Dear Haters

Originally posted May 26, 2017

---

How many times in your life do you get everything right the first time? When do you ever stumble straight down the right path, no detours or wrong turns taken along the way? Isn’t life full of mistakes to learn from?

Yet, when one mistake is made, people instantly judge us for not choosing the right path the first time.

When Amy Bleuel lost her struggle with depression and passed away from suicide, there were many well-wishers and sad supporters struggling to come to terms with her death. Yet amidst them all were the horrid, hypocritical comments that forever stained the internet. The haters, those who said things like “how can she preach against suicide and be a founder for support groups to stop it, only to go and do it herself?” and “maybe she just wanted to go out famous”.

Dear Haters,

Sometimes, people don’t get everything right. Sometimes, we make mistakes. Most the time, we aim to learn from those mistakes.

Sometimes, we don’t get a chance.

When we show someone how to do something, we give them a way to bypass all the mistakes we made ourselves. We take them on the shortest path we know, encouraging them to bypass the hazards we had to face. They’ll still face their own hazards and struggle through the danger, but we gave them an advantage we never had.

Amy fought for us, gave us as much support as she could so we wouldn’t have to face the same struggles she went through. Somewhere along the way she made a wrong turn, and this time she didn’t get a chance to find her way back. She brought us this far, and now it’s up to us to keep looking for the right path.