I did not know Emily well. I met her one October weekend when I flew to Memphis, Tenn., to be with my son, Jordan. (All names have been changed.) He was excited that I was going to meet Emily, his first serious girlfriend. Since Jordan and Emily shared a birthday, they would turn 21 together. His pride in her was obvious. Emily was polite, outgoing and cute as a button. She oozed Southern charm.
I met Emily only twice after that, but we spoke on the phone many times. Although she hinted that her life was unraveling, I did not feel it was my place to get involved. I figured she was just going through a phase. During my New Year’s visit I began to sense that something was wrong. Emily seemed tired and wasn’t the playful self that she had been in October. By April, Emily would not leave the house. Jordan told me she sometimes became anxious when he wasn’t with her. She felt physically ill and was overeating. I chose not to get involved. In June, Jordan called to tell me Emily was dead.
As I flew to her memorial service, I sobbed the whole way. What had happened to this beautiful young woman? Was it suicide? Did she overdose on prescription medicine? Was it a physical problem? Months later I would hear that the autopsy was inconclusive, but the pathologist believed she had died of an untreated heart problem.
Much of what I know about Emily I learned after her death. I learned that her parents divorced when she was an infant. She never had a relationship with her father. It pained her to know he had remarried and was living with children he could talk to, hug and play with every day. Her mother married and divorced several times. Emily became lost in blended families. Toward the end of her life, Jordan told me, she was depressed and cut her flesh when her emotional pain became too great. I had never heard about cutting. I couldn’t imagine why a person would do that.
The September after Emily’s death, I returned to the high school where I work as a media specialist in the library. In the past, I had often listened as teens told me about their disintegrating families and the pain caused by divorces, remarriages and families gone awry. But at the end of the day, I could shove their worries aside before leaving school. No longer. Emily has changed everything for me.
When Marina, a high-school senior who had just transferred to my school, came to the library to type up her poetry on the computer, I spent a lot of time talking to her. Like Emily, Marina was cute with a wonderfully bubbly personality. Many of her poems were about the typical teen problems of growing up. However, others were troubling. These poems were about the pain and confusion of reaching out for love when no one responds. I wondered what experiences could lead someone not yet 18 to write such heartbreaking poetry. For some reason, I told her about Emily and that she had been a cutter. Marina slowly pushed back her sleeve to expose the thin white marks that crisscrossed the fleshy part of her forearm. I responded as I wish I had known to do with Emily. I simply reached out and gently touched the scars.
Some scars, like Emily’s and Marina’s, are notched in flesh. Others are not so easily seen. According to the Center for Mental Health Services, as many as one in eight adolescents may experience an episode of depression. Every day millions of teenagers sit in classrooms across America, struggling to deal with feelings of hopelessness and despair. Many times, their problems are the legacy of parents who have placed their careers and personal lives before the well-being and safety of their children.
I failed Jordan and Emily when they needed me most. They kept her pain from me because they sensed that I would not understand. They were right. But I have changed. Now when teens come to the library, I greet them with a warm smile and kind words. I laugh at their jokes and compliment them on their clothes because I know they need adult acceptance. For some, these are the only caring gestures they will encounter all day. But my biggest contribution may be finding information and recommending books that will help them better understand their problems.
Every day I see girls who remind me of Emily, and listen to stories that are similar to hers. Every day I reach out to them because now I know I can make a difference. I lost my chance once. I will not let it happen again.
