Princess Loser

The Glee episode last night featured a comment by one of the main characters that suicide is selfish.  It isn’t an uncommon utterance. In fact, if you do a simple search on Google with the words suicide and selfish, it returns 10.5 million results.  So, clearly, this is something that many people either believe or think is absolutely ridiculous.

Different people handle the topic in different ways.  One comment that I found contained the following statement: “I think it’s not only selfish but it’s the last punishing blow to the living. It’s the easy way out of dealing with the turbulence that is life! We are left with so many unanswered questions.”  Apparently, this person doesn’t want someone to commit suicide because it is just too cruel to the living.  I guess that it is simple to put your own feelings ahead of those of someone who is so depressed that they see no other way to deal with their pain than to end their own life.  I mean, that’s a very typical thing, to put your needs before those of someone else.  What’s weird is that that attitude is not considered to be selfish, even though the “survivor” is not thinking about what the suicide victim has been going through, what pain might be causing them such agony, and just how desperate or lonely the person might be feeling.  To me, it seems selfish to say, “You’re punishing me by killing yourself.”

A religious website had the following: “When one has no hope does not know God or have faith, suicide becomes one of the greatest acts of selfishness.” I don’t get it. Does that mean that if a person who commits suicide is an atheist that they are being selfish, but if they are a Christian or practitioner of another religion that they are now less selfish?  How does their spirituality or lack-thereof determine if the act is selfish or not?  If God exists, do people really think that one of God’s posse is keeping up with which suicides occur among those who are church-going and which are among those who lack faith?  It seems like God would have bigger fish to fry. (And, no, that wasn’t some lame Lent-oriented pun.) God shouldn’t want anyone to suffer needlessly and, despite what some religious organizations seem to think, I don’t see a loving God as being one intent punishing people for being sick.

A user from the Experience Project’s website stated, “I don’t think its selfish to be angry with a person who chooses a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” That disregards a whole segment of society. While some who are suicidal are only temporarily depressed, there are so many who have a mental health issue that might be considered terminal because it will be with the person for the remainder of their life. For example, if a schizophrenic ends their life, then they are using a permanent solution to resolve a permanent problem. The statement also disregards the intensity of the pain that the person, regardless of the nature of their problem, is going through.

And, as always, children seem to have the best understanding of the world we live in and the problems we deal with. As a first grader, this person had lost her father to suicide and heard people at his funeral asking how her father could hurt her family in such a way. Even at that young of an age, she realized, “he didn’t do this to us. Instinctively, I knew.” So how is it that kids can understand that suicide is not an act of aggression against friends and family? How do the rest of us not understand that?

Suicide is not some simple choice people make because they are lazy or they don’t care about others. Suicide is the choice of someone who feels that their life has lost that little spark that made it worth living. Suicidal ideation is a horrible thing to go through. To feel suicidal is to feel like your very core is being sucked out of your body by a high-power vacuum and no matter what you do, you can’t hold onto it and you know that you can’t save yourself. It’s almost like being in the ocean with no life preserver, no lifeguard in sight, and no ability to swim. It drains you of your hope. It drains you of any joy you could have in your life. It makes you feel like your family, your friends, etc. don’t care or shouldn’t care or that they would be better off without you. And to write it off as the act of someone who doesn’t think about what others will go through is to thoroughly misunderstand the act itself.

Mirrored from Hyperaware.