But just because we look like we have it all doesn’t mean that we feel like it. There’s a degree of pressure on us in North Shore that outsiders would never suspect.
Our parents grew up watching John Hughes’s movie The Breakfast Club. When our folks were young, it was enough just to be Brian the brain or Claire the homecoming queen or Andy the jock, but now they expect us to embody all those traits concurrently.
That’s a lot to ask.
And for some of us? Sometimes?
It’s just too much.
Sincerely yours,
The scrolling text ends with the movie’s title coming up on screen:
THE
GATEKEEPERS
*
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 2012, three promising Lake Forest High School students ended their lives by stepping in front of commuter trains. The losses came in rapid succession, first in January, then February, then April. My hometown of Lake Forest, Illinois, became the focus of national news as the media attempted to make sense of the story.
But how could anyone make sense of the senseless, especially as my town was a microcosm of the rest of the country?
How could anyone find a way to explain the more than five thousand daily teen suicide attempts in this nation?
And how could anyone rationalize that which takes more young adult lives than cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease, collectively?
To be honest, I avoided much of the 2012 coverage. I didn’t seek out answers. I wasn’t looking for clarity. I didn’t need to learn everything to protect my own teens because I don’t have children.
All I wanted was to bury my head in the sand and pretend none of this had happened. The events were simply too sad to contemplate.
By trade, I’m a humor writer so I tend to eschew that which isn’t uplifting or funny or lends itself to a punch line. I perpetually aim for the Hollywood happy ending, impossible given the circumstances. And, selfishly, I didn’t want to think of my pretty little town as anything less than perfect. In my head, Lake Forest was the bucolic gem I’d fallen in love with watching all those John Hughes movies so many years ago. I didn’t want to imagine something unseemly roiling under the surface of its pristine exterior.
Unlike the fictional town of North Shore, the city of Lake Forest has been incredibly proactive in attempting to prevent teen suicide and the community wholeheartedly supports these efforts. After thirty-three teen suicides in an eighteen-month period back in the early 1980s, the city established a youth center called CROYA (Committee Representing Our Young Adults) to safeguard our most precious commodities. The Gates Community Center in this book is based on the real-life good work done by CROYA.
And yet we’ve still lost some of our best and brightest here in Lake Forest.
Senseless.
That’s why for me, denial was the easiest way to deal with every heartbreaking article, each tear-jerking story. There are those who run toward the burning building of raw emotion, but I’m not that person. In that respect, Mallory is a part of me, as we both trend toward action over sentiment.
Because I’m not good with processing sorrow, I knew that if I dwelled in the stories, if I really dug in and tried to understand them, my sadness would morph to anger. I didn’t want to be the jerk speculating about people I’d never met and situations that didn’t involve me, so I detached, opting not to use my platform to inform or educate or enlighten.
Not long after the tragedies, I was invited to Purdue, my alma mater, to lecture freshmen classes for a day. After spending ten minutes with the students, I realized the speech I’d prepared was absolutely irrelevant. My message had been drawn from my checkered academic career, titled Cs Get Degrees. I’d gone down there with the intention of making students feel better about slacking in college, as my life/career were living proof that how you start the race is irrelevant; what matters is how you finish.
Instead, I learned that no one was having fun on campus, no one dared slack, not even for a minute. Cs might get degrees but they sure as hell wouldn’t get a job come graduation.
I met students from all over the country that day (even some from my sleepy Indiana hometown) and every one of them had the same story—that campus was a pressure cooker and the competition they’d all faced in high school had simply intensified in college.
I returned home with two thoughts: (a) that I’d never be admitted to Purdue today, and (b) that it’s so much less fun to be eighteen than it was in 1985.
The visit entirely changed my perspective on what it’s like to grow up now, particularly on Chicago’s North Shore. Here I’d been envious of the kids who’d been raised with so much opportunity, only to discover that the opportunity came at a cost.
A couple of years later, while working on a deadline for another light memoir with a happy ending, I learned that a college friend’s son had committed suicide.
Her boy was smart and handsome and athletic, the star player on his football team. He had tons of friends and came from a loving, supportive family, with a pack of younger brothers who thought he hung the moon.
Yet even with everything going for him, even with his family’s support, even with what he’d achieved and a limitless future stretching before him, he couldn’t outrun the depression that lied to him, that told him the only way through was out.
More than seven hundred people showed up for his funeral.
Despite being surrounded by all that love in his life, my friend’s son still felt alone.
Even though I’d never met her son, his life and death left an indelible impression on me. I couldn’t remain in denial about the pressures his peers are facing.
I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
I couldn’t remain detached.
I had to do something. To say something.
I chose to live in Lake Forest because this was John Hughes’s hometown. His movies were a love letter to my generation. Through his films, he told us that he understood what we were going through, that our feelings were real and valid and important. He didn’t always have solutions, but that didn’t matter; what mattered is that he listened.
He made sure we knew that we were not alone.
Because of his inspiration, this book is my love letter to your generation.
What you’re going through is real.
What you’re feeling is important.
You are heard.
And you deserve your Hollywood happy ending.