Okay, so throughout my time as a member of wattpad, it's become increasingly clear to me that a lot of people don't quite grasp the concepts of suicide or abuse or depression or anxiety. So I'm going to be saying a few things that could both help you understand other people's characters and make your own better if they involve any of these or they can just be some helpful things to know for people in real life. A few of these will probably also be based off of my own experiences.
First of all, suicide. A lot of people think that people only commit suicide because they are sad or because they think that it won't get better. They also only ever think it happens with people who are severely depressed all of the time and are never happy. This barely even scratches the surface. I'm a generally happy person. I have good friends and decent grades and I am on a nationally ranked team for my favorite sport(cheerleading.) And yes, I have days where I'm sad, but that's normal. I'm a generally normal person. A few weeks ago, it took about three minutes for my life to fall apart, mostly because parents have way too much power over their children. I got in an argument with my parents and, of course, even if the child is right, they are still the ones to be punished. I'm not going to go into detail about what followed, but I'm just going to say that it ended with me in the shower, waiting for the tub to fill so that I could drown myself. It wasn't until I was already underwater did I will myself not to follow through with it. And most of you are probably thinking "Oh my God, why would you do that? It gets better and you know you shouldn't do that and you can always talk to someone why would you even think of doing that?"
You guys need to understand where I'm coming from though. I know it will get better. I know it, I know it, I know it. I am fully aware of the fact that it will get better eventually. It's been told to me countless times. I know. But here's the thing: I wasn't thinking about the future. I was thinking about the present. And my mind was telling me that I had about five minutes before my mom told me to get out of the shower to decide whether I wanted to finally just stop at everything or drag my sorry ass back downstairs so my parents could spend a few more hours screaming the same thing at me over and over again while I flinch every time they go near me and then sit my sorry ass down and spend a few more hours going through every homework assignment I've done since September so they could make sure I did everything for the twelth time that week(because apparently every single thing I don't do right is directly related to my school work?) while my parents yell even more about how I ruined their lives and how it's "just going to be another year of hell." I was scared. I didn't want to go through that. I didn't want to keep going through that, because it's far from the first time this has happened and I know for a fact that it won't be the last. I. Was. Scared. I was afraid of being alive, not in the future, but at that moment. I did, for some reason, choose the latter. I dragged myself out of the water, dried myself off, and made my way downstairs. The night went exactly as I had predicted, and my mom spent about thirty minutes chewing me out on my most recent theology test. Apparently, I hadn't answered all the parts of one of the essay questions, and that alone was enough to make me "a screw up." Ironically, my grade on that test was 100%. I'm saying all of this to accentuate the fact that sometimes, we can't fix our problems. There was nothing I could've done in my own abilities to prevent that night from happening or the week of hell that followed. I was afraid of my own family and I was afraid of my own life. People don't always attempt suicide or contemplate it just because they are generally sad. Sometimes it's because they are scared. Sometimes it's because they are tired. Sometimes it's because they can't change their situation and they can't wait for it to change on it's own. Please consider all of these possibilities, instead of just saying it's because "they are sad" or "they are depressed." And if you are writing a character like this, maybe consider one of these as the reason instead of just being sad.
The next thing I want to talk about is child abuse, because contrary to many people's beliefs, it isn't always just parents getting drunk, whipping their child with a belt, telling them they hate them, and then leaving. And yes, if that is the case, it's horrible and despicable and wrong. But that's not the only kind there is. There are manipulative parents, parents with anger management issues, neglective parents, passive aggressive parents, and selfish parents. They aren't just blatantly hateful.
Parents can be nice to their kids at one moment and then be screaming and throwing vases at them the next. Parents can also be completely calm all the time, yet make subtle remarks about how their kid is a burden or how their kid is messing things up. Parents can have unbelievably high expectations, and be completely unfair to their kids when they don't meet them. Parents can be extremely abusive without even realizing it. Parents can be egotistical and only care about their child for their own personal gain. They can also just be flat out neglective, and not provide for any of the child's needs.
Another thing most people don't really get: social anxiety. Social anxiety needs to subtly seep into all of your character's social interactions, not just the big ones. It doesn't just mean having a panic attack while giving a speech or throwing up before presenting to the class. It means waiting thirty minutes to throw something away because you don't want people to look at you when you stand up. It means feeling uncomfortable when you're alone in public because... well, you just are. It means feeling unconfident and shy in every. Single. Thing. You. do. That's really all I've got to say.
I think most of my stories have touched up enough on depression, so I'm going to mostly leave that topic alone, but I'd like to make one more point about depression, anxiety, and social anxiety: These are illnesses, and they are very real. They cannot be helped. Don't tell someone with depression that they can't be sad and don't try to tell someone with social anxiety or anxiety that they shouldn't be worried. We know. We get it. We really do. But we. can't. Help. it. All you do when you say that is make it worse. Please just be there to listen and comfort your friends if they have any of these and if you are writing a character with one of these, please make sure you don't write something about it that isn't true.
If you have any questions, anything to add, or anything I should fix about this, please pm me. Also, if you need help writing characters, then feel free to ask me about that too :)
