Good morning. I don’t know why I woke up thinking about suicide and why society feels so negatively about it but here we are, that’s the gum ball that my mind has sent me for the day. When I wake up in the morning my brain is locked and loaded and firing on all cylinders, a very annoying fact to my non morning friends. Now, before you go and get your knickers in a twist, I don’t condone suicide, although I’m not necessarily against it. I truly believe that life is up to the individual living it and one thing we all have to be big girls and boys about is that it isn’t fair and it isn’t always fun. Now I do feel I should give a bit of my own background on this topic.

I have suffered depression for years and I’ve become quite good about pulling myself out of the depths of despair because well, no one else was fucking going to do it for me. Usually when people would try to “help” when I was down it involved a series of bumper sticker slogans like, “You’ve got this. There’s always a silver lining behind every cloud or at least you’re alive.” And my personal favorite, “god won’t give you more than you can handle” an awkward one since I don’t believe in god. My depression led me to attempt suicide when I was 18. Being young and inexperienced, I tried taking a bunch of sleeping pills and washing them down with peach Schnapps, which I still can’t stand the smell of today. Oh and at the last minute just to be extra dramatic, I ate rat poison, which actually helped to save me because it made me throw up many of the pills, not all. I did end up hallucinating for 3 or 4 days all of which I did at home without a doctor’s care because my mum was more worried about what the neighbors would think if she called an ambulance and I guess in her opinion I was just high, so no need to bother people.

Although I had plenty to feel bad about when I was 18, I do think that being a teenager with a penchant for the dramatic at a time in your life when everything was a big deal was also a big contributing factor. When you are younger you yet haven’t developed your “grey view” and by that I mean, you haven’t lived enough to know that there is A LOT of grey in the world and very few things are black and white; so your choices seem quite limited.

Outside of my own suicide attempt I’ve also known many people who have been successful in suicide. Back in my early 20s when I was recovering from a wee little meth addition, I was hanging out with the 12 Step Crew and met several people there who suffered depression and this is where my successful friends came from. Although I viewed all of their deaths as very sad, there was one person I felt particularly sad about. It was this guy who used to play poker with my then much older, 17 years older to be precise, boyfriend I was dating. I’m sure this isn’t shocking to you at this point that I had “daddy issues.” Any who, this guy used to come to my BF’s house once a week to play poker and although I did try to engage in conversation with him on several occasions, he was painfully shy and didn’t really open up. What was truly sad about him was after he killed himself, all of us in the friend’s poker group found out more about him through his obituary than all the years he sat at that poker table.

That is probably the worst part of suicide is that it usually leaves the ones behind feeling all sorts of horrible feelings such as sadness and anger. I’ve been on the receiving end of that and can attest that it doesn’t feel good. Suicide always leaves more questions than it answers but I can’t help but wonder if how we’ve been socially trained makes it harder on us. We are raised to believe that life is the best thing ever! And to have it is a blessing and we should do everything we can to stay alive at all cost. Some people are so fucking crazed about this notion of life that they will kill abortion doctors and they will prevent families from pulling the plug on someone who is no longer there. They torment themselves with “what if.” What if they wake up in 20 years, what if they are even slightly aware even if all they can do is blink? AT LEAST THEY ARE ALIVE. Hallelujah! What a pile of shit. I’m starting to see that suicide is probably one of the most independent decisions that a person can make and who am I to say to someone that they must live as long as possible? How would it shape our relationships with others if we didn’t see suicide as a weakness, a cop out or some sort of defect?

Everyone loves to talk about free thought and independence unless it is about life. We pound into people’s heads how precious life is and that it must be lived because it is a gift from our parents. Gift?! Fuck off! Two people had unprotected sex at just the right time and viola! And that creation of life could have been through a loving marital relationship, a rape, a drunken sexual experience with a stranger, a single woman and a donor, or even an insemination to a paid womb. However it starts it certainly didn’t involve any consultation with you. You had no say in the matter. And whatever the circumstances of your parents, be it rich or poor, you are expected to deal with the hand you are given. And once you are born, you are thrown into whatever social system for that area like it or not.

So we’re born and then given a name that probably has something to do with someone else in our parent’s lives, not ours, and we are raised with someone else’s ideas about life and expected to live up to their expectations of our lives. We are normally raised with some level of religion and by the time we are old enough to think for ourselves, much of that ability has already been molded and shaped by our families and communities and dulled so that we are willing to think just as much as we are allowed. In fact, free thought is so reviled by many societies that being different from those in your group will in many cases, get you ostracized from the community. Most people now and throughout time have lived their whole lives doing what others want them to do, without ever getting to experience what it is they truly wanted to do or be. Now that is tragic.

Then there are many like me who were raised in incredibly dysfunctional and abusive homes and suffer from depression. Now I don’t suffer as badly as some people do but I do suffer. I’ve learned coping mechanisms but don’t be fooled, it is a struggle for me nearly every day. I fantasize about walking off a Scottish cliff more days that I’m sure people in my life would be comfortable hearing. For people who have had that sunshine suppository jammed up their arse this probably sounds horrible. You can’t imagine not wanting to live life every single fucking day, even if you are miserable, but just because you feel that way doesn’t mean we all have to. You have no idea how hard it is for those of us who struggle.

