In the old world, arcade machines were in bars. They were coin operated. If the coins ran out, it was game over. If in the game you were shot or eaten or the ball went down the drain, you had three chances. Wasted, you were out. Death. These recreations dedicated to taking your money said something about life. That playing cost money, that the game, like money, ends and that you could no longer play when you died.
Games have moved to the home, to the mobile, they go with us everywhere. They do not work with coins. They are by no means free, but you pay in a way that looks like it. And the game never ends. you never die You always come back if you want. Death is not real. Living is free and you resurrect as many times as you want. This is today, this idea.
Suicide cannot be a matter for children. Because a kid hasn’t tried enough times. Because he is wrong if he decides to kill himself. Because he still has a lot of people who don’t know he’s suffering, who love him and who can help him. A child, a teenager knows nothing about the rest of his life. Little does he know that it will be so worth it. He kills himself out of pure suffering, to teach a lesson to those who inflict pain, to attract attention. They are too few years old to know that it is always a mistake.
Last year, 25 children under the age of 15 committed suicide. Teenagers haven’t lived long enough to know how much people love them and the hole their death leaves. They are too many creatures to suspect what they are missing. It is normal to suffer if you are alive. Maybe we missed telling them this. And that life can be hard and mean but at the same time fun and joyful.
I’m convinced that all those children who can’t take it anymore and jump into the void were hoping to come back. That they believe they are inside a game that allows them to resurrect. And that, like Tom Sawyer, they will attend their own funeral and, watching their own mourn, comfort them, promising to stay here, with us fighting against abuse, injustice and dragons.
