Find your tribe in a Sea of Creativity
as i watch (and rewatch and rewatch) s4 ep4, it's impossible not to reflect on how each of vecna's victims may hazily or not so hazily represent different stages of giving up on life as a young person. across the board, all four teens presented flickering signs of internal turmoil that could have been clocked under a more watchful eye. but it's still those small differences, those small choices, that make a world of difference when it comes to approaching a struggling friend.
chrissy didn't truly want to die, just to escape. she easily could have been pulled out of her state of desperation if someone had truly stepped in a little earlier. the one helpful person she managed to confide in, ms. kelley, despite ms. kelley's valuable efforts, didn't have the time or the bandwidth for her she might have liked. the next person didn't know chrissy well enough to properly step in and intervene, even though he tried and came the closest anyone had so far. but before that, none of her peers had invested in her in an actionable way despite her tries to find her way through the cracks of her own self-made image and call for help. everyone assumed everything was fine, until it wasn't. because it was chrissy.
fred was the bottler, who channeled and ignored his way through guilt and grief to build himself a normal life out of ruins. and it worked! it worked until a trigger appeared. enough of a trigger to bring him back down. it started small, but grew more debilitating over a short period and sent him down a dark, consuming spiral that he all of a sudden couldn't escape from. he'd unintentionally isolated himself, and no matter who might have wanted to step in for him in his time of need, they were too far away. fred didn't truly want to die either. but once his trigger became too close and suffocating, he lost his way.
patrick was the wilter, who incrementally became less and less of himself among his family and friends. the way his father treated him ground down his self esteem and warped the voice inside his head until it became nothing but his father's unkind words. unfortunately, the descent was so gradual that all his friends adapted until suddenly it was long past too late to pull patrick from the depths of his sunken self worth and tell him he deserved better.
then there's max. the avoidant. the stoic. she plugged along, trying to pull herself up and out by her own bootstraps. but the biggest difference here was the open investment her friends maintained in her life. they were willing to bend over backwards to remain by her side until she reached out a hand for help. they tried and tried and tried until it was almost too late, but by then, they'd done enough. max saw just how much she was watched over. she saw her friends' concern for what it was: love, not nagging complaints that she "wasn't who she used to be". they cared more for her well being than to where the old max had disappeared. they paid attention to what mattered to her and offered it when she was finally ready. at every turn after the graveyard, she worked to accept more help and they did the work to understand what kind of communication max needed so that she could continue trusting they had her best interest at heart.
td;lr - love your friends loudly. you never know who might need what.