Why do teens commit suicide?

Since May 5th, the town of Palo Alto, California has seen four teenagers from the same high school kill themselves by stepping in front of a train, all on the same stretch of tracks. Others have been spotted by police and concerned citizens and stopped before they could follow them.

Why are these teens (one as young as 13) killing themselves?

Most of the coverage talks of 'suicide clusters' and how this is a cry for attention as the teens see the effects of another teen killing themselves like this. But that doesn't answer the question on what drove them to that point.

When I was younger, people always said that "These are the best days of your lives, so enjoy them," or something to that effect. I know a lot of other people hear the same thing at that age, from people who are older, and have gone off into the 'real world'.

Frankly, I can't think of a more depressing thing to tell a teenager. Do you remember your high school days? Not just the good parts you like to remember. I'm talking about everything. The teasing, the drama, constantly feeling like no one understood you, everyone trying to pressure you into one thing or another, teachers piling homework on you, standardized tests, and looming SATs, the pressure to figure everything out about where you want to go in life, so that you can go to college, and get the right degree, with the right references, to get the job that will make you enough money to survive for the rest of your life.

And then you go and tell them that this is the GOOD part? Really, the only question is why more teenagers don't commit suicide.

Being a teenager is stressful enough with all the problems of the here and now. Dumping the knowledge that things are only going to go down hill from there makes people wonder why they should bother dealing with this, if it wasn't going to get better.

I can say that when I was that age, there were many times that I seriously considered committing suicide. I was always on the outside of every group. I was single, and always had been. I wasn't popular, and I wasn't the top of my class, and I didn't have an escape. And I had all this pressure to decide what I was going to do in life, what college I was going to go to, and all of that. On top of that, most of the music that was popular at the time was all bright and happy, or talked about love and sex, and all those things I lacked, and that just made me feel worse. I put up a front of being happy, but inside, I was basically dead already. And there were times I seriously considered what would be the best way to kill myself.

I didn't have access to a gun, so that was out. There weren't any sleeping pills, or anything like that in the house, so I couldn't do that. Jumping into traffic was out, because you could live through that if you weren't lucky. The only trains that came through were big freight trains, and they never went that fast, since they hadn't had time to get up to speed yet, so I couldn't do that. Electrocution was out, because you could possibly survive it. Fire was definitely out, because I wasn't big on the whole pain thing. I didn't know where to get enough drugs to OD on, and even if I did, I didn't have the money to get them, so that was out.

Why am I still alive?

It isn't because of some religious experience. Most of my experiences with religion and 'religious' people only serve to push me away from them.

It isn't because of friends. I didn't really have any. There were acquaintances, but no true friends.

It isn't because of family. I love my family, but in those moods, I always thought that they would be better off without me causing trouble all the time.

It isn't because of any psychologist or therapy. The times I went, I just felt like they were preaching at me, and I shut down.

It isn't because of any hopes or plans for the future. I couldn't see anything beyond tomorrow.

So why am I still alive?

Its because there wasn't a convenient way of killing myself, and I was too lazy to go actively searching for a way, when those moods were on me. So I would sit, and be depressed, and eventually the mood would pass, for a while.

Its because I eventually found a release for those feelings, a way to express them and purge them safely.

What was this release? It was actually three things that allowed me to find a measure of peace.

First, I 'discovered' bands like Metallica, and the lyrics of rage and anger were more therapeutic than any amount of psychobabble.

Second, I started playing more video games. I would build cities in SimCity, just to unleash disaster after disaster upon them. But my bread and butter was always flight simulator type games, like X-wing, where you blasted the enemy from the skies. I could spend hours blasting enemy spacecraft.

Third, and most important, I discovered RPGs. I'm not talking about things like Final Fantasy or World of Warcraft. I'm talking Dungeons and Dragons, Mutants and Masterminds, and Shadowrun. I'm talking MUDs, MUSHes, and MOOs. It was this escape from reality that really saved my life.

When I was playing Dungeons and Dragons, I could be the vile necromancer who crushed his foes. In Mutants and Masterminds, I could be the vigilante who lived by the motto "I'm not a hero, I'm a bad man that does bad things to bad people." In Shadowrun, I could be a criminal, running the shadows and doing things of questionable morality, all for a few bucks. In short, RPGs allowed me to express the darkness of my soul, and give those feelings a release.

The discovery of RPGs was like opening the lid on a pressure cooker. The underlying causes were still there, and might always be there, but by throwing myself into this fantasy world, I could cope, and I wasn't brooding on them any more. All my anger, all my rage, all my hopelessness, all my loneliness, I took it all, and projected it on my characters, and I was free of it, for a time.

But there was a downside to this. I began to throw myself into the fantasy world, to the point where I can no longer relate to people in real life. I don't know what to say or what to do when there isn't a computer screen between me and another person, or we're both pretending to be other people. People say to be yourself, but myself is the reason I ran to the fantasy world.

Is this a healthy lifestyle? Willfully throwing yourself into a fantasy, to the point where you long to get rid of reality altogether, is not healthy. But my circumstances would have to improve dramatically before I could lead a 'healthy' life. Between living a fantasy, or spiraling into depression, I'll take the fantasy any day.

There are still times when I get depressed, when I consider, "To be, or not to be?" But now, instead of brooding, I turn the music up, pour myself a drink, and drop into the fantasy world. And eventually the mood passes.