There were times in my life when the only thing that stopped me from killing myself was the thought of what it would do to my grandfather. He was my lifeline.
One of my best friends committed suicide last January. He was 22. He’d been in treatment for less than a year. He had no fucking way of knowing if his mental illness was incurable, because he hadn’t even fucking tried yet, hardly.
I’m not the most mentally stable individual. I nearly went into a state of extreme psychosis afterwards (as it was, I spent several months damn near that state). The weeks and months afterwards were horrible; I felt like I was walking around hollow after having had barbed wire run through my digestive tract. And there is guilt that I will carry for the rest of my life. The sense that I could have somehow stopped it. That if I’d called him the night before, if I’d come to visit that week, if I’d forced him to do this or that. . .and so on. And, because he’s dead, I will never receive his absolution, or his assurance that it wasn’t partially my fault.
He’s dead. He’s a victim of his mental illness, but he’s dead, and he’s not the one feeling like shit because he’s not feeling. We’re both victims.
Shadez got it right on. Seeing someone who’s tried is hard. Loving someone who has is harder. I have another friend who recently talked about it. He asked me what would happen if he “had to die.” I told him, quite honestly, that I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected that it would break me.
None of this absolute pity for the victim and complete disregard for our own feelings. Grief is selfish, and we are more than entitled.
This makes a little more sense than what I percieve to be the gist of the OP. Thanks for refining your intent.
I agree with you that the pain of mental illness is excruciating indeed. However, I also agree with others that comparing my suffering/your suffering in some kind of one-upmanship game is fruitless and, frankly, rude.
I think we can all agree that a person who commits suicide was suffering, one some level, from a mental illness. Cancer is also an illness. Why would you blame the victim of one, but not the other? Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Suicide is not about saying “fuck you” to the world. That’s something the survivors come up with to help pass the blame. Suicide is not about grudges. It’s about not wanting to live, period.
It can also be that the desire to end the torment outweighs the desire to live. They don’t always want to die. It just seems unavoidable. Despite fully knowing what that will do to others.
I will agree that suicide is selfish, but not the way we normally think of someone being selfish. It’s selfish in that you’re totally unable to see beyond your pain, and even if you were, you’re so deluded by it that you think no one WILL care if you die-you might even believe they’d be better off without you.
Bingo. It is pointless to count coup for victimhood in the wake of suicide. There’s plenty of misery to go around. Suicide is an act of hoplessness that just keeps on giving.
A year ago next month, my best friend’s father killed himself. He smuggled in a gun and blew his brains out in the front yard of his house. It was, and still is, very rough indeed.
He had battled mental illness for at least 25 years, and had his ups and downs with treatment. There were some good years, too. Finally though, at 72, he’d had enough.
After his death, the family discovered diaries he had written, going back decades. He was very much the strong paterfamilias, so he poured out thoughts into his diaries that he never shared with others. His diaries were the one thing that finally gave a measure of peace to his family. He documented his ups and downs with a remarkably clear insight. After so many years, he was just plain too tired to go on. He loved his family, thought his doctors were fine, but he was just plain worn out from years fighting to ‘feel right’ (his words) in his own head.
Really, really bad shit happens. Playing the my-pain-is-worst game is tacky, pointless and spectacularly selfish. So is blaming the dead.
You know not everyone who kills themselves have a mental illness some people do it for other reasons whether they be financial, out of shame, disfigurement or permanent injury, under the influence of drugs, or they just feel like “what’s the point?”
I’ve a friend whose mind is indeed working that way. He has a daughter, and when severely depressed, he’s convinced she would be better off without him.
My step-father commited suicide in January after a long fight with schizophrenia. I am quite aware that he suffered for years inside his own head. But he left my mother, a 6 year old girl and 5 year old twin boys behind. It’s not anyone’s fault specifically but it’s incredibly hard on all of us. We have so many of these unanswered questions, 3 young children will grow up without their father.
Granted. Even though those left in the wake of suicide probably wonder whether the suicide could have been ‘in right mind’ at the time, no wonder the cause.
Any death sucks, but actual suicide just adds a unique layer of suckitude. It’s not all that unusual for the very old or ill to just give up. My formerly healthy mother just plain gave up on life after her two younger siblings died unexpectely within a year of each other. She didn’t want to live any more, so she stopped trying–and died within six months. I was frantic and bereft when she gave up, but her spark and will to live were gone. People can live carelessly or unwisely, and die for it, by entirely predicatable ‘accident’. Sucks, big time, all of it, but there we are.
There are plenty of reasons not to rail at the dead, even suicides. One is that pesky ‘judge not’ thing. Comparing relative tragedies and strengths with the dead smacks of hubris. Whatever the dead did or didn’t do, they already paid for it with their lives. Second, the dead are beyond hearing. It’s wailing into a void.
Everybody has unique, invisible fracture lines. When somebody shatters, it effects those nearby. Strongly. But people don’t choose to fracture apart. Heaping metaphorical coals of guilt, recrimination and anger on their shades doesn’t help anyone, the survivors least of all.
