Breaking the Boy Code - September 11, 2020


Things to Say Before Dawn

Topics
suicide impacts giving up fear mental health stigma
I Can Show Them Every Side： Boys and Theatre I Can’t Focus： Boys and Online Learning

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

179.12

Word count

1,453

Sentence count

84

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 I often talk about suicide like it's a statistic.
00:00:03.760 The fact that it was the leading cause of death for teenage boys in Canada in 2018,
00:00:09.320 or that rates of suicide attempts are as high as 78% among trans youth who have experienced sexual assault at school.
00:00:17.020 The fact that 70% of mental health problems have their onset during childhood or adolescence.
00:00:23.080 these numbers are a reality but the reality for me is that suicide is a really personal thing
00:00:31.160 that these numbers don't touch and as I was talking to a kid last week I told myself if I
00:00:38.760 could record something to help with suicide prevention I would this isn't a podcast episode
00:00:46.620 really it's a message for suicidal youth and it's not perfect it's not totally polished but it is
00:00:54.140 me speaking from the heart over the next little bit i'm going to tackle three beliefs and maybe
00:00:59.500 they're beliefs that you're struggling with maybe they're beliefs that you've heard of that you're
00:01:02.940 trying to better respond to or gain empathy for before i start just to trigger warning that this
00:01:09.160 is about suicide and self-harm and if those are not things that you want to or are able to listen
00:01:15.340 to you right now, then send you my love and better skip this. The first one is that your
00:01:24.700 loved ones would be better off without you. I don't know if that's really the right way to put
00:01:28.800 it, but the idea that you, specifically you, impact the people around you in a negative way,
00:01:34.340 that you drag them down, that you waste their time, or at least the belief that they would
00:01:39.420 move on after you died. It's really difficult to put into words the impact of losing someone to
00:01:46.720 suicide. I remember hearing someone talk about it like it was ripples on water, and to me it's like
00:01:56.280 shattered glass. Maybe that's the reason I so often talk about statistics instead of stories,
00:02:01.540 because those stories are as sharp as they were when they happened. So let me leave it
00:02:07.360 with this. When a 12-year-old kid that I knew died by suicide, I spent three weeks trying to
00:02:13.480 keep myself and others afloat. And at the end of those three weeks, I wrote this message to a bunch
00:02:20.580 of youth that I knew. If you die, you'll shatter people. I know because I've experienced it
00:02:26.460 firsthand. Sure, there are people that won't care and some people who will be sad but will get over
00:02:31.160 it. But there are some people whose lives will never, ever be the same. There are people who
00:02:37.100 will carry the pain, the guilt, the loss with them for as long as they live. You won't leave behind
00:02:42.780 a simpler world or a better world. You will break that world into a hundred pieces and lots of those
00:02:48.580 pieces will never be whole again. Ever. There are people that care about you. There are people that
00:02:55.240 would lose you. I know you might not think that applies to you. My friend didn't either. And we're
00:03:01.020 shattered. Call a hotline, text a friend, smash your room to pieces. I don't care what you have 0.96
00:03:08.100 to do. Just don't give up. The second belief is that you should give up. And the phrase giving
00:03:16.880 up has an interesting position to me. Like, who are you giving something to? Where are you giving
00:03:22.140 it? It has a sense of drowning to me. There's exhaustion there and there's also a lot of fear.
00:03:29.540 So this is from some blog that I read so long ago, I can't find it again.
00:03:33.140 When I was first learning about suicide, the idea that if you are ready to give up your life,
00:03:38.260 I mean really ready to give up everything that you have ever been and could ever be,
00:03:43.800 why not just give up your fear?
00:03:47.720 Stop being afraid of your parents or the prospect of therapy or an inpatient program.
00:03:52.480 Stop being afraid that life could go on because life could be different
00:03:56.240 if you had access to support and resources to help you manage your mental health.
00:04:02.560 I guess by giving up your fear, what I'm talking about is courage.
