Hey everyone! This is Aidan. In this post, I want to tell a story of why I started this project.
By the way, I have Autism & ADHD, and sometimes these two make my life easier or more complicated. Autism makes it hard for me to show my feelings towards others, but that does not mean I don’t have feelings. I can cry or feel sad, but the faces I make and the words I say can sound cold to another person.
My ADHD is good at helping me forget things, which is probably why I don’t hold grudges. The hard part is that it can make me forgetful and clumsy, and sometimes it takes me longer to understand something when I’m being taught. Learning isn’t always easy. Some subjects make sense right away, while others take a lot more work for me.
I care very much about my family and my cats. I also care about my friends.
Even though I am still in high school, I have some university friends because I often hang out at Starbucks where my Mom does most of her work. She even calls Starbucks her “coffee office”.
One day, one of my university friends, let’s call him “Peter”, looked terrible. My mom asked him what was going on, and then he told us that he had just lost a friend to suicide.
While both my mom and Peter were sad, there was something more I saw in Peter. He looked confused and guilty, like he was not sure how to react to one of his friends dying by suicide. I remembered that expression.
I asked my Mom about it when we went home. At home, she explained to me that suicide, especially among young people, can make a friend feel guilty because they feel they should have known and helped their friend, but it was too late.
I didn’t understand until it reminded me of the experience with my friend who wanted to kill herself. About 3 years ago, I noticed that one of my friends, let’s call her “Maya”, was acting differently, not like her usual self. Staying in the corners of classrooms, hiding her face, not talking. Another friend told me that she was posting videos of empty grass fields with the song “Pure Imagination” in the background.
I was confused about what to do, so I did what I could, which was talk about random facts and funny things about me. Everyday I kept on messaging her, trying to make her happy. And I think it was working because she always responded with curiosity and excitement.
After a while, she looked better.
She started talking with other people again, her confidence was high, not hiding her face behind her mask, so much brighter compared to before.
Several weeks later, I got a note from her. It said, “Thank you for helping me when I wanted to kms” (note: kms means “kill myself”).
We never really talk about it now, but I’m happy that she’s doing way better.
I remember my mom telling me that suicidal thoughts happen in the brain, and that the brain can be unpredictable. After what happened to Maya, I became interested in learning more about mental health and suicide, and how I might be able to help people in the future.
I figured out that my new project is to help people not go down the wrong path. I want to give every suffering student in Indonesia the same treatment I gave to Maya: laughing, connection, empathy, and someone to look forward to the next day.
I told my parents what I wanted to do, and together with some university friends, we did some research. We found that peer support can help people in the same way I helped my friend Maya. That’s why I want to do this project.
To make a person not feel alone and choose the wrong path.