A Winnipeg musician tattooed 120 signatures on his arm Thursday in a symbolic gesture to show how many teenagers have written suicide notes but chose to live.
Robb Nash, the lead singer for the band Live on Arrival, tours schools, First Nation reserves and youth correctional facilities to warn young people about drugs, alcohol and suicide.
Nineteen-year-old Taylor Bowman once found herself thinking about ending her life. At 15-years-old, she carried her suicide note around in her pocket at school.
“I felt very alone,” Bowman said. “Nobody is listening to me, you know, I feel like I’m screaming and nobody hears me.”
Nash and his band came to her school and told the story about another girl, at another school, who felt the same way, and felt compelled to give him her suicide note and seek help. That prompted Bowman to do the same.
“She walked up to me and she had tears in her eyes,” he recalled, talking about Bowman. “She said it was like you were speaking right to me and then she handed me her suicide note and bracelet she was planning to leave for her mom.”
Fast-forward four years later, and Bowman and Nash have become good friends.
Bowman, like many young people Nash has touched, has a tattoo of Nash’s lyrics on her arm to remind her of her strength.
“My pain will never disappear but neither will my strength” it reads.
And now Nash too is tattooing his arm.
In total, 523 teenagers have handed their suicide notes to Nash, most of whom just carried the notes with them not knowing they would meet him that day.
Nash has chosen to have the first 120 names on his arm.
“These are all people who were in the same place and they found the strength. They kept walking. They ripped up their suicide notes. They got off their train tracks,” Nash said. “We want to make heroes out of those kids, the ones who’ve found the strength to get up.”
