I came across your pit thread and was going to answer this there, but then thought I should put it in the original instead.
The answer is: Just longer than the person’s breaking point. Somehow, if the person holds on for just a little bit longer, it’ll all be OK.
IMO, there is little one can say that will convince people holding this view otherwise.
I think I knew that, cognitively, but I always hope that getting someone (if they ever will) to actually examine how they believe what they do and why, might allow some room for change.
Of course, I keep hoping the same exact thing will happen with homophobes. Good thing I’m not holding my breath.
Seems to me that everybody’s aware it won’t “all be OK,” especially the ones who’ve gone through it. So what if it’s not all OK?
If you are terminally ill, it is ok. That is the only time I want to say it is ok.
Then again, I believe a person who commits suicide has a tremendous weakness and is even more selfish than weak. (I should say that the weakness isn’t inherently their fault- as was mentioned, they may have been abused, may have a genuine psychological issue, etc.)
Even if you feel like no one cares about you, someone does- hell, likely many more than just one person care about you.
If a person is so selfish that they cannot look outside of themself to worry about and care for those around them, then it is certainly easy to see why that person may feel that their life has no purpose. If a person can never correct their view, they wont ever be happy. If a person is truly so selfish that they can’t be happy, then I agree that, that is a miserable way to live your life.
Wow, that’s babbly. I need to sleep.
I think you should look at Siege’s post.
Not if they do not want contact with you for whatever reason. So it’s no different in that case, is it.
Those same people will think any child who didn’t believe as they do is in hell. Are we obligated to follow the religious ideals of our parents because if we don’t they will be saddened because we are Hell-bound? I think not.
Marley, I should note that I am generally in the group that says suicide is wrong. I agree wholeheartedly that it is unacceptable and that there are options.
After reading this thread (and the Pit thread), I tried to justify it in some way- just so I could try to understand the mindset of the other side. I don’t completely agree with the rationalization I conjured, but that is the only way I could possibly agree and, even then, my agreement would be doubtful.
For some of us, suicide is a decision that develops within the head of a person who feels no significant connection to the outside world. It’s been said that the worst prison time is solitary confinement. For some of us, life IS solitary confinement because we are incapable of feeling a connection with any other person–like someone with no eyes can not dig on a rainbow. The mechanism to comprehend any such connection simply doesn’t exist. Personal affiliations exist, sure, but they exist only as a meaningless symptom of walking out the door. They become a mockery of the individual who is given to understand that interpersonal relationships can be beautiful and meaningful, except, not for them.
Alone in a crowd. Nobody understands me. The.Connecion.Does.Not.Exist.
Life (as described in the movies, pamphlets, novels, mores & memes) isn’t worth the pain (of being alone). Pain is real enough. Some of us can overcome the masturbatory shame of deviance and use pain to force ourselves to recognize and realize a definite relationship between ourselves and at least one other person. Yes, this means that torture can be preferable to solitary confinement. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then rethink posting bile in this thread (msmith and others more senstive of tongue but equal of mind)
Absent any such emotional connections, there is no possibility of emotional harm to anyone other than the perpetrator. And of course, if certain methods are used, no physical harm to others is a worry. So for the person doing the deed, there is no harm, only benefit. Any consideration about other people is manifest as a projected sense of relief from the burden of this worthless piece of noncontributing flesh. Everyone gains.
Let me make a couple of things clear up front. I don’t think suicide or attempted suicide should be a crime, and the notion of involuntary hospitalization unnerves me. In fact, the fear that I might be involuntarily hospitalized kept me from calling my therapist at one point when I was suicidal. (I called a suicide hotline instead.) I’ve spent 24 hours on a locked ward, complete with the proverbial rubber room after a near suicide; I’ve no desire to ever do so again.
I’m also aware of the damage that suicide does to those left behind. Indeed, during a point when both our lives were truly awful, it was the awareness of what one’s suicide would do to the other which helped a friend of mine and I survive the troubles we were going through.
Suicide is also just one thing on a rather long list of things I consider to be bad things. In my fantasy world, it wouldn’t exist, but then again, neither would drug overdoses, lingering terminal diseases, or bad marriages. Since that ideal world is never going to come about, and I suspect it might be rather boring if it did, I prefer to deal with the world as it is, which is why I stuck my neck into this thread in the first place and why I’m about to stick my neck out again.
