say and when to say them. I know the motivation for my character, and that leads me to express the proper emotion I need to tell the story. I even know where I’m supposed to stand or sit on the stage and say them.
Improv is a little different, because it involves making up scenes in the moment, based on an audience suggestion, so I get a little more nervous, because I am responsible for coming up with the words, stage movements, and emotion, but I’m still pretending to be someone else. I’m still making up a story. I’ve always told someone else’s story.
I’ve never stood up and told mine.
Sitting behind a keyboard and writing about Trevor’s suicide is not easy, but it’s definitely easier than saying it out loud in front of a group of strangers, but folks… lemme tell ya… when I finished, people began coming up to talk to me, and they were no longer strangers. We were more connected than I would have ever thought.
They didn’t come up to me there in the room that I spoke in, though. They didn’t do it in front of everyone else. They would find me later when I was alone. They would come to me one at a time over the course of the next couple of days of the conference, and it would always go the same way.
They would speak almost in a whisper.
They would thank me for sharing.
They would start to get emotional.
They would apologize for their emotion.
“I lost my sister to suicide.”
“I live in constant fear of getting that phone call.”
“My best friend is bipolar.”
“I struggle with depression and anxiety.”
“I’m sitting at a table full of people I work with every day, and none of them know.”
Before I put on the microphone and walked up to the stage, I thought, “I’m going to do this, and if it’s too hard, I won’t have to do it again.” And it was hard. So hard. And I don’t want to do it again, but I’m going to, because so many people are struggling and keeping it to themselves. Too many. I’m going to talk about it, because it’s necessary.
Struggling with mental illness, or seeing someone you love struggle with it, can be incredibly isolating. It feels better to know you’re not alone, and my friends, you are NEVER alone. You are surrounded by people who are touched in some way by it, but they’re walking around struggling with it, and hiding it, and they feel alone too.
When Trevor died, his best friend told us that they had no idea that he had depression and anxiety. They had no idea that he was in intensive therapy. They had no idea that he was thinking of taking his own life. They were the last person Trevor texted, and that text was sent while he stood on the roof of the building he had climbed in order to jump to his death.
The text read, “I’m sorry but I have to do this.”
He was in so much pain that the only way out for him was to take his own life, but he didn’t tell anyone. Not even a whisper.
We need to learn to talk about mental health.
Say it out loud.