Suicide is not a joke.

People need to realize that.

So many teens, kids, maybe even adults are able to toss around words like "suicide" and phrases like "Kill me now," as if they're talking about nothing more than the weather, not realizing what an impact they might have on people who have actually experienced real, serious, suicidal thoughts. My brother does it all the time; in fact, I was once guilty of it. When I first heard that suicide was one of the topics we'd be covering in my seventh grade health class, I remember saying something along the lines of, "What, are they going to teach us how to jump off a bridge?" I said it with a laugh; my younger brother chuckled, too, though my dad scolded us for laughing at such a serious thing.

Looking back now, I could not tell you one single reason why I thought the topic of suicide was humorous. It's amazing how much a person can change in two short years.

I was never depressed. However, I very nearly lost my best friend to suicide later in the very same year that I made that stupid joke. Before then, I had never really thought depression would affect me personally, or anyone around me. Frankly, I thought I was above it. I thought you had to be poor and mistreated with divorced, fighting or abusive parents.

I never realized it could happen to absolutely anyone.

She was doing great in school, straight A's in everything. Her family was well-off, but not obnoxiously rich. She lived in a good-sized house in the country, with a huge yard and her own horse and goats and chickens that she had to share with no one other than her little brother.

I never even would've guessed that she was depressed until she got the news that her parents wanted to move halfway across the country for a job offer; in fact, she didn't even know that she was clinically depressed until her parents took her took a doctor. And I only realized the extent of it when I went to visit her the day after the move was confirmed and her arms and legs alike were filled with thin, self-inflicted cuts.

The move only made things worse, and before long, she was purposely doubling or tripling the dosage of her anti-depression pills. At first, it was just to try and make herself happier. Later, it was to kill herself.

She did, thankfully, get over through the depression, but it wasn't an easy process. It was slow and painful as she forced herself to stop cutting, went day after day to see a counselor, and tried desperately to make some friends who wouldn't treat her like crap.

While I cannot say that I understand what it feels like to be that deeply depressed, I'll never forget all of those nights when I lay in bed awake, unable to fall asleep, wondering if my best friend would still be alive in the morning.

So now, when people loosely make jokes about suicide, or declare that depression could never happen to them, or wonder why on earth someone would be so stupid as to take their own life, I remember those days with a sharp pang of pain.

And I wasn't even the one who was depressed.