Does knowing Carly's story have you reaching outward toward others?

On this 24th anniversary of Carly Henley's birth I'm here to say that IT'S TOUGH...

It's TOUGH to step out of lifetime traditions of not wanting to interfere with those who are struggling.

It's TOUGH to get those who could today use the 'boost' your words and efforts might offer, to dare the seeming risk involved in responding to them.

It's TOUGH to admit to someone else that you've been seriously considering bringing an end to your life.

It's even TOUGH to acknowledge your sometimes-struggling self enough to even respond to others whose efforts toward merely keeping you here on this earth have been clearly well-intended.

It's EASIER to just... not interfere with the seemingly personal thoughts and feelings of others.

It's EASIER to just ignore... ignore the sincere efforts of some, because you yearn instead for a supreme human (or super-human) to be the one coming to your aid or rescue.

It's EASIER to avoid the self-preserving RELEASE of ANYthing you're feeling, rather than to take the slim CHANCE that you will both (a) be alive in 5 years time and (b) evolve to then regret having ever bared so much pain in front of somebody who once made direct inquiries as to your well-being.

It's EASIER to sit back, thinking/believing that you can somehow measure your own progress, and deem yourself clinically free from suicidal concerns.  That while opting to close-off your mind to anyone or anything that ever affected you during times in the past when you may have struggled.

Recently I read the very real, and very personal account of a young woman's brush with suicidal thoughts and plans.  Her deep plunge toward the edge of despair was triggered by a failed test score.  She failed by one point.  She wrote of then having spent a short time with an oblivious parent while "trying to act as normal as possible". She thought:  "This will be the last...".

She then retreated to her own, beautiful apartment, and thought "Nothing is Beautiful", which represented a sign to her that she was "in deep trouble".  The woman had written a suicide note, and was engaging the voices in her head.  She had a plan for how to end her life.

But then something told her to "text someone".

Heeding that impulse, she texted a dear friend:  "Are you free tonight?  I mean are you around?  Please please please respond."

The friend replied right away, but was more than two hours away, and the girl told the friend not to worry about it...  The friend pressed the young woman for further understanding, and the woman managed to blurt  "I'm just not well."

The caring friend said:  "I'm not leaving you alone tonight..." and with that the friend drove to be with the struggling young woman.

The friend stayed the whole night, and perhaps somehow inspired the woman to phone her parents to tell them she wasn't well, and to ask if they would come and see her the next day.

The friend then stayed around to help the young woman prepare to spend the upcoming weekend at her parents' house, as the woman knew she couldn't be alone.

The parents were challenged, to say the least, as far as comprehending the dire nature of the daughter's condition.  At one point the daughter began to cry, and it all came out:  "I was going to kill myself...".

The father awkwardly asked:  "Why would you want to do that?"  and it was perhaps something about his tone which caused the young woman to scream at him in response.

Not long afterward, the mother was crying, and the father told of being as scared at that moment as he'd ever been.  BUT THAT is a grand example of the awkwardness which is merely the alternative to suicide.  It takes some choreographed reaching-out... and responding...  a whole lot of fumbling... and a giant blessing from fate... to bring forth the better outcome.

SO what can society DO to really help, when the alternatives to so much of the important stuff are "easier"?

I've been reading lately about "Out of the Darkness", which is a series of walks, done in cities around the country, as fundraisers for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP).  Suicide is such a challenging adversary that even well-meaning, well-organized groups attempt to "bring suicide into the light" by walking from dusk until dawn (at night).  Makes me wonder if that, too, is because it's easier...

What about you?  Have you been able to plan an active (vs. passive) course of action to be reflexively put in play at the moment you sense someone nearby in some despair?  Can you will your mind through the steps, in the face of typical resistance, to the point where you would at least give the troubled person a reasonable chance at a better fate?

I agree fully that society would do itself a grand favor by letting matters of suicidal feelings become less taboo, both for conversation and for future reflection.  But how do we get there from here?  And can anybody be motivated to reach the paths of least psychological resistance by Carly Henley's well-preserved (on YouTube) zest for the humanity all around her?

Happy Birthday to Carly on July 30, 2014.