One odd thing I remember that my formidable and demanding mother said, possibly because it was so atypical: “People do the best they can.”
It’s true. Let the dead go, in peace if possible, or at least with minimal reproaches.
I’ll concede that point.
About this time last year, my nephew’s mother in law was staying with them. Nephew and his wife were woken up early one morning by their two children, ages 6 and 4 yelling:“Mommy, Daddy! Grandma hurt herself.”
She had indeed hurt herself. She’d got up in the middle of the night and sawed her wrists open, so her grandchildren could find her body lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor the next morning.
Pity her if you will. I think she was a cruel, heartless bitch for choosing to end her life in such a thoughtless manner.
If you just gotta’ off yourself, please pick a better way is what I’m sayin’.
but I’d like to add a few points, in my extremely humble opinion. I’ll make this a two-parter so my One Trick Pony can wave toot his horn on more than one soapbox.
*Victims and selfishness abound all the way around. The person suffering who couldn’t see beyond that and the one(s) left behind who can’t see past their own pain to care about why the act was committed in the first place.
*It’s only supposition to say what happens after. Many religions don’t feel that a suicide’s problems have ended with their death. On the contrary, they’ve just begun in earnest. By the same token, assuming that everyone connected will be scarred is not completely plausible. There are sadistic fucks out there who think and do the most heinous things possible. I doubt seriously they’d give a shit. And there’s probably plenty others who just fall into a normal category who don’t do much more than shrug. At least, that’s been my experience with the latter.
*I mainly agree with Shadez. If I offed myself, I wouldn’t be a victim of that action. Perhaps you could classify me as such due to failure of mental help in every imaginable manner, but I would be responsible. I feel that, NO ONE ELSE IS TO BLAME, EVER, FOR ANOTHER PERSON COMMITTING SUICIDE. A contributor, even to a humongous degree, but not the decision maker. So, no one can actually stop them but their own desire. NO ONE.
*Tenar nailed it that it’s just not comparable.
*In opposition to what John Carter of Mars said, I’ve been grateful in the past for anything that allowed me insight into that person’s thought process. I’d rather know why they felt the way they did, than have to guess and wonder forever.
*And Zoe totally sums up what has gone through my mind when I no longer wanted to live. It was, to an extent, about everyone else. Because even if they suffered, it would only be temporary. But if they dealt with me all the rest of my natural born days, I’d benefit of my destruction daily and understand how my shit was killing them. Just slowly. I also agree 100% with furt. My loved ones aren’t nearly as educated, but they responded in exactly the same way. The rest is accurate too. How long is long enough to try to beat something like this? How long??
That is a beautiful thing to say LaurAnge and I thank you for it.
*Any of the times that I’ve prevented myself from following through, it’s been because of what I’d do to my eventually-to-be-ex husband and bestfriend. For the last decade, he’s been pretty much my driving force for staying alive. So, I think it’s disingenuous to claim that some aren’t thinking of others if they are successful. Sometimes they’ve just run out of using that as an option, it’s so worn thin.
*Carnick may very well have been talking for me with “Suicide is not about saying “fuck you” to the world.” and “Suicide is not about grudges. It’s about not wanting to live, period.” As well as dwyr. And Guin echoes more eloquently what I was talking about…
*I cannot fathom what hell it must be to deal with schizophrenia or any sort of long-term debilitating mental problems without relief (like in Veb’s post). For both the one in the midst of it and those surrounding.
*Lastly, I believe we all do the best we can. That might apply moreso to anyone who takes their own life. Again, IMVHO.
Add to all this that my heart goes out for those who feel compelled to contemplate suicide and those who’ve had to endure its fallout. I wish us all peace.
Yeah but I mean whats the point of giving a shit when your about to kill yourself? Fuck everyone else the person who commits suicide have to be there to worry about it.
that is, they won’t have to be there to worry about it
Tenar, I feel obliged to remind you that there are places and people you can talk to when you are in a 'suicidal trough." There is never a reason that you cannot get help. I personally am willing to listen if you need someone to talk at. Feel free to email me anytime. Really.
boofuu
Granted and considered, John Carter. But when push comes to shove–and let’s concede suicide is the ultimate shove (off)–what exactly can amount to a “better way”? If someone’s sufficinently despairing to willfully depart life, careful considerations about discovery and lasting aftermath probably paled into insignificance.
Of course it’s horrible and scarring. Even if one doesn’t find the body, the overwhelming reality remains that someone loved wanted OUT of life.
Selfish? Yeah, in the narrow sense that an individual person forgot, for whatever reason, that they were ‘part of the main’, much less worth a bell tolled in grief and loss. I’m not minimizing the loss and damage suicide inflicts on survivors, no matter why or HOW it’s done.
It’s just pointless, not to mention unseemly, to be angry with the dead for any reason. Suicides–and any dead–aren’t above reproach, but they’re surely beyond it. They’ve already made the ultimate, irrevocable choice. There’s no possible point, much less good, to counting coup, comparing agony, with the dead. They certainly paid for whatever narrow, despairing mistakes they made in life–and death. They can’t pay any more than they already have. They already rejected self and life itself.
