.:I Need To Get On My Soapbox Briefly...:.
I've been delinquent with blogging, what with My Beloved back in Australia, and all the things I have to deal with at work lately. It's been a time of transition and adjustment for me, and it feels wildly frustrating.
Of course, it is with a heavy heart that I discovered that the great Subas Herrero passed away today. He lived a full life, I believe, and he will be missed. It is sad, indeed, but not necessarily tragic.
However, what is tragic is that today, a 16-year old has apparently taken her life as she was consumed by a system that refused to help her out when she was down. And as much as I'd like to be on my high horse while I'm on my soapbox, too, I realize that in my complicity and complacency, some of that blame falls squarely upon me.
Which is precisely why the last thing I would do is to blame her for it, and to tell her what she did is wrong. It's an exercise of futility: she's not even there to hear it.
I am not a psychologist by practice. I am not the most empathic person around. Despite that, this is not the time nor the place to push one's moral agenda in the middle of a tragedy, and one that could have been prevented, in the first place. I had no desire to jump on the bandwagon, and I will probably jump off it as quickly as I came on it once I get to say what I need to say.
Over on Twitter, I had some very choice words for someone who decided that sensitivity was not the order of the day, and was shocked when he got his back. It upset me to no end because I realized that here was a person who failed to see that this girl who took her own life was a victim, and we don't go around blaming victims.
I think back to the countless gay kids who have killed themselves because they were bullied relentlessly for who they were. I think back to how it must have felt to be in their shoes, and the awful things that they must have gone through, and I cannot, for the life of me, find it in my heart to condemn them. They were already condemned by their tormentors in their lives. Why would I choose to add to that in their deaths?
They were victims, as this 16-year old student was also a victim. Do I want to play the blame game from here? No. I'm not going to even go there. But I just refuse to take it sitting down that someone would dare attack this student, as if she even had any means of defending herself, whatsoever. She does not.
We say of those who have left us: "rest in peace." That's the least we could offer someone whose only true mistake was to put her faith in a system that failed her. And I, for one, choose to do so.
I do not know you, child. I have never met you. But may you rest in peace.
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