This subject lives somewhere quieter in me.
Years ago, a young woman came into my life for a short time. I was going through one of the most painful periods of my own life, and I didn’t have much to give anyone. I couldn’t save her.
She later took her life.
I still remember sitting beside her on the sofa watching Silicon Valley, a show she loved. I looked at her and had a thought I have never forgotten:
That could have been me.
Some people die.
Some of us stay alive while parts of us die quietly inside.
And sometimes a human being reaches a place where the pain of continuing to live feels greater than the fear of dying. I don’t pretend to understand what happens inside that final moment. I only know that human pain can go much deeper than what is visible from the outside.
Recently, I watched a young Palestinian girl speak about losing her parents and having to survive without them. She looked barely ten. She spoke as though death might be easier than the life waiting for her.
I watched it three times.
Not because I could understand her pain.
Because I couldn’t.
We say things like You matter. I’m here for you. Be kind.
Then we return to our lives.
There is nothing wrong with those words. The question is whether we are willing to live them when kindness costs us something.
When it requires us to admit we were wrong.
When someone tells us, You hurt me.
When acknowledging their pain threatens the version of ourselves we prefer to believe.
Maybe suicide prevention sometimes looks less like a slogan and more like putting down your ego.
Calling someone.
Listening without defending yourself.
Saying, I didn’t understand how deeply that affected you.
Or simply:
I’m sorry.
An apology will not cure depression. A conversation cannot carry the weight of every wound. We should never make one person responsible for another person’s decision to live or die.
But human beings affect human beings.
We regulate through one another. We build our understanding of safety, trust and belonging partly through the way other people respond to us.
And when someone has already been hurt enough, another betrayal, another dismissal, another moment of being made to feel invisible can travel much farther inside them than we will ever know.
That is why performative kindness troubles me.
Not because the words are wrong.
Because words like You Matter ask something of us.
They ask whether the person standing in front of us matters when their pain makes us uncomfortable.
Whether their experience matters when it contradicts ours.
Whether we can care more about repairing harm than protecting our ego.
You may never know how much pain another human being is carrying.
You may also never know how much a moment of genuine accountability, tenderness or truth could change the weight of what they are carrying.
So this September, perhaps don’t only tell people they matter.
Make sure they can feel it.
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