Shellfish
Life is decent right now: the project is exciting, I'm going to meet one of my long-time LJ pals in a few weeks for the first time and am stoked about that, I have excellent friendships ... so it might seem odd that I've been thinking about suicide lately, but maybe only because "thinking about suicide" is linked with a stereotypical, and taboo, image of depression.
Probably many people consider it often, and in any number of moods.
I'm not looking to off myself now, or any time soon, but it's just there as this interesting option for a last day on earth. You know?
I also think about the ways I might die that aren't suicide, like a car running me over while I'm on my bike, slipping in a puddle and cracking my head open, a mean virus... how are those deaths better than hanging by the throat from a tree limb in a forest at sunset? One last nice view, a death woody, a thought-out farewell note.
Why is suicide taboo anyway? Why does it get tagged as selfish? If people said, "self-centered," I could go with that, but selfish? I don't really buy that most people who are making a decision like that are doing so because they don't care about how it will effect others.
A person CAN commit a selfish suicide, sure. You could blow your brains out in your parents bedroom the day of your sister's wedding, and that would scream "pay attention to me me me!" But suicide itself is not inherently something done without consideration of others.
For example, at the center of my thoughts about suicide is that I would like to save my friends the hassle and expense of corpse handling. The classic, walking into the sea strikes me as very practical. I wouldn't mind being fish food, or animal food. I'm less thrilled abut being pumped with embalming fluid or having my perfectly fine flesh incinerated and adding to a degrading of air quality.
I think about my few possessions: who should I give my books to, my computer, the drawings that would probably increase some in value? I think about the things I would like to do before I die, and the last note: the thank yous and goodbyes.
Maybe my suicide has the markers of a control freak, but don't call me selfish.
That idea comes from the sadness that happens in death's wake
"How could he just end it all? Was he so wrapped up in his own little world that he couldn't consider the sorrow and pain that we, his friends, would experience at his passing? Was he such a drama queen that he actually desired to bring about weeping?"
But come on. Sooner or later a person dies. We all DIE. There's no escaping it. So the suicide doesn't bring about any potential sorrow that wasn't going to have to be dealt with eventually anyway.
I do see how tragic it is, or can be: that sense that someone as ended a life far too early. I get it. But is there also the possibility of ending a life at just the right time?
Once, an ex-boyfriend of mine was talking about suicide. His lover had just died and he had pretty much retreated from the world. He was talking a bit like I am now, not of killing himself, but about all the baggage that comes with it. Having thought about killing himself, he was aware of how careful he had to be on the subject … aware of how unwilling people are to actually discuss suicide in any terms other than to assure you of all the things you have to live for.
The taboo around suicide is part of what turns it into a lonely and desperate act. “Lonely” and “selfish” get confused, because each paints a picture of a person cut off from society, but while a person can be both, to equate one quality with the other is a grave mistake.
As you might guess, from what I've written here, I agreed with my ex, whose argument back then was that committing suicide was not automatically "a cry for help." That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, but comes from the same type of thinking that suicide has many faces and shouldn't be lumped into any single psychology.
I was careful with my answers. I wanted to be honest with him so that he could know I was someone he could talk with about these things. At the same time, I certainly didn't want to say anything that sounded like an endorsement of suicide. He was young and healthy and had his best years still ahead of him.
He seemed comforted a bit, to have someone willing to be an ear to these thoughts, a conversation that others might have tried to derail.
But then he did something very selfish. He stopped writing. He dropped contact with all of his friends. He retreated from reach by phone or computer, and even moved away from the city.
Having planted the idea of his suicide in our heads, he then withdrew from the life he had known and left the possibility of his death looming. This is drama in every sense: a play death enacted for effect.
I am glad he didn't kill himself, of course. He is too, now.
I suppose he needed to create some sort of symbolic suicide in order to start life anew. Maybe I'm toying with the same notion by writing on this subject ... flushing it out to refocus on the actual changes that need to happen in my life: things much more boring than jumping off a cliff, and so less fun to think or write about.
Probably many people consider it often, and in any number of moods.
I'm not looking to off myself now, or any time soon, but it's just there as this interesting option for a last day on earth. You know?
I also think about the ways I might die that aren't suicide, like a car running me over while I'm on my bike, slipping in a puddle and cracking my head open, a mean virus... how are those deaths better than hanging by the throat from a tree limb in a forest at sunset? One last nice view, a death woody, a thought-out farewell note.
Why is suicide taboo anyway? Why does it get tagged as selfish? If people said, "self-centered," I could go with that, but selfish? I don't really buy that most people who are making a decision like that are doing so because they don't care about how it will effect others.
A person CAN commit a selfish suicide, sure. You could blow your brains out in your parents bedroom the day of your sister's wedding, and that would scream "pay attention to me me me!" But suicide itself is not inherently something done without consideration of others.
For example, at the center of my thoughts about suicide is that I would like to save my friends the hassle and expense of corpse handling. The classic, walking into the sea strikes me as very practical. I wouldn't mind being fish food, or animal food. I'm less thrilled abut being pumped with embalming fluid or having my perfectly fine flesh incinerated and adding to a degrading of air quality.
I think about my few possessions: who should I give my books to, my computer, the drawings that would probably increase some in value? I think about the things I would like to do before I die, and the last note: the thank yous and goodbyes.
Maybe my suicide has the markers of a control freak, but don't call me selfish.
That idea comes from the sadness that happens in death's wake
"How could he just end it all? Was he so wrapped up in his own little world that he couldn't consider the sorrow and pain that we, his friends, would experience at his passing? Was he such a drama queen that he actually desired to bring about weeping?"
But come on. Sooner or later a person dies. We all DIE. There's no escaping it. So the suicide doesn't bring about any potential sorrow that wasn't going to have to be dealt with eventually anyway.
I do see how tragic it is, or can be: that sense that someone as ended a life far too early. I get it. But is there also the possibility of ending a life at just the right time?
Once, an ex-boyfriend of mine was talking about suicide. His lover had just died and he had pretty much retreated from the world. He was talking a bit like I am now, not of killing himself, but about all the baggage that comes with it. Having thought about killing himself, he was aware of how careful he had to be on the subject … aware of how unwilling people are to actually discuss suicide in any terms other than to assure you of all the things you have to live for.
The taboo around suicide is part of what turns it into a lonely and desperate act. “Lonely” and “selfish” get confused, because each paints a picture of a person cut off from society, but while a person can be both, to equate one quality with the other is a grave mistake.
As you might guess, from what I've written here, I agreed with my ex, whose argument back then was that committing suicide was not automatically "a cry for help." That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, but comes from the same type of thinking that suicide has many faces and shouldn't be lumped into any single psychology.
I was careful with my answers. I wanted to be honest with him so that he could know I was someone he could talk with about these things. At the same time, I certainly didn't want to say anything that sounded like an endorsement of suicide. He was young and healthy and had his best years still ahead of him.
He seemed comforted a bit, to have someone willing to be an ear to these thoughts, a conversation that others might have tried to derail.
But then he did something very selfish. He stopped writing. He dropped contact with all of his friends. He retreated from reach by phone or computer, and even moved away from the city.
Having planted the idea of his suicide in our heads, he then withdrew from the life he had known and left the possibility of his death looming. This is drama in every sense: a play death enacted for effect.
I am glad he didn't kill himself, of course. He is too, now.
I suppose he needed to create some sort of symbolic suicide in order to start life anew. Maybe I'm toying with the same notion by writing on this subject ... flushing it out to refocus on the actual changes that need to happen in my life: things much more boring than jumping off a cliff, and so less fun to think or write about.
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