This could be your school or work place

It is with a sad heart today I must post about the recent shooting. I don’t want this to be about which side anyone is on.

I want this to be about what I had to deal with in my own high school, my good friend, and what I see today with the “world”.

Obviously like many youth today he had a Mental Health issue. If you start there, it would be wonderful but we come around to Mental Health and yet again dodge this topic on a national level. Remember it is not just the shooter or the ones he kills. It is ALL the families as well the community who now have to somehow come to understand this day.

I remember my own high school where I never fitted in. Some days my wish was to have super powers to make me invisible. It never happened. In that journey I was chased after by bullies. I tried to commit suicide as I rode my bike to school one morning.  Then I had enough so I started a fight with one of the main bullies which led to the office, asked by many teachers “You TKO” so & so.

It took many years even to understand what that time was for me personally. Going through a 12-step program I wondered if I could forgive my school? I walked up to the school ground and did the step to forgive. At that moment things just didn’t seem to matter as much.

After public speaking many times about school life for me I realized that I burned out. Why after so many times going through Grade 8 and just not passing the grade I walked away. I didn’t quit I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So that was me in high school. Another friend who was around at the same time after he graduated he talked about “blowing up the school” as he was bullied so much in my same school. He now has a drug addiction and deals with severe Mental Health issues.

Our youth at some point become adults where again I helped on the Board for Mental Health in my local area where I found often many of these people were just trying to get by without the “voices” in their head getting to them that day or the paralyzing grip of the darkness of depression that seems never to end. I would sit and have lunch with them to be a friend for them. I also wanted them to know that I would let the local board know any concerns at the drop-in center. I found here a group for me personally was in a small part just like me. For I was still trying to deal with self-esteem issues and depression on those days I could just be me.

The world we live in now is changing so much our own identity has be questioned. What do I mean when we grew up in the 1980’s the internet was just coming on board. Globalization was rarely talked about unrest seemed controlled even if it wasn’t. I see the gangs, the drugs and mass shooting as outcomes of the disconnect of society. Why? You ask any child in elementary school they won’t say “I want to be a drug dealer or in a gang” even worse yet dead before my 25^th birthday or serving 25 to life.  Here we are dealing with that everything which is ripping apart our community. It has become just the next news cycle for the Opioid crisis or talking points on Gun Control.

Remember there has been 18 school shootings in 2018 already. The Opioid crisis is now taking down our first responders every hour of every day filling up our ER’s.

Is all lost? My only hope is this will be the year that we start talking to youth about a healthier approach to life. Other than things like which “bathroom” they should use or before they get to high school they talk about sexuality.  

I have often said you would never say to a patient who has a Heart Attack don’t exercise, eat as much as you like, and I will see you in a year.  That is only if there is openings at the hospital. Yet many are faced with the same choice trying to see someone that the local doctor has referred them to. When they are there finding a program that works for them.

Remember you are never alone it only feels like that right now there are people willing to listen.