on suicide

[perse.livejournal.com]

this was brought up by some people's comments in response to a previous post

I, as the "protector"/front/etc of this system have attempted suicide twice. Once in November of this year and once in November of last year. Both times I have had the full buy in of everyone in the system - or I would not have done it.

The notion that you have to stay alive because it will hurt your friends and family if you die is a load of crap. It is not only illogical but completely unethical to expect that someone should live for decades in very intense, insurmountable pain to satisfy those around them who care about them.

Just because people care about you and are good to you doesn't mean you owe it to them to keep living.

At some point, you owe it to yourself to examine the quality of your life and if after thorough examination you conclude that you would be better off ending your life there is no reason you shouldn't be allowed to do so. If someone were in intense physical pain and decided to go off life support because they couldn't sustain a decent quality of life, the people around them would be sad/etc. but they probably wouldn't condemn them for it.

Yet so many people believe that they are entirely justified in condemning those who attempt suicide, no matter what the level or intensity of their emotional pain, no matter how long they have suffered, or how long they have paid the ultimate price for that pain - staying alive. Out of duty, out of loyalty, out of consideration for those very people who they love.

Yet your first and most primary responsibility always has to be to yourself. If you don't believe your life is worth living and you have honestly tried to make it okay and it's not, there's absolutely no reason in the world you should ever be condemned by *anyone* for deciding you're better off dead. Only you can know what's best for you.

It makes me furious that people who supposedly "love" others so much want to see them live out their lives in excruciating pain because that is somehow better, more venerable, more courageous than ending it all. If you love someone, you support them. You acknowledge how they feel as being valid. You support their choices for their life even if you don't agree with them - provided they're not abusing someone else.

Who of you should sit in judgement on someone else and tell them they just haven't fought enough, tried hard enough, stuck it out enough, so they have to put in another ten years of hell, trauma, depression, overwhelming pain - just to keep you happy?? Just to not hurt others?

That's such a bunch of shit.

Everyone has to determine what's right for them and best for them. Those around them who can't look past their own selfishness and their own needs to the needs of those they love and care about who are in tremendous pain don't deserve to have their wants and needs taken into consideration. They just don't.

Assisted suicide is legal for terminal illnesses, in several states. Assisted suicide because you're in torment and agony, all the time, is not. There is no distinction between the two. There is no ethical boundry there.

Everyone likes to say "stick it out, it'll get better", but no one can predict the future. Everyone hopes things will get better for you, but maybe they won't. Maybe they'll get worse. Until you've lived someone else's life you have no idea how hard it is for them. You don't get to be the moral arbiter of someone else's destiny. That is the ultimate in arrogance and presumption.

Comments

[spare-parts.livejournal.com]

Eh. I'm still of the opinion that if one really wants to kill themselves, they should go and do it, and not crosspost their suicide note to a half dozen communities. But maybe that's just me.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

*hohum*

for a supposed expert on suicide, you post comments very well. I didn't think dead people could type.

[jenscovia.livejournal.com]

yeah, i think posting to all those groups that you're gonna kill yourself in 2 days is total bullshit. that just makes you a manipulative attention seeker.

i mean if you're so intent on offing yous, then just fucking do it.

i personally think that suicide [the non-hospitalized, non-lifesupport pulling kind] is the most selfish thing a person can do.

jady

[jenscovia.livejournal.com]

"Assisted suicide is legal for terminal illnesses, in several states. Assisted suicide because you're in torment and agony, all the time, is not. There is no distinction between the two. There is no ethical boundry there."

I think when people are in such agony, they think that they are better off. But you know what? You can't see the futre. You can't know how many lives you touch every day. If I had been succesful at killing myself as a teenager, I'd never have my daughter, nor would I have become a kidney donor. I'd never have learned what it was like to finally get things together. I'd never learned the value to of hardwork getting me/us to where we are now.

Yeah, you've got to look out for you, but honestly and truely, life isn't ONLY about you. When you're self-centered, you can't see the others who share your life.

Anyhow.

Anise

[arimle.livejournal.com]

Well, to reply to this. (I don't know about any sort of cross-posting and I'm not going to take it as a deliberate attempt to stir up melodrama; I don't know whether you're suicidal or not, if I was sure you were I wouldn't reply, or I'd have Slávka reply, because these sort of situations make me uncomfortable and unable to say anything useful, especially since I don't know you. But Sláva is in retreat because we're really sick and she doesn't like that because she can't sing, so I'm all that's here for now.)

I support assisted suicide, I guess, provided there's absolutely no chance the person will get better and they are in a state of mind where they can make that decision for themselves. For a severely depresed person, neither of these things are the case. No matter how bad things are for them, no matter how long they've felt this way. Of course when you're depressed you feel like things are horrible, always have been horrible, and always will be horrible; that's what it means to be depressed. If you could take a blood test or something that said that you would never, ever be happy, no matter what, then okay, maybe I would support your decision to die. Maybe things will get worse. Or maybe they'll get better. Like you said, nobody can predict the future.

