Not on the roster

The Wyoming high school football preview magazine — which I write every summer — mentions several hundred Wyoming high school football players before each season.

Every once in a while, though, somebody who should be a part of their team’s story that year isn’t there.

Sometimes, the reasons are explainable, and some reasons more common than others. Moved away. Ineligible. Transferred. Decided to focus on another sport. Had a falling out with a coach. Incarcerated.

In a dozen years of preview magazines, and almost 20 years of covering high school football in the Equality State, I’ve heard all of these.

But sometimes, when I ask the question “What about ____?”, I can hear an audible sigh from the coach, followed by silence on the other end of the line.

I know what’s coming.

That teenager is dead.

Usually, the coach fills me in on the details. I’ve talked to coaches that have had players who have died in car crashes, drowned on rafting trips, been accidentally shot, and more.

But the hardest reason to hear, by far: He killed himself.

I can’t help but feel my heart break harder for those deaths than the others. And I know why — it’s because that could have been me.

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During my freshman and sophomore years in high school, depression manifested in me in the kinds of changes that few people could notice. Even I struggled to see it in the moment. In retrospect — through both individual introspection and therapy — I see it much more clearly, though. Specifically for me, my depression came out in small bits of anger and frustration that grew increasingly more frequent as I got older. By the time I turned 16, right at the start of my sophomore year, I had mastered the “non-response.” If someone said something that brought out my ever-more-frequent feelings of anger or frustration, I stared daggers, but my face didn’t change and my voice stayed silent.

What people didn’t see was how often I turned those daggers inward, beating myself up for my perceived shortcomings. As those moments became more and more frequent, they slowly became tied to thoughts of suicidal ideation.

From an outside perspective, my depression could have simply looked like basic teenager stuff. What teenager doesn’t occasionally come off like a jerk? That’s part of growing up; not every jerk is depressed, and not every depressed person is a jerk. In fact, on a traditional depression checklist, I didn’t hit many of the key indicators that would normally indicate clinical depression.

No matter what, though, the idea of not being there was hard for me to escape.

I didn’t realize that I was struggling as hard as I was until I had an epiphany during my sophomore year. In an instant, I realized something wasn’t right. I asked my parents for help, and fortunately they listened and acted. I started taking antidepressants and going to therapy.

The brain chemistry started changing, slowly at first, although a higher dose of Prozac accelerated the good changes. Therapy gave me more tools to handle my daggers and keep them from stabbing me.

Recovery was proof: I wasn’t broken. I was sick.

Today, more than 20 years later, the sickness still lingers. But now I know how to keep that sickness from killing me.

Unfortunately, not everyone receives that help.

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The coaches I talk to always struggle to find the words. Their words represent the same words uttered by family, friends, mentors, community members. We’re never ready for it. Why him? Why now?

I think the surprise is misplaced. In Wyoming, we should be ready for it. And that sucks.

Wyoming ranked first — or last, depending on how you want to look at it — in per capita suicides in 2021, with a rate of 32.3 suicide deaths per 100,000 people, in the last full year that CDC data is available. Wyoming also led the country in per capita suicides in 2020. And 2019. And 2018.

Suicide is the No. 2 cause of death in Wyoming for people from ages 10-44. Men die more often than women, and in Wyoming, 75% of suicide deaths involve a firearm.

Some good news? Wyoming’s rates fell in 2022.

But that’s in the aggregate. The individual suicides remain — holes in families, communities, schools and teams that will remain unfilled.

That’s why we have to talk about it.

I believe the only reason I’m alive is that I felt comfortable talking about my emotional darkness with someone I trusted. Maybe most importantly, I had engaged in difficult, emotional, vulnerable conversations already with people that I trusted, and they had shown me they were ready to handle them. Friendship and rapport are a start; love, trust and vulnerability are even better.

Conversation isn’t the sole solution. Even the most trusting and open relationship may not be enough to save someone. But it’s a start.

From the Wyoming Department of Health: If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of harming themselves, please call 911. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text “WYO” to 741-741 for the Crisis Text Line. 

–patrick