Edema Rue

Alright. Recently in my city, there have been multiple suicides, and attempts. The older sister of a friend included. One who I met. One who could not have seemed happier. Rates are doubling, tripling, quadrupling.  People are breaking, falling apart. People hurt. 

And the problem is, they hurt in their own minds. They fall, they break, they grow, they die. And on the outside, there's no change. When you crush a bag of chips, the outside looks the same no matter how smashed and broken and mutilated the inside is. When people fall apart, no one ever sees the outside. 

Because how can anyone help them? How can anyone change the hurt that never ends? They can't. 

We can't. 

No one can.

No matter how long the hurt leaves for, it always comes back. 

And they're tired.

And they're done. 

And there is so much wrong in the world, but mostly, there's just so much wrong in people's minds. 

In the most recent LDS general conference, I can't remember which talk, it was mentioned that before there can be peace in the world, there has to be peace in people's hearts and minds. 

How can they know? How can they see that no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much you just want the pain to end, that there is always a reason to keep living? That even if they were the only person alive who cared that they existed, which they aren't, there would still be reasons to keep living?

How can anyone help?

Because in the heat of the moment, the thought isn't to write. It isn't to talk. It isn't to reach out for help or even pretend a while longer or to go outside and just breathe. The thought is to make the pain stop. Just as you would flinch away from a physical pain, these emotional attacks hurt so badly that they can only think to make it end.

Death will never be a solution. 

There is hope.

There is peace, and love, and joy. 

Even though the world is such a dark place, such an ugly place, such a filthy, tainted place, it does end. 

Christ is there. 

Love is there. 

Hope is there.

But even these truths don't help people when they're fighting for their lives in their own minds. 

When they're so caught up in emotion, no truths can change it. 

By the time we realize we need to help, it's too late to even try. 

Sometimes it's too late anyway.

But we have to try.

How, though? 

How to fix the hurt?

How to know, how to love, how to have the strength to stand up and fight anyway, even when it hurts you?

I'll find the answers someday. 

Someday, this pain will end. I promise.