Let me describe my experiences with being suicidal. The mental pain is like having your soul ripped from your body millimeter by agonizing millimeter. There simply is no hope, none whatsoever. When I’ve been suicidal, I’ve rationalized that whatever pain my death may cause those who love me will be offset by their being relieved of the burden of having me in their lives. Here and now, I can see the irrationality in that statement. When I’m suicidal, I can’t. When I was suicidal when I was laid off, knowing that companies were getting 200 or 300 applications for tech jobs, I rationalized that taking myself out of the labor pool permanently would make it easier for someone with a family depending on him to get work. I was single; I was alone; the only man I ever loved had walked out of my life years earlier without a word; and the friends closest to me had moved 600 miles away. All I could see was an eternity of struggle, pain, poverty, and hopelessness stretching on for at least another 40 years, given my family’s usual lifespan, and that 40 years looked like an eternity. What was the sense of continuing to struggle and strive if it netted me nothing? Suicide appeared rational, logical, and a way I could benefit society by giving society one less hopeless deadbeat to support.
DiosaBellissima, I like you. I usually like seeing what you post. The thing is, when I’m severely depressed, a statement like your “I believe a person who commits suicide has a tremendous weakness and is even more selfish than weak,” would, ironically, make me even more likely to commit suicide because when my mind’s working that way, it’s easy to extrapolate that to “someone as weak and selfish as I am doesn’t deserve to live.” Again, it’s not rational, but if it were rational, it wouldn’t be severe clinical depression in my book, although I’m not a psychologist.
I’ve tried pulling myself up by my own bootstraps; I’ve tried overcoming severe clinical depression through force of will alone, and I am an extremely stubborn, strong-willed individual. I can also point to an external cause for some of that. I was brought up to believe I was worthless, useless, ugly, selfish, and hopeless, and it’s taken a lot of hard work to overcome that and, to be honest, I still haven’t done so completely, which is why a post like DiosaBellissima’s still triggers a small, traitorous voice which whispers “maybe you are a weak and selfish waste.” Trying to overcome this on my own without treatment left me nearly catatonic and trying to will myself to death. I tried to commit suicide twice on the way to the hospital, even with friends and my fiance present. The only thing I wanted in the world was to die, to stop hurting and I wanted it worse than I may have wanted anything. My treacherous brain and even more treacherous body would not shut down; would not let me die.
I’ll be honest. The first round of treatment was bust. My doctor misdiagnosed me with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, kicked me out of the hospital after a week (I was told it was the HMO’s policy), told me to take a medication for OCD once a day and attend a support group which met once a month 10 miles away and everything would be fine. Fortunately, my friends were better than my doctor. I grabbed hold of my tattered bootstraps, found a new job (my employer waited until after I was out of the hospital before firing me), changed insurance plans, and, after a second hospitalization, found good treatment. After I lost that job and my health insurance, I found even better treatment at a free clinic. Every step of the way was difficult, and I couldn’t have done it without the help of friends, even those who walked out on me because I wasn’t healing fast enough, and my fiance, who dumped me just when things were getting good.
That was over a decade ago. Life’s still not always easy, and I can still do some incredibly stupid things. The thing is, even though it’s been a couple of years since I was in therapy, the coping skills I learned there have made it a lot less likely I’ll wind up another selfish, weak, victim of suicide.
I consider suicide a bad thing. I also consider it a bad thing that a close friend’s much loved husband may die far sooner than he needs to because he tends to neglect his diabetes. I listen to the morning news as I surf here, and I could probably point out two or three things on any given morning which I consider bad things. The story on right now’s a good example – a woman tried to poison her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and her two grandchildren by adding bleach to their dinner because she didn’t think her daughter deserved to have her grandchildren. I may not be able to do anything about women poisoning their families; I may not be able to do much about my friend’s husband; realistically, I may not even be able to do much about people suffering from depression or other people’s perception of them. On the other hand, it’s one of the few shots I’ve got, so I may as well take it. I don’t think I expect to succeed, but if I can stop one person from going through what I went through or help even one person understand what it’s like, I’ll count that a success, however small.
Respectfully,
CJ
Siege, I understand where you’re coming from from a successful treatment/therapy standpoint. And that’s fine. What I’m looking at is the sad fact that treatment doesn’t always work. Or that some people simply never connect to the rest of the world, for whatever reason. Or that they don’t see any point in connecting to the rest of the world because the whole thing is strictly a biological fluke anyway. There are many personal reasons for a person to let the curtain drop, so to speak. And there shouldn’t be a law forcing someone to continue an empty life. Of course, the survivors are going to feel unfathomable pain from the loss of their loved one. Religious issues will undoubtedly compound this pain, but that’s another thread.
