Coming home to find your sister swinging from a beam with her eyes bulging and skin pallid. Is this a selfish act on her part?
The act of suicide is usually a form of self indulgent desperation. Even those that try and make it non selfish are indeed making it worse.
Throwing yourself off a ferry in the middle of the ocean? Means that all your assets are frozen for 7 years and that you can’t be buried, always wondering what will happen.
The term “suicide victim” only refers to those still alive.
Is there a non selfish act of suicide?
Are all suicides selfish?
Hm… this may be a nitpick or a language issue on my part, but I think they aren’t so much “selfish” as “self-centered”.
When you commit suicide, you’re either completely wrapped in how you feel and unable to worry about the feelings or others OR actually convinced that you’re doing others a favor by offing yourself.
I was >< this close from jumping off a 10th floor window when I was 11: not because I intended to cause distress to the neighbor who would have gotten a big splat on her patio, but because the constant beratings and put-downs I got from my family had convinced me that I was a useless waste of air. I absolutely and sincerely believed that offing me would have made things better for others. The moment passed, I decided that “I refuse to believe that anyone including me can be completely useless, there must be something I’m good at and what I have to do is find it”… but it was very, very close.
I would agree with the use of ‘selfish’, mainly because I’ve come to the same conclusion some time ago.
It leaves a mess behind, and a Catholic funeral for a suicide is extremely boring (been to two of those) as the priest comes up with tortuous logic to ‘excuse’ the act.
The classic was that effectively JC topped himself.
In the four cases of close friends that I’m thinking of, I am sure that it was not malice, in the fifth that I prevented, it was because the guy reckoned that he was old and useless (despite being remarkably fit and mentally active for his age).
I knew that young males go through a period of despair, I generally put it between 18 and 25, but did not realize that the same happened in lasses. Age eleven strikes me as slightly precocious.
When I was around 24 years old I had a laundry list of fucked up things that happened to me. I won’t go into detail, but trust me, I was miserable. I was in my house in front of a sink full of cold water holding a razor blade and trying to get the nerve up to slice my wrists. I honestly felt that everyone including myself would be better off if I were dead. (There was very little “everyone” since everyone in my immediate family had died recently…that was one of the fucked up things that had happened) A good friend of mine happened to be living with me for a few months and she came home early from work and caught me standing there in the bathroom. She was both angry and heartbroken to see me feeling this way but I can still hear these words coming from her: *“Do you know what it would do to me and the rest of your friends if you do this? Don’t you care about us?!!” *
So yeah, I think suicide is somewhat selfish. A guy I knew in High school killed himself a few years ago and it tore his family up. (especially since he did it because his worthless wife…who I also had known for years…was cheating on him) But when you get to that point when you start thinking death is a release you kind of think that everyone will get over it because you’re not important enough to cry over. At least thats how I felt, when I was wanting to take myself out.
The study of what is going through suicide victims brains can be difficult. This is due to the most recent thing going through their brain is either a small piece of metal or a concrete paving slab.
I think it’s probably selfish and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re in so much pain that you don’t want to go on, it’s worse than the people in your life going on without you. They have options. You may not.
People with chronic, non-curable illnesses? Who are old or alone or broke or a drain (emotional and financial) on their loved ones–or who have no loved ones?
Hell, I’d be first in line for the pills and razor blade.
My life is my own, I have a right to be selfish about it. As well, in the case of painful terminal illnesses and mind destroying diseases, I’d call it enlightened self interest.
And if my loved ones/friends/whatever want me to hang around while I degenerate and/or writhe in agony because they benefit in some way, then they are ghouls and the last thing I want is to be helpful to them in any way. Not to mention that with that attitude, they won’t be my loved ones or friends anymore.
I agree with this sentiment. It’s absolutely selfish and absolutely OK, in my book. I do not always agree with it, I think sometimes people make things out to be much worse than they really are. But in the end, I think it’s a problem that we can’t even call our life our own. We had no choice about checking in, I think checking out should be up to us.
lamonfire, I am not sure whether or not you intended that link as a joke, but it really is not appropriate to this discussion, particularly without a warning for folks who may be posting from work.
As it was not really relevant to the discussion, I have simply destroyed the link.
Is this supposed to be funny? Because I find this to be in terribly bad taste. (This link goes to an animation with a picture of a cat dressed as Hitler with blinking eyes and a song playing loudly with lyrics “Kill your parents, then kill yourself.” Classy.)
When I was feeling suicidal, I found this site helpful in convincing me not to kill myself and would recommend it to anyone who is thinking about suicide.
It wasn’t the standard teenage woes. It was caused by parents who never, ever said “good job” because “they didn’t want it to go to our heads”, but also never, ever failed to point out our failings. They never congratulated my brother on getting married; two of us finished college faster than average for whatever our major happened to be, all three had very good grades… the closest my parents came to saying good work for that was a snorted “I guess you can do things right when you really want to” for a 100% (no grade curves; the next highest grade for that class of 240 was a 63%)
My brother wrote a poem at age 7 about how there were originally 8 dwarves but one offed himself before Snow-White got there. Mom thought it was “so tender”; I found it terrifying. This is a woman who trained as a grade school teacher and taught for over ten years :smack:
Right; if the hopelessness and despair are unbearable, it seems like the best path. I’m not sure why that’s selfish, just because it also have a negative effect on other people.