“One death is a tragedy. A million deaths are a statistic.” -Stalin
The past few months have been all about the flattening of the covid-19 curve. This deadly bad boy came out of nowhere, and it didn’t take long until its name made it on everyone’s lips. Any means - no matter how coercive it was - was deemed acceptable to prevent covid-19 from train wrecking our lives all the more.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that when you put all your attention in one place, some other things fly under the radar, even being as if not more important. Yesterday, upon reading an article that stated that in the month of May only, there had been more deaths resulting from drug overdoses in B.C than the total number of deaths in B.C from covid-19, I was bamboozled.
This pandemic showed society’s ugly colours in the brightest of lights. It made one thing very clear - when the foundation of a system is already broken and new cracks make their appearance, fixing the new ones won’t magically make the old ones disappear.
But society doesn’t abide by the rules of empathy. It abides by the rules of selfish efficiency. Suddenly when the system collapses and it is bleeding to its own fucking death, the alarm bell starts to ring. That’s the high price that comes from buying into our own collective stupid oblivion.
It’s reported that about 800 000 human beings commit suicide every year. One life is lost due to suicide every 40 seconds. These numbers make me sick to my stomach. And yet, ever since this pandemic started, the attention that has been drawn to the suicide curve that will inevitably reach new peaks, has been non existent at best, at least in mainstream media.
As humanity is falling apart on its self, hopelessness screams for help are getting left unheard. Yet all the risks factors that can drive one to the edge of a cliff are more than ever present. Financial ruin. Emotional starvation. Loss of support system. Loss of belonging. Rise of relapses. Stuck in toxic households with nowhere to escape. Having to face a type of uncertainty we have never had to face before in our lifetimes. Hope is running thin, many are sitting alone in darkness wondering if this thing called life is truly worth it after all.
Thanks for your words.