DENVER (CNN) — Students at a Denver-area high school are expressing love and kindness in an unlikely location.
A girls high school bathroom is known for gossip, but the discussion in this stall is overwhelmingly positive thanks to post-its.
“I feel like I’m kind of speechless when I think about it,” Hannah Blackman said. “I’m like, did we really do that? Like, did people actually take the time out of their day to do this?”
Students Hannah, Taylor and Teagan are among the students who wrote these messages, full of encouragement and kindness, all in contrast to a message written by a fellow student last week: “is life worth all the b-s?”
“Our first instinct is to scrub it off, like, erase it, like, it’s vandalism,” Blackman said. “But, no, like, we have to pay attention to those kinds of things.”
These three say mental health is a serious issue in their school.
“People are going through stuff, like, so severely that they don’t want to be alive anymore,” Teagan McGovern said. “I don’t think people grasp how big of a deal that is.”
“Yeah, you might be 12 or you might be 17, and we might think these problems are trivial, but that’s your real-life world,” Kristen Lewis said. “That’s all they know right now.”
You are loved.
You are beautiful.
You have a future.
“Personally, I know just going in there even not having a bad day it’s just a good feeling just to see positivity,” Taylor Volek said.
And that positivity will stick even if these post-its come down.
“Everybody’s situation is different, but, at the same time, we’re all very alike,” Blackman said. “And we need to kind of stick together, and I feel like that’s something that we could be better at as a community.”
A teacher said the school plans to move the post-its to a hall so others can see them.
The teens are now raising funds for suicide prevention.