Suicide is the ultimate, willful abandoment of everything and everybody. It’s a lousy pattern to fall into, much less compete with.
But at the same time, tonight, walking out (chasing my silly dogs) I passed our pond…
So quiet, and still. With that welcoming water… I would like to walk right in there and never walk out.
So, I don’t blame suicidals. I’ve been there, heck, I wrestle with it every day. I’ve got too much going on to make such a selfish move. But no, I don’t blame them.
continuity eror I have read this thread and I am struggling to put how I feel into words.
My first thought equated to FUCK YOU! Then I reread the thread and started thinking you were a ‘almost-did’, my urge to tell you off diminshed. But you just don’t seem to get it.
People who loved suiciders will never be the same again. The suiciders are dead.
So going with my first thought…FUCK YOU.
When a person kills themselves they are dead…the aim of the game really. Their family? Not so dead. Their friends? Not so dead. They are there thinking “FUUUCK!!! How the FUCK could I have stopped him?”
Not everyone who kills themselves has lifelong mental illness. REALLY! Some have situational depression. The fact that they don’t have skills to cope with those situations is HORRIBLE.
At the end of the day THEY are dead because THEY chose to be.
As the wife of a suicider and mother of a son who hasn’t seen his dad since he was baby, we are victims. Victims of suicide.
I don’t give a shit for your “battle of pain”. I do care that you want to negate the pain of (in your lingo) “survivors”.
I know my husbands last night was full of guilt, remorse, sadness, and even good memories. I know this because he was on the phone at least every 10 minutes.
His last call, at 11:40pm said “I have 20 mins left to live”
My response? “Stop being a dick, go to bed and I will see you in the morning”
Turned out he died exactly when he said he would.
Here’s the problem, though, and what those who haven’t been there may have a hard time understanding. There have been times when I have been lying in bed, the phone six inches from my hand, the phone number of an old and trusted friend running through my hand and still been unable to call him. Fortunately, no, make that “Thank God” I’ve also been able to do anything else, including what I wanted most, killing myself. Even when you know there’s someone out there who’s willing and able to help you, the way severe depression distorts your thinking makes it extremely difficult to reach out and get that help. A few years ago, I was being treated by a very good therapist, one who I trusted and who did me a lot of good. When I was suicidal, however, I didn’t call her because I thought that if I did, she might have me locked up and that would only make my situation worse. That night, I called a suicide hotline, instead. I’d bookmarked them in the phone book when I was laid off because I knew that I might not be capable of looking up their number if I needed them.
This isn’t just one of my idiosyncracies. It’s a characteristic of the disease and the way it distorts one’s thinking. When depression is at its worst, I sincerely believe no one is willing or able to help me, even though as I sit and type these words, I know full well experience has taught me otherwise. Right here and now on a pleasant summer Sunday morning with a man I love sleeping in the next room, I can understand how much my dying would hurt those I’d leave behind and how justifiably angry they would be. Even so, though, I nearly typed “some of them” instead of “they”. I think there are even some people around here who’d be sad and angry to see me go. When I’m severely depressed, when there’s nothing in my world but pain, I can’t see that or, if I can see that my dying would hurt people, I also sincerely believe that the short term pain of my death would be made up for by sparing them the long term pain of continuing to have to put up with me.
I understand how people can be furious with those who commit suicide, especially when they haven’t been given a reason to know how bad things are. I don’t blame them for their anger, although I do hope they don’t blame themselves. I have also had my mind snap, so to speak, under unbearable pain. I didn’t commit suicide or die; I just spent about 2 days close to catatonia and almost completely unresponsive. It scared the daylights out of my fiance. I couldn’t take the pain any longer. Was it selfish? I don’t know? Is having a heart attack selfish? How about going into insulin shock? At that time, I’d never been treated for depression, even though I’d been battling it for over a decade and my first suicide attempt had happened some 13 years earlier. I regret that it happened and what I put my fiance through but I don’t regret its being the spur I needed to finally get treatment and to realize that not only would treatment help but that I might actually deserve treatment and help. On the other hand, I did survive.
John Carter of Mars I’m truly sorry about what your nephew’s mother-in-law did. It was a cruel thing to do. There’s nothing more helpful I can say.
boofuu, I appreciate your offer but, while I’m not Tenar, I wouldn’t take you up on it. You see, I don’t know you and, more importantly, you don’t know me, at least, not the real me. You don’t know the scars I have within me that, when I’m at my worst, I think will people away and make them not want to be around me or help me because I’m unfit for human contact. I have been betrayed by people I thought I could trust and I’ve been unable to help those I’ve wanted to. I know it may be rough hearing this, but when I’m depressed, even turning to a friend, even turning to the group I set up to help people cope with depression (Cecil’s Place) is difficult. Firing up the computer, looking up the address of someone I only know on-line and e-mailing them is much tougher. I do appreciate your offer, though and the kindness behind it.
I hope this has helped,
CJ