00:04:07.920 And something that's cool about courage is that to make lasting change,
00:04:11.760 you don't need to be courageous for very long.
00:04:14.720 Some movie that I watched on an airplane once said,
00:04:18.260 all you need is 20 seconds.
00:04:20.980 And honestly, probably less than that.
00:04:23.140 To say, mom, can I talk to you about something serious?
00:04:25.640 or to hang out after class with your favorite teacher or to click send on a text.
00:04:29.500 All it takes is a few seconds where you let go of your fear.
00:04:34.380 And I know this is like the definition of easier said than done,
00:04:38.540 but that lesson has stayed with me for a long time.
00:04:41.640 If you're willing to give up everything, why not give up your fear?
00:04:48.040 The third belief is that you're alone.
00:04:51.460 Mental illness can do a lot of things,
00:04:53.280 but in my opinion one of the cruelest is tricking you into thinking that you've got to be by yourself
00:04:58.060 and I mean that also has to do with societal stigma about mental health and beliefs about
00:05:03.000 how to be a man it has to do with reading or misreading the responses of your friends or
00:05:06.380 your family and it also has to do with your life like I guess there are times when you are more
00:05:11.380 alone than others and those are the times that I want to remind you that you can reach out
00:05:15.220 you're never as alone as you think you are and to sort of help you remember that this is a poem
00:05:21.480 that I wrote for a young person in 2016 after spending an entire night with him. It's a poem
00:05:26.720 that's been to hospitals and Instagram calls, but I've never shared it publicly. And I guess I still
00:05:34.060 don't really consider this public. This is between me and you. It's called Things to Say Before Dawn.
00:05:43.060 In my world, scars come from injuries. Injuries are accidents and accidents are stories.
00:05:49.180 So my body is a book, with chapters dedicated to my bike or my skateboard,
00:05:53.040 but I've never meant to hurt myself, and the scars are always fading.
00:05:57.840 Your body is a landscape.
00:06:00.260 Scars lie side by side like topographic lines where altitude equals fear,
00:06:03.940 and fear doesn't fade in the same way.
00:06:05.780 It comes back with every storm when you carve river valleys into your wrists like rain on the desert.
00:06:10.280 You have the Grand Canyon aching under a bandage.
00:06:14.020 And I don't mean to make it sound like a beautiful process. It's not.
00:06:17.420 but it might be a natural process because getting help is hard and there's something safe in
00:06:22.240 automatic responses. Your brain will always release endorphins and your blood will always
00:06:27.180 clot. It sounds dumb to say but your body does not want you to die. Let's file this under things 0.62
00:06:34.920 to say before dawn. The blade is always sharpest when it touches your skin but your body will
00:06:40.040 always try to heal itself. The night is always darkest when you wake up alone but it always
00:06:44.580 gets lighter. The sun rises 270 minutes after 3am. That's 269 minutes from when I started this poem
00:06:52.160 and the point is the red line ace up your sleeve isn't your only option. You're gambling a
00:06:56.500 dangerous hand counting on blood to trump thoughts believing you need to be silent to be strong.
00:07:02.520 If a kid cries and no one hears him, did he still cry? Things to say before dawn. There is no strong
00:07:11.340 or weak, there is alive and not alive, and I want you any way that you are. Things to say before dawn,
00:07:16.920 you are not broken, and even if you were, the way to treat a fracture is to hold it close and hold
00:07:21.320 it tight. Things to say before dawn, I am here for you, and that's really what I mean to say,
00:07:26.540 there is someone there for you. Sometimes your room seems like the loneliest place on earth,
00:07:32.560 but if you've read any French literature, you know that a prince can be found in the desert.
00:07:35.860 Let me put it like this. If your wrist bleeds and no one sees, does it still hurt?
00:07:40.660 Of course, you're better off with love.
00:07:45.260 268 minutes.
00:07:50.000 Go to breakingtheboycode.com slash suicide or DM me on social media at boypodcast if there's anything I can do to support.
00:07:58.400 Normally, I use this space to encourage parents to have a meaningful conversation.
00:08:01.920 Today, I'll just tell you that you are loved.