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How Photography Saved My Life

Karl-Heinz Frage

By Karl HeinzPublished 5 years ago 2 min read
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Hi, my name is Karl-Heinz and I am a recent high school graduate. High school was a tough time for me. I'm pretty sure it was a tough time for everyone, but high school was just terrible for me. Now all of this started my freshman year in high school. Now my brother also went to the same high school as me—he was a senior-—and so there was already a sense of acceptance on my first day. Now throughout high school, not a lot happened until I reached my junior year. That's when everything went south.

It started out with me not having energy to do my homework. Then I would sleep all the time. I would sleep so much that I would go days without ever eating anything. My grades started suffering. I started losing friends. Now as all that was happening, by pure coincidence I met a man who I'll call Mr. G. Now Mr. G was a pastor at the church I attended, and he pulled me over on a Sunday afternoon and asked me to meet him for coffee the following Saturday. So I went throughout that week, barely holding on. I had started to lose weight and my clothes didn't fit. So that Saturday when I met Mr. G, he started talking to me about the Bible and Jesus Christ. And both of my parents are pastors, so I had already known and understood what he was talking about, but it felt good to not have to talk. So after Mr. G finished his spiel about the Bible, he asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about. He said that he could see me struggling and that he would listen without judgement. So I did.

I told Mr. G everything that was happening. He ended up inviting me to his Bible study group and for awhile. It helped. Then Mr. G moved and I didn't know who to turn to. For a very long time I contemplated suicide. The thoughts themselves went on from the end of my junior year to the middle of my senior year. The reason they stopped was because someone saved my life. Around March of 2019, everything was getting worse and worse. It didn't have the energy to do anything at all. I was passing all my classes, but as most of my teachers noted, even though I was physically in class, I wasn't really there. So it had gotten to the point where I had planned out how and when I was to take my life. And the day of it, a friend of mine invited me outside. For the sake of it, I'll call him J. Now J was a pretty cool guy, but we only ever talked inside of school. So when he invited me out I was surprised. So he wanted me to help him take photos. I was confused. Then he told me how he had found my Instagram page and that he was impressed with my skills. So I ended up agreeing and we took a bunch of photos. And we had so much fun that I had forgotten my plans to take my life and we made plans to hang out again. All in all, had I never gotten into photography, which I had been doing for quite some time, and had J never looked at my Instagram, I never would have been alive to experience traveling across the world. So thanks to my trusty Canon camera, I am alive.

J and AC

coping
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