pushed over the edge: "teenage wasteland"

i read an article called "teenage wasteland". the article itself talks about teenage suicide and what pushes one to take their own lives. 

this article really hit close to home for me. when i was in middle school, one of my closest friends (lets call her Jane) had revealed to me and our group of frinds that she was cutting herself. oddly enough none of our group of friends (including myself) thought much about it. in fact, it was almost glorified. we would all talk about how and where we cut ourselves, or tried to commit suicide. i myself never cut myself, but i felt the urge to lie about it so that i wouldn't be so left out of the group. in a way, it made us closer. we used to have xanga accounts and we'd write about heartbreak and other reasons why life sucked. one day, me and another friend were in class. the guidance counselor opened the door and had called me and her out of the class. she told us that my friend Jane had just been taken to the hospital. Jane had come to school that day with a fresh cut which she was hiding in her sleeve. but my teacher noticed something was wrong and they found the cut. "she was bleeding so much that we had to call the ambulance." I was told that she had just missed her vein and that she would be held in the hospital under surveillance. she was missing from school for over a month. she wrote to me once, telling me how much she wanted me to visit but that they wouldn't let her put my name down for the list because i was too young. we all worried about her so much, and suddenly cutting and suicide became more of a reality to me. i had regular appointments with the guidance counselor so that they could keep an eye on me too, since i was the closest to Jane. Jane came back to school when me and my friends were on our lunch break one day, me and my friends heard about the news and ran back to school and up 4 flights of stairs to welcome her back. Jane had a few relapses over the years, she was in and out of the hospital a lot during middle school. me and Jane went to high school together afterwards, and one day i had the guts to talk to her about it. to ask why. because even though i was also depressed, i was never pushed that close to the edge. she told me that it was because she wanted some attention, she was jealous of her brother who was in the army and loved by her whole family. basically, she couldn't be perfect. 

reading this article reminded me of that part of my life. and it reminded me that we as humans are "our own worst enemy". we constantly try to be perfect in one way or another. when in reality, "perfection" is relative and there isn't really a set standard for perfection. its only the standard that we put for ourselves. and when we are putting that much pressure on ourselves we are going to hurt ourselves. we might say that we like being "average" or even try to glorify being "weirdos". but in reality, very few of the "weirdos" actually like being "weird". 

it also reminded me that suicide is a hard thing to understand. in the end of the article Donna Gaines mentions about how some would always ask "why?" "why did they do it?"  "why didn't they just leave?" some people blame depression, and a "chemical imbalance" for the root of suicides. but me? i blame people for it. there are so many "standards" that are being set, and unless you meet such standards you're deemed "below average". what is average when it comes to types of people that we ought to be really? i can't understand how people can be called average in that sense. and for some people (including myself) when you hear "below average" in this sense, i hear "worthless" instead. and i've been told to correct my thinking because i think that way. but its not something i can really change.