Causative Affect

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A  young girl is dead. That is the final paragraph of a story that has shocked Canada. Not for the first time, nor the last. Each time brings its own shock of disbelief. That a young boy, a young girl, hovering on the brink of maturity acts on the impulse to end what has only just begun. There should be a much, much longer space between birth and death. There should be episodes enough of happiness and inspiration, expectations and satisfaction reached to expunge the bitterness of episodic disappointment and regret.

Someone in their teens deciding that they cannot wait for deliverance from the anguish they find themselves in has made that precipitate determination that theirs is a future without value for them. In depriving themselves they deprive those who love them who will bear the burden of sorrow. They have left behind their legacy to the world, a truncated life of imagined triumphs that will never be realized. Their future is surrendered.

From the perspective of a mature mind the puzzle will always be what could possibly have been seen as so horribly painful that a young person would prefer death over life? The silent, blank and very dark finality of it is so irretrievably and unmercifully final. From death there is no return, no lingering uncertainty whether after all one regrets the decision and prefers to turn time back, a rescue from the finality of non-existence.

It is the depth of that despair that should be remembered in the case of Rehtaeh Parsons, who committed herself to the unforgiving forever of death. Her belief that life no longer held any value for her, that the pain she was suffering was so intolerable that death was preferable. Leaving behind everything that ever might have held her to life in favour of abandoning it all.

A brief time of abandonment to a hedonistic pleasure that held consequences she was not prepared to face. Hormone- and youth-culture, thrill-seeking abandonment, an innocently guilty foray into the forbidden territory of adult yet teen-centric sexual activities. And then, the dreadful pangs of regret, of concern for reputation, of pain that accompanies peer contempt and derision.

Rejtaeh Parson was not as resilient as many other young girls. She hadn't the self-confidence that would carry her over the demeaning period of regret, conscience and confusion that alienated her from her decision to defy convention for a brief foray into the complete relaxation of acceptable behavioural standards. She was unwilling to pay the price for liberating herself however briefly from the social contract.

Not when that liberation came complete with the social judgement that so swiftly followed. She was a more than willing participant in the partying event that sullied her reputation as a slut. It was freedom from convention and caution, and it was light-headed fun. It was without doubt all of that for the boys whose adventure it represented to take advantage of an opportunity while they and she were both under the influence of alcohol.

That those boys chose to display evidence of her having succumbed to that reckless behaviour that bespoke a certain amount of self-abuse, speaks hugely of their lack of compassion for another young person living in a world where males are excused rudely abusive behaviour and females are not. Rehtaeh's girlfriend was clearly invested with a greater sense of self-awareness and self-respect.

She anxiously attempted to guide her friend, but was rebuffed. Which did not stop her from trying again, returning with her mother to attempt to convince Rehtaeh to remove herself from her dangerously compromising activities. That they both failed represented a complication in the ability of others to influence the behaviour of those other than themselves absent common values and perceptions.

The episode in juvenile exploration of freedoms for which they are unprepared and as yet unfit, ended horribly for one participant. If there is any guilty party it is perhaps the blatant culture that has evolved of youth entitlement to shun adult advice while taking on adult behaviour as practised by children incapable of understanding the realities of consequences.

The stupidity of young boys parading and celebrating a conquest emulates the behaviour of many adult men whose emotional level of maturity has never been satisfactorily attained. But the fault lies also in a teen culture that seeks to find victims to deride, to make examples of, to hold in contempt, while secretly being grateful that they are not themselves like those losers.