I LOVE HALLOWEEN. Love love love it. Maybe it’s because I like weird things, but I just love everything about Halloween. My favorite thing is when the Halloween store opens up in Lewiston once a year – I could spend hours and hundreds of dollars in there!

Last year, I was Alice from Alice in Wonderland for Halloween. She’s my favorite character of all time, and it was only fitting. Not to mention it was a lot of fun!

Despite all of this, there are so many costumes out there that are so hurtful and ignorant. Take the recent example of the self-harm Halloween makeup kit from Walmart. For the small price of $3.99 you too can recreate self-harm scars that are a real problem for so many people. Self-harm and suicide are nothing to joke about, and nothing to be taken lightly.

It’s horrifying. Not just what goes on in someone’s mind when they turn to self-harm, but that people or groups of people would think that it is OK to do this kind of thing. It’s not a costume, it’s real life. Suicide isn’t a costume. Hurting yourself isn’t a costume. And it never should be.

It’s not funny to joke about self-harm or suicide, or really any struggles that people go through. These things are so scary, and it’s hard enough to experience it without others mocking you or thinking that it’s all one big joke.