In our fast paced world, with short texts and tweets of 140 characters or less it often seems that we are distancing ourselves from real connections with people.   I wanted to share this story with you about Chris Gethard a comedian and public access TV host, that before this I never knew existed.

He has 15, 370 Twitter followers and hundreds of folks posting comments on his tumblr.com blog, but when an anonymous person asked him if he ever had suicidal thoughts, Chris dropped everything and responded.  For a busy person (like all of us are) to stop and respond shows a true love and respect for our fellow man/woman and if you will our brothers and sisters.

Chris shared about his past struggles; being bullied in high school and college, his depression and yes his own thoughts of suicide. 

Here is just one segment of Chris’ reply:

To answer your question directly - yes, I have had suicidal thoughts in my life. You are not alone.

I first remember having them around eighth grade. And then, during my freshman year of high school, I was being bullied pretty bad in my lunch room by a group of kids a year ahead of me. They were throwing food at my friends and I, and no one was stopping it. There was one kid, Scott Hansen, who was the worst one of all. Because you knew he was more like us then them and was just going along with it out of fear and pressure and to throw the food so as to not be the guy getting food thrown at him. So this s*** was getting real bad and I talked to two different teachers and neither one of them did anything about it and as a real emotional kid who was already clearly heading into depression issues, I just plunged into an awful, awful place. And I brought a razor to school with me, and my plan was to wait until he threw food at me, then to talk to a teacher who I knew wouldn’t care, then to go to the bathroom and cut my wrists so they’d both feel horrible about themselves forever. That was a very melodramatic 14 year old kid instinct, and obviously I didn’t do it, but I think back and still get scared because I actually brought the razor with me. I took enough action to do that. Scary s***.

If you have a few minutes, I invite you to read his full post.  I hope and pray after you read it that it might give you pause to “tune in a bit better” to those around us that might need our guidance, encouragement and a listening ear.   

http://thechrisgethardshow.tumblr.com/post/31345619495/for-gethard-...