There are so many people who truly struggle every single fucking day with their own brains. Let’s say that life for many is like swimming laps in a pool of crystal clear water, but for those who suffer depression it’s like doing those laps in a pool filled with mud. You can do it but it’s exhausting and takes much longer. And for some, their mental illness is so intense it is like swimming in newly poured cement and they just can’t seem to move quick enough and end up stuck in place forever. Life is challenging enough for those who don’t suffer with any sort of mental illness and damn near impossible for those who do. Personally, I feel it is incredibly selfish of those who don’t suffer to make those of us who do feel guilty that we can’t cope the same way and have a hard time keeping up. You’re “pull yourself up by your boot straps” bullshit is great for normal people who stumble, NOT for people who are truly struggling with demons left by abuse or even a chemical imbalance or illness that requires medication, which brings its own nightmares.

What if we had the mindset that people truly had control over their own lives, even if they didn’t even wanted to participate any more? What if we didn’t stigmatize suicide for any reason? Inuit societies functioned for ages with older members having the freedom to go off and fall asleep in a snow bank when they felt they were more of a burden than a benefit to others. Death was pretty quick. Suicide and abortion were both tools that early man used that led to our survival. Maybe today’s man considers it barbaric because we can keep people alive without their consent and for many years but it doesn’t mean it is right. We have the ability to warehouse elders until they die good, bad or indifferent. This is where inequality is a sever marker to your experience. If you have money you can live in a nice apartment with nursing care and lots of activities and if you’re poor you are housed with other poor elders often left and forgotten. You’ll share a room in a facility that smells like the institution that it is and your activities are limited.

Why can’t people have control over their own lives? Why can’t we decide how much we are willing to take whether it be emotional or physical pain? I saw a documentary several years ago about an 80 something year old woman in France who was seeking out places and ways that she could kill herself humanly. She wasn’t ill or depressed but just done. She lived a lovely full life but never married or had children and although she didn’t regret her life decisions, she was alone since most of her friends were dead and every bloody day was the same. She had joy in life anymore and wanted to end it before she was unable to have a say. She decided that she had seen enough of the world and tasted all she wanted from life’s buffet and was ready to go. Yet people thought she was insane and tried to stop her. I’m sure you’re thinking “well of course she was health.”

They why do we give the same grief to terminally ill people? A young girl in California had to move to another state so she could end her life on her terms and avoid the horribly painful death her brain tumor would cause. People lost their shit over this and were angry that she wanted to end her life. Just stop and think about what you are saying to someone! How fucking cruel. Many referenced that she shouldn’t play god by making that decision. Look, whatever god you believe in already condemned her to death with the diagnosis of brain cancer the only thing she did was deny this god the pleasure of watching her die painfully and slowly. She felt it more human for herself and her loved ones not to. If you god can’t share that opinion why would you want him/her/it in your life anyway?

I feel badly when people kill themselves but I can also see how people could feel a great sense of control when they otherwise might not feel that way. They might not have control over what happens in their head, who their family is, who they can marry, what they can do for a living, or even who they can be or who they can love, but suicide, well that is taking the ultimate control over your life! Maybe that’s how we should approach people who are suicidal. Find out what they feel they don’t have control over in their lives and helping them find that control with the understanding that sometimes there are just situations beyond our control and not everyone wants to be here. And if that is the case and they still want to go, why not let them, but let them do it with dignity and ease.

FYI men are more likely to do a Smith & Wesson selfie or don a rope necktie while women choose pills or razors most often. I don’t know why we couldn’t have centers specifically dedicated for end of life actions. Where people could go for counseling and help, but if they eventually decided they still wanted to end it all, they could book a room and do it peacefully under supervised care and without worry that they will fuck it up and cause more problems for themselves. The family could be counseled as well and proper goodbyes could be said. I’m pretty sure that if we approached it in this manner many more people would be saved and those who were intent on doing it would still do it but feel better about it.

We could do something like that in our societies but it would require that we change our perspective. Most of us are against this because the religious books say it is bad. Well we created the gods and all their rules and if we were so inclined to evolve intellectually, we could make this happen. We could value humans over the idea of life and we could value a well lived life regardless of its duration, instead of seeing a long life automatically as good. It should always be value over time, same with marriages.

Now just because I have a different view of death doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and encourage every depressed person to kill themselves but I’m not going to make them feel bad for wanting to do it either. Life ain’t all that. We’re born, we struggle to survive and have moments of pure joy in between the struggles and then we die. We need to find our humanity in regards to death. Life isn’t for everybody. I’m certainly not interested in living till I’m really old. I’m already cranky as fuck and have arthritis. I’m not in it to win it. I feel I got maybe 20 years left and then hey peeps, peace I’m out. I’m going to stick around long enough to finally take that long walk off a short cliff. With any luck I’ll be drunk as hell and will quickly fall into the ocean. The end!

Any way, there’s my two cents. Take it or leave it.