I think our society as a whole needs to look at death differently than they do now. Judgements are clouded by issues that have nothing to do with a person’s individual take on the meaning (or lack of meaning) of life. We are emotional beings, and as such, there will always be pain and a sense of loss whenever someone dies. But we have to respect the right of a person to choose when that time will come.
That’s not always true. I’m not talking about myself here, I have friends and family, but there really are people who don’t have anyone else in their lives. Think about that loner woman from the second-season episode of Six Feet Under. Nobody even went to her funeral. She had NO connection with any other human being. I’m sure there are people even on this board who have no human connection whatsoever. It’s easy for those of us with family and friends to not see these people, but they do exist.
But the question shouldn’t be “is suicide immoral?” or “does it hurt other people?” It should be “do we have the right to control our own bodies?” IMO, it is hypocritical to be pro-choice (in the abortion sense) and be anti-medically induced suicide (for everyone, not just terminal cases). Both these issues revolve around whether or not we should have control of our own bodies. Would you say that a woman should be compelled to carry a fetus she doesn’t want because her mom (or even her SO) might like that baby? Those of us who are pro-choice say no, but isn’t this basically the same issue? Forcing someone to do anything against their will is my definition of immoral.
Suicide is not always the result of mental illness. Many of the old rural chastitutes are committing suicide because they have no purpose.
No, that’s the point. People holding that particular opinion seem incapable of recognizing that for others, it may very well never be “all OK”. There’s a fundamental disconnect in which they cannot conceive of a situation in which everything does not eventually work out for the best.
I understand what you’re saying, and people should realize that. I just don’t think it makes suicide more or less ‘bad.’
I’m having trouble extracting your meaning about that last bit, but I think we agree.
My only point was that in some people’s view, suicide is always ‘bad’ (as in, inexcusable), no matter the circumstances or the individual. The answer to the question “When is enough?” is, for all intents and purposes, “Never”.
The major problem I have with the situation posted in the OP is the attitude of the father. I get no feelings of warmth, of loss, from this man. I get “OMG people are going to think we’re bad parents. We’re gonna lost the country club membership.” Guess what, Dad? Your child had issues that to her were so extreme, so bad, that she chose to take her own life. You standing there saying:
“The knowledge, the tools, their psychological encouragement. … She was led to her death,”
makes me realize why she certainly didn’t feel she could come to you with her problems. Problems? She didn’t have problems! She was led to her death!
I don’t know what makes someone who seems to have a bright future decide to kill themselves. But her parents trying to put the blame off on someone else just bothers me.
Another thing I have a problem with is the issue of suicide being “illegal”. If someone makes a suicide attempt and is not successful, by all means get treatment for them. TRY to find out what is so wrong, from THEIR point of view, that death seems not only the best but the only alternative. But “illegal”? On top of everything else a suicidal person is dealing with, you’re going to slap them with the label of “criminal”?
Not to mention that it goes on your “permanent record.” Insurance, gun license, and some kinds of employment are in the shitter.
I’ve posted this before. Apologies for the repeat, but:
One of the suicides I knew was simply uncorrectable. To give context, his entire family is unstable. His parents have both been in and out of mental institutions, his sister was psychotic, his brother was a paranoid schizophrenic who was wanted by the police for a violent crime but who had spent 10 years hiding out somewhere, and then there was Harry (not his real name) who had been medicated up to his eyes for twenty years without a moment’s happiness.
Yes, he killed himself. Yes, I’m sure it was upsetting for his parents and his wife. I know it was. It had to be. But what else was Harry supposed to do in order to appease everyone else? He left a note saying he was afraid he’d do something violent, that he’d turn into his brother, that he could feel his control slipping. He was already half zombified by all the meds. He had already been “helped.” The tragedy isn’t the suicide. The tragedy is that a very nice man had an incurable disease.
He has to soldier on silently. Because if anyone is allowed to commit suicide without being vilified, the terrified little person deep inside all of us might get the notion that suicide is, in fact, an option after all.
It IS an option (I mean, how do you explain all the sucessful suicides??). And it’s *the right choice * for many people.