Another thing: when we tried to kill ourselves (a long time ago; when I was still just a part of the consciousness with no self-awareness) we thought we'd get some relief in death. We've since come to the realization that there isn't any relief in death because there isn't any 'we' to experience relief. Now, I don't know what your religious beliefs are, or indeed anything at all about you, but...

Well, anyhow. I suppose if you really are going to kill yourself, this isn't going to stop you, and I'm sorry about that.

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

Aside from my belief that most of what you said here, with a slightly different interpretation, can be used as a reason not to commit suicide, I have two things to say in response.

I didn't say the other person shouldn't commit suicide, or in fact, comment at all on their advertisement of this decision because, simply, I don't know them. To be completely cold, I neither know how bad their situation is nor if they are worth saving. I leave that to people who know them and care about them.

Also, if any of the suicidal people that I have known and cared about had been as rational and well-thought out in their decisions as you have been in this post, I would have let them do it without resistance. In some cases, I might have helped in some ways.

The point, for me, is that every person I have been in the position of talking out of suicide has been emotionally overwrought, mentally unstable, and/or so wrapped up in their own problems that they were incapable of making a rational decision, and thankfully, every last one of them eventually realized it.

"Only you can know what's best for you."

In a word, bullshit. 17 years ago, I pulled the trigger. If I wasn't multiple, I'd be dead. No one can actually know what's best for you. not even you. Someone who isn't you might be able to see options and opportunities that you can't.

They might see those options and opportunities because they aren't blinded by the immediacy of the problems the way you are. They might see them because they've been there, too.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

Well I don't know what prompted this. :) But ethics around suicide are very interesting. For euthanasia I like M. Scott Peck's look at it in _Denial of Soul_ which is not anti-euthanasia, but makes the point that most people who are in pain want the /pain/ to /stop/. Not so much death but peace.

And so he says that ending the pain is probably the best direction for society to go in, which may or may not involve in some cases euthanasia. I agree with this and for me, if someone says they're in pain enough to kill themselves, my focus becomes stopping the pain, not helping them to die.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that while I don't agree with you that suicide is some kind of right, I am prepared to accept that people will kill themselves and that after they're dead judging them is both wrong and pointless.

But when someone tells me that they're suicidal, I am /fully/ prepared to take that as them communicating that to me for a reason and step in. Because their action was not, in the end, to kill themselves, but to communicate about it. Stop the pain, in other words.

Within a multiple system of course there is the problem of the whole, but it doesn't sound like you wanted to discuss that.

I am sorry for your torment and agony. What's up with that anyway? What's making it that painful?

Shandra

[perse.livejournal.com]

what prompted this was a previous post by someone in this community and everyone else jumping his/her shit.

I am not actively suicidal right now, but I have suffered from major depression my entire life and there are a lot of times when I am.

The problem, in my opinion, with pain, is that sometimes it is just too big to stop. Mine, for instance, is caused by nearly 20 years of child abuse. That is not the sort of pain that will ever go away.

I am on three meds now and I see my therapist religiously, once or twice a week. There are still days when it hurts that bad. I agree that most people do not want to die, they want the pain to stop. For me, it is always like that. I want the pain to stop and now that I have had a couple/few months without it being so intense, if something gets screwy with the meds and it comes back I'm in a worse position than before because I have no defenses against it now. (Which was what happened last month.)

But one of the interesting things that I realized was that unless I'm prepared to do serious bodily harm to myself, the whole taking pills thing isn't going to cut it (although it nearly did, the first time. I just can't ingest that many again).

The people who've responded to my post to say don't talk about it just do it already are the worst sort of assholes. Just like my "friend" who I've known for a year who sent me an email this week to tell me that he thinks I'm a professional victim and I'm only happiest when I'm in the deepest blackest despair and that if I can't fix the past I just need to get over it and move on.

Anyone who's talking about it is talking about it for a reason. & I daresay, if they've posted it across six communities they really are hurting/angry/whatever. Telling them that they're an awful person for doing so rather than empathizing with where they're at is heinous.

There isn't any moral superiority and watching someone else suffer and telling them to just get over it/themselves already. Sometimes things really *are* that freaking bad. No one else never knows how bad your pain is.

[spare-parts.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but if you want to fucking cry for help, there are communities that are FOR that. There are places where everyone will rally around you and tell you it's ok and life's worth living.

Oh wait, you don't want people to do that either.

What do you want, exactly?

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I agree that no one ever can know someone else's pain. And sure, ideally people would respond more compassionately. I didn't see the post in question - probably 'cause I usually avoid poor-me posts.

At the same time, no one is -required- to respond a particular way to someone. I think a lot of people who struggle with their own issues around self-destruction can get hard assed about it; others just have heard it on the 'net so many times. I think using the internet as medicine, therapy, or support is a very dangerous road, because so much of the information that creates a compassionate response (body language) is missing.

In reading your post I found the comment about 20 years of child abuse pretty hard to take; I hope you're not assuming that anyone else commenting has or has not experienced the same. I am sorry that you feel it that way, because it is hard.

However it's not the only possible result. I mildly suggest that if what you're doing is not working for you, or untenable in the long run, that I hope you find a new way. I know lots of people who have, including us.

Shandra