While watching the news with my mom today, I saw a story about a local teacher committing suicide in their classroom and being found by students.

This wasn't a teacher I knew, nor a school I went to/taught at. But this really hit home to me.

I've had depression before. I struggle with pretty bad anxiety right now. (I was crying almost all night and all morning because I was worrying about work. In fact, students could tell something was wrong and at least one student in every class period commented that I looked sad, or sick, or tired.) But it's really hard for me to think about ever doing something like so drastic as killing myself in my own classroom.

All I could think was, those poor students! They will forever live with that image in their minds. That's terrible. Then as I looked up more information on the story, I found that the woman wasn't much older than me, and she was married. How could someone so young, with so much life left... with a husband, just throw that all away. It's hard to imagine someone doing that. But that's what's so hard about mental illness, it's not always easy to see inside the head of the person or understand how they feel the way they feel.

I'm not much of the praying type, but I want to say a little prayer for her students, coworkers, and family. It's hard to lose someone and I can't imagine the pain these people are going through. Not to blame the victim in this scenario, but it's selfish to do this to people who love and care about you. I know that as much as I'm overwhelmed and anxious lately, I could never do something like that to all the people I know who care about me. I could never hurt my parents that way, my friends. I could never do that to Jon.

So this kind of helped put some of my anxiety into perspective. As tough as things are, as much as I feel like I'm drowning in work, I know it could be worse.