Qaiyaan Harcharek and Don Rearden grew up in small cities, and each have skilled a lot tragedy. (If you or somebody you realize is in disaster, name or textual content 988 to succeed in the Suicide and Disaster Lifeline.)
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A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Time now for StoryCorps. And now we have a warning for our listeners. This morning’s dialog is about suicide. Don Rearden and Qaiyaan Harcharek grew up in small Alaskan cities tons of of miles aside, locations with a few of the highest suicide charges within the nation. And when their friendship started, they realized how a lot they’d in widespread.
QAIYAAN HARCHAREK: It appeared as if we knew one another our entire lives. It is sort of unusual.
DON REARDEN: Yeah, immediately. I do not assume the common particular person can perceive what it is prefer to develop up in a spot the place you lose so many individuals to suicide.
HARCHAREK: It is powerful.
REARDEN: Yeah, it’s. The primary individual that I knew intimately who’d took his personal life was a teammate of mine. I used to be only a freshman in highschool, and he had moved in to Bethel to play basketball. We had been good mates. After which that summer time, I came upon he’d, you realize, took his life. After which that fall, I misplaced one other classmate. Fairly quickly, it was like a complete gymnasium stuffed with those who I knew personally who had been gone.
HARCHAREK: I might relate 100%. All of my grownup life, I’ve had struggles with psychological well being and melancholy, and I am a suicide survivor. I tried it. Nonetheless, I’ve this imaginative and prescient. I do not know – it is laborious to explain, however it was my spouse and youngsters reaching as much as me, and there have been many, many silhouettes round them of individuals with faces, and yours was considered one of them. What I do know is it was the love that I acquired from every a type of those who saved my life.
REARDEN: I am going to always remember once you referred to as me after. I simply – I imply, I cried. I used to be pondering of you and simply relieved that it was a name like that and never one thing else. We have misplaced so many individuals that means, and you are feeling hopeless, and you are feeling like nothing you can ever do issues. After which to listen to you say, like, (crying) I used to be a type of faces was one thing, man.
HARCHAREK: Yeah. I respect you.
REARDEN: I respect you, man. We have to get out on the land collectively and simply go spend a while within the wilderness.
HARCHAREK: Completely. That is my drugs.
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MARTÍNEZ: Qaiyaan Harcharek and Don Rearden in Anchorage, Alaska. This StoryCorps dialog is archived on the Library of Congress. Should you or somebody you realize could also be contemplating suicide or is in disaster, name or textual content 988 to succeed in the Suicide & Disaster Lifeline.
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