A gay teen from Valencia County, New Mexico has taken his own life after enduring years of bullying, reports KOB News. Carlos Vigil posted a suicide note to his Twitter account on July 13, moments before he ended his life.
“I’m sorry to those I offended over the years. I’m blind to see that I, as a human being, suck. I’m an individual who is doing an injustice to the world and it’s time for me to leave,” reads the note. “The kids in school are right, I am a loser, a freak, and a fag and in no way is that acceptable for people to deal with. I’m sorry for not being a person that would make people proud.”
The 17-year-old’s parents say their son had been suffering from bulling since the third grade, but they had only been aware of his situation for a few years.
We are still losing queer kids to bullying and hate.
We’ve created hotlines and video campaigns and a movement to get gay/straight alliances into schools. And those efforts have made a difference. They’ve saved lives. I hear from queer kids every day who’ve been helped by Trevor and It Gets Better and GLSEN and the ACLU. I hear from queer kids every day who’ve been saved by a counselor on a Trevor hotline or by someone whose IGB video they responded to or by the GLSEN-backed GSA that the ACLU had to sue their school to get in place. But no one writes about LGBT kids who haven’t killed themselves. Maybe we should.
But there are queer kids out there who are suffering so much—there are queer kids out there who are being made to suffer so much—that all the hotlines and videos and GSAs in the world aren’t going to get them through it. We may need to build an underground railroad for these kids. Because for some queer kids getting out of sorry, hateful, hater-filled shitholes like Valencia County, New Mexico, could mean the difference between life and death.
We can despair or we can do something. Something more.