Words Hurt by Mandee

So a friend of mine posted this amazing post on her blog and I wanted to share with you guys. As many of you know I am writing a speech on Conversations and this just ties in perfectly with everything I have been thinking over the past couple of weeks. Enjoy and visit her blog y'all because there is some epic photography that y'all need to see. (Photos are Mandee's as well)

I’m not quite sure what made me think to do this shoot. But I don’t think that there is a topic that needs to be discussed more than this one. There is so much hate in this world. So much sadness and hurt. A lot of kids get bullied. They get called names and beat up and mistreated. They feel like nobody cares. They think “why do people hate me so much? what did I ever do?”. They don’t deserve it. But it still happens. It hurts so much and it’s killing them on the inside. And you know what happens? They start to think that they do deserve that pain. And so they make themselves hurt.

Self harm is so common these days! It’s so sad. Self harm consists of lots of things, not just cutting. One out of twelve kids self harm. Teens start to hate themselves because they think that everyone else hates them. They get depressed, lonely, and don’t know what else to do.

I’ve heard that depression is like drowning. But people are all around you, and instead of worrying about saving you, they’re just concerned about what colour your bathing suit is. Like, they don’t even realize that you’re drowning at all! They just go on with their lives. Nobody notices, it feels like nobody cares.

I guess that example just shows what people these days care about. A lot of times, the stuff we care about doesn’t even matter! We care so much about how we look, and what other people think about us. It’s sick that 40% of girls between the age of 10 and 16 develop eating disorders because someone had the nerve to call them fat.

A lot of people think that it’s stupid. That a person could let such a little statement change the way they view themselves or the way they feel or think about themselves. But obviously it’s not a little problem if 40% of girls are going through it. Teens feel so much pressure to be perfect, and not to disappoint. They don’t want to be a failure. They want to make everyone happy.

We make mistakes a lot. Everyone does. But we’re teens. We’re the next generation. We’ve got so much pressure on us, trying to live up to expectations and meet standards. And a lot of teens just give up. They don’t feel good enough or smart enough for anything. They think life is meaningless. And they say goodbye. There are 30,000 suicides every year in the United States alone. Suicide is the 11th leading cause for death, homicide is 15th. And for every one male suicide attempt, there are three female suicide attempts.

There’s a million different voices coming from a million different directions and they’re all saying something different. And some of them encourage us and some of them tear us apart. Words. They change everything. We can use them for good or for evil. Everything we say can either help someone or make someone want to curl up and cry.

And it’s hard to tell what someones going through. Because a smile hides a lot.

So try to make everything you say lovely. Be kinder than necessary. Because you never know who you’re going to be talking to and what they’re going through. Make every word, action, and thought count. What you say and do can save a life.

-Mandee