Well, he had style. I feel for the conductor (or engineer?) who will have to live with this.
That’s… just…
Sorry, but your guy was an asshole. Not as big an asshole as this giant asshole, but an asshole nonetheless.
If you want to off yourself, I don’t have a problem with that. But to kill other people in the process or subject a train conductor to a lifetime of nightmares, well only an asshole would do that.
Want to kill yourself? Fine go ahead, but man the fuck up and do it without endangering other people.
I agree with all of the above. And on a more selfish note, I once was trapped on an el’ train between stations while they scraped off the remains of a suicide from underneath a train in front of mine. I and my fellow passengers were stuck there for an hour and a half, and I had an appointment to get to.
I did not have compassionate thoughts about that suicide. The word “asshole” crossed my mind a lot as I sat there. And I’m not a bit sorry. You wanna kill yourself, fine. Don’t bring tiring misery and frustration into my life while you’re doing it.
Honestly to me, this sounds really self absorbed and uneducated. A person with a serious mental illness, who is in that state of mind cannot help it. Maybe a little compassion is in order? People who are that ill to begin with are not in their right mind, and the despair, or hallucinations just takes over their ability to think clearly.
OK, he was a crazy asshole. Still an asshole.
But he made people late!
Can’t he get treatment at a center? Just not around here, not in my backyard.
And of course even though he is mental I expect him to hold down and job and be able to pay for his own treatment.
Thank you for your permission.
While I have from time to time thought about stepping in front of something, I vowed a long time ago to never commit “suicide by _____”. I wish to involved as few people in my death as possible.
Though getting a job at Walmart for Black Friday still remains a possibility.
While I have no doubt there are people that are so mentally ill they can’t think enough about others to try and take a conductors (and passengers) feelings into account - I think the majority of suicidal people do think about this. I have even read suicide guides that have a suggested tip amount of $50.00 for the hotel maid that will discover your dead body.
Some people just are assholes and don’t think about others - regardless of whether they are mentally ill or not. I think the ramifications of suicide are what keep some people from doing it at all.
If I ever take myself out - I will endeavor to make it the most polite suicide this county has ever seen.
To add to my last.
A lady I know was on board that Metrolink train that was derailed in Glendale (linked above) due to the above linked asshole wanting to off himself and losing his nerve at the last minute.
This lady is absolutely one of the nicest sweetest ladies I have ever met in my entire life. Someone that lights up a room just by the force of her sweet personality.
Her train car derailed. She was on the upper level. The car was torn in half right at her seat. Her legs were left hanging in midair and the guys in the row in front of her died.
To think that one of the nicest people I have ever met came within inches of dying, and now suffers from both physical issues (leg and foot injuries) and PTSD due to this person’s actions just pisses me off. (I could not even type man in that last sentence, he is not a man by any definition I would use. Male yes, man no)
Well if you can just hand wave that away and say he is sick, well you are a better person that I am. To me he is a scum sucking asshole. Actually to call him a scum sucking asshole is an insult to scum sucking assholes everywhere. He is worse.
$.02
Rick
Yep…:rolleyes:
Scary but that really is how those type of people think. Mostly it comes from ignorance, and well, epic assholery selfishness
Rick, Im sorry, you seem to have misunderstood who is exhibiting assholery behavior
Yup, thank you for demonstrating proper technique.
Exactly. Smiling and waving at the goddamned engineer before you stick your head in front of the train he’s driving - either you’re undergoing a psychotic break or you’re one hell of an asshole, because you have zero remaining ability to empathize with others.
I’ve seen a documentary segment about the local (Metra train, Chicago) train drivers suffering from PTSD and depression over the experiences of seeing people kill themselves under the wheels of their trains. I’m sorry - and yes, I dealt with severe depression on and off for several years, thanks - but I consider it a less-confrontational version of suicide-by-cop. You’re making someone else kill you and they have to watch while you do it.
Agreed.
A related story.
I once dated an ICU nurse who thought it would be a pretty good idea to teach people the proper way to off themselves so that they could succeed at it.
She saw more than a few cases of people who were injured by accidents and desperately needed life sustaining hospital equipment but that equipment was not available because it was being used to keep some failed suicide victim alive. The time it took to obtain a replacement device was sometimes the difference between full recovery or a lifetime of disability for the accident victim.
She hadn’t yet seen a case where an accident victim dies while a suicide lives but she knew that situation may someday occur.
Once connected, you can’t unplug the guy who wanted to die in order to save the guy who so desperately wants to live.
The decision to take one’s own life is not irrevocable, at least not until the very end.
The person who is a suicide survivor may have regrets and may be able to get beyond their immediate problems and get back to having a functional life, being a member of their family and a net contributor to society.
I regularly speak with depressed and suicidal individuals on a crisis hotline, and we always ask “have you ever attempted suicide before?”
The answer to that question is frequently “Yes”, with stories of overdose attempts in high school or similar.
In those cases, the person survived their first attempt, often many years before. The circumstances that brought them to the point of suicide may be environmental or chemical, out of their control. And the fact that they are calling shows that they are trying to not do it.
I imagine you would hope to match up the surviving train jumpers who are hogging life support machinery with the innocent victims of car wrecks who need the machines and do a quick trade, but don’t you think it is possible that the suicidal person on the machine might be a teenager at a low point in their troubled life who simply took a handful of pills and didn’t hurt anybody and might get beyond this to get on with their fruitful life.
As an illustration of how illogical suicide can be, I once spoke with a kind woman who explained her reasons for wanting to end her life. I asked about her 8 and 10 year-old children and she assured me that she loved them deeply. I asked her how she thought they would feel about her death. She replied, in all sincerity, “They will understand.”
No loving mother could make that statement in a sane state of mind.
You know, that problem is not the fault of those attempting suicide. It’s the fault of a system which doesn’t supply adequate resources to victims of depression or to healthcare providers.
Mental illness is the leading cause of suicide and suicide attempts. There are precious few resources to treat it, even when it becomes life threatening. And when it becomes life threatening - not just to the person who suffers from it, but to innocent bystanders like Rick’s friend - nobody blames the lack of education, lack of insurance coverage, lack of therapeutic choices, or lack of support for an illness that takes thousands of lives a year.
Your friend wouldn’t complain that someone on life support during a bout of pneumonia was taking up a ventilator needed by a car crash victim. Complaining that someone’s suicide attempt didn’t take is like complaining that someone’s staph infection didn’t do the job. It’s thoughtless and cruel.
I do not understand what drives some suicidal people to use a method that damages other human beings, but I don’t make the assumption that it’s because they’re assholes. They are broken. They are so broken that not only are they destroying themselves, they are damaging others. I don’t understand the mechanism behind that choice, but hating on them only takes away from finding a way to prevent these tragedies.
You can support increased mental health care access in this country while simultaneously thinking that people who throw themselves in front of trains are raging assholes.
My concern with a statement like this is that is not far removed from the “suicide is the coward’s way out” school of thought.
If this personal viewpoint is expressed to one’s family either explicitly or implicitly, then there is a pretty good chance that doors have been closed.
A close family member might not feel comfortable confiding their struggles with a person who is so critical of suicide, and then one is left saying “If only I had known… Why didn’t he/she say anything?”
I actually think those two statements are worlds apart. Nobody in this thread has said that all people who commit suicide are assholes; just those people who do so in such a way as to traumatize (and in some cases, injure and kill) others. I have a lot of sympathy for people suffering from mental health problems, and a lot of sympathy for people who are suicidal. I don’t have much for people who decide that their only option is to go out while traumatizing and injuring as many other people as possible.