TW: suicide
Mental health wasn’t something that was introduced to me until my junior year of high school. Growing up I knew about things like depression and anxiety, but the way it was presented to me was that those things only appear when something severe happens to you. Like it’s only normal/okay to be depressed when someone dies. My family pushed the idea that when you’re young with little to no responsibilities and all your needs are met then there is no reason to have mental health issues. So when my friend in his senior year of high school, who lived down the street from me, in a nice suburban neighborhood, headed to college, in band, with a dog, nice family, swim team, with a car committed suicide I had difficulties processing. Like everyone else my number one question was “why?” You can list a number of reasons why he didn’t fit the “could possibly commit suicide list”. You could also list a number of conspiracies that possibly could have been the reason why he did it. Now that I’m older I’ve realized that those are just questions and answers we search in order to make ourselves feel better because in reality there could be no reason why. Not everything needs an explanation and that’s okay. Realizing that has personally helped me navigate through hard days.
Unruly Bodies 
I really enjoyed reading your post. My parents also pushed the idea onto me that if someone lived a normal life growing up and didn’t have anything really bad happen to them, it didn’t make sense for them to have any mental health problems. I think this is really toxic for anyone to hear growing up if they had these circumstances because they’d just end up feeling really invalidated if they did feel like they had a mental health disorder. Proper education on mental health is really important and should be taught in all schools and should start young.
So many people fighting depression have a smile on their face, and are often the ones making others happy. You really never know what is happening behind closed doors (relationships or mentally). As someone who struggles with depression severely, I can understand the “why” question. Especially if it’s coming from someone who has never dealt with mental health issues. It’s such a complex subject, and there is no one fits all answer. Sometimes the one that commits suicide doesn’t even fully know. Thank you for shedding light on and sharing your experience with this.