6

Every time I read this my eyes fill up with tears.
I don't know if it's because I feel I can relate in so many ways, if it's because I know the person who wrote this and it hurts that they had to watch this happen, or because I'm just an emotional person. It's probably a mixture of the three. But I thought if I get to read it, I want you all too aswell. And most of you have probably already heard it or read it elsewhere, but read it again. Because it means something.

by caitlie.
There was once a little boy, he was very pretty, and smart, and funny, and sweet, and good to his friends and his family. He liked to play on his Nintendo, and eat fish and chips, and visit animals at the zoo. As he got older though, he became confused, as so many of us do, and lost his way. He fell into circles that didn’t want to help him, but rather wanted to get drunk and high and forget about their own problems. The little boy became more and more lost, and so became angry at the world, because no one was helping him. He started drinking heavily, just like his friends did, and instead of finding himself numb and safe from his thoughts, he got angrier still. He stopped playing his Nintendo, and smoked marijuana instead. He stopped eating fish and chips, and had random sex with strangers. He wasn’t good to his family and friends anymore, he was ripping the people he loved apart with his anger and aggression. He started to hurt himself with sharp things, and so hurt his loved ones more at the same time. People fell away from the boy, and he became desperately lonely. One day, he cut his wrists open and hoped that he would be free of the world that didn’t understand him. He failed, however, and woke up to resent, anger, sadness, confusion, and more loneliness. He had developed serious depression. This boy didn’t have a brother to carry him, he pushed everyone he loved away, and they let him. They didn’t care enough, and the boy had broken himself.

This story is probably familiar to lots of you, in some degree. The boy could be a friend, or a friend of a friend, a mother, a father, a sister, a cousin. There are always people who lose themselves in depravity and loneliness, and there are always people who let them. You’ll be glad to know, I should hope, that the boy eventually found the strength to pick himself up again, but sadly in doing so lost his faith in humanity, and carried with him a sense of self reliance that meant he couldn’t love anymore, he couldn’t trust, and he never felt safe. It’s easy to think in these situations, that other people are able to take care of themselves, and that assisting them would be too heavy a load. You could think it too painful to try and help, especially when the person is so resistant. One has to remember though, that life is a challenge, and that the people you love are always going to hurt you, they’re always going to be difficult, but that they’re worth your help. They deserve it.

We’re a community, us MLC girls. We’re from Toorak and Kew and Fitzroy and all the places in between. We’re all black and white and yellow and orange and brown (if we’re lucky), and some of us enjoy activities of questionable moral nutrition, and some of us like Mario Kart. Some of us are gay and some of us are ‘those chicks you see down Glenferrie road eh?’. We’ve got kids who spend more time at Shoppo, Chadstone, Victoria Gardens, Northlands, Chapel St, Flinders St, Degraves, whatever you’re into, than they spend at home, and that’s alright. A lot of us stand together and support one another, but sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between our lives, and the film Mean Girls.

We have to remember though, that being a community means looking after one another. In this day and age we’re surrounded by glitter, and people and things that want to lure us away from our paths. We’re young, and we’re curious and easily excitable, and as our brains aren’t finished developing, we make the most insane decisions. This is why we need to be there for our friends when they’re vomiting all over themselves in alleyways, or even just when they’re stressed about a French test. We’re brothers, aren’t we? We’re all people, and we all deserve to be happy, and safe, and loved.

It’s the scariest thing in the world, feeling completely alone. When your friends are too wrapped up in themselves to see that your parents are splitting up, or that something terrible has happened to you and you want to tell the police but you can’t because there’s so much to consider, and you’re afraid of conflict and confrontation. A lot of us have to grow strong and weathered through horrible experience, and that’s all very well, but there’s always the chance that instead of growing strong, you will grow poisoned for life.

My point here, is that if our country, our community, is filled with lost, lonely, frightened people, we will end up with our own, Australian Columbine. So if you can’t see the point in being there for another person for humanity’s sake, think about the greater good. Be bold, be brave, and do the best you can. Let someone cry on your shoulder, call the police when you think someone is in danger, turn someone on their side when they’re passed out drunk, tell someone you love them. You need to say, ‘he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother’, because if someone had said that, that little boy I told you about wouldn’t have the scars he has today.