She’s crying again. After play rehearsals, she smiles as she walks out, only to then abruptly cry. Sometimes, if you are unlucky, you will catch a glimpse of the many scars on her wrists. This is not uncommon with people dealing with depression and anxiety; I have witnessed this a multitude of times to the point where I have grown accustomed to it. For six years I had to give my heart and patience to those suffering with this illness, but my love and affection only went so far, because I did not know what I was up against or how to help them. I always wondered if they had not grown up in such a strict faith, would their circumstances be different? Would she not have purposely inflicted pain onto herself to feel something other than the pain within? “From 2015 to 2017, Utah's age-adjusted suicide rate was 22.0 per 100,000 persons, with an average of 628 suicides per year”; with this in mind, it lead me to always be in a state of fear wondering if my friend would actually be successful at her attempts to end her own life.

 

I had many talented friends in the arts and STEM academics that put on a genuine show everytime they were met with an audience; what I mean by this is that they felt that since nobody can help them or see through their eyes, it was just easier to play it off. Most of the time their parents told them to stop complaining or to smile more, but they also did not know how to help them either. Between costly therapy sessions and prescribed drugs, there was only so much a parent could do. I had a friend named McKayla who would always say “I don’t know” when faced with logic. She was the most difficult person to try to help, because every solution was either rejected or did not work. Her mother was LDS and tried her best to quiet these situations. The breaking point for me and her as well was the first real attempt to end her life in the school bathroom; I can still imagine the poor girl screaming as she witnesses the dripping blood flowing out of my friend’s sliced veins. Another girl I knew was diagnosed with depression at a young age, too young in my opinion, but she suffered the worse, whether it be from abuse from her father, the slicing of her wrists, or the rape that would occur when she ran away after being rejected by her Mormon parents and threatened to be removed for coming out as bisexual. These types of situations put a bad name to the faith. These types of situations go back to to the crying girl, which is the first stage we see with these victims of circumstances or bad genetics.

Besides these biased feelings, I have always been curious to know the nature of this beast we face here in Utah. Can I truly blame it all on a particular religion? Or is it all because of the high altitude of the spaghetti bowl we live in? Maybe my views on people are too closed minded to see that just because every suicidal and depressed kid was a part of the LDS Church, does not mean that, that was the sole reason behind their problems. All I know for sure, is that the pressures of being a teenager who strides a little off or unique to their beliefs or stubborn family members, is going to cause some repercussions for their mental health and relationships. Maybe that girl was born unlucky, with a side effect of an impending doom, but all I know for sure is that this pattern is common to her and many others, but to everyone around who sees the girl crying, it is just another day of hearing her wailing. She always went to therapy, but that was not enough. Her desire to be seen could be viewed poorly under the stage light; like her open wrists were next to her fake smile.