Irony

In case you missed it before, let me recap my feelings about suicide. Suicide is a fundamental right of being human and it's a personal choice. Just as some people choose to live, others find that their most appropriate option in life is to leave it behind. Unless you've been there, it's easy to underestimate exactly how much pain has to be accumulated in a person's life to make leaving more appealing than staying.

There are many, many people who believe it is their duty to do anything--anything--to stop another person from committing suicide. I say, why is it anyone's business? Do a Web search on "suicide prevention" or "suicide support" and you'll see what I mean. Where does this attitude come from that deems it appropriate to "save" someone from suicide? Why is there an arrogant assumption that only people who are unfit to think for themselves would consider suicide? They say things like, Life is a gift not to be wasted. Life is not a gift; it is biological happenstance and we do what we can for as long as we can once we get here. Still the words keep coming: Hang on, there's hope, you just need to see another day, things will look better when you're not so emotional, you just need to talk about it, blah, blah, blah. Talk about it? In this country, you'll actually get hauled away by the police if you so much as discuss the possibility of ending your own life (trust me on this).

People who feel adamant about interrupting the life/death path of another person are asking the wrong questions. and pursuing the wrong answer. The issue isn't about what you're doing to stop someone from committing suicide; the issue is this: What are you doing to help eliminate the intolerable pain and suffering from the life of the person who is contemplating suicide? Suicide isn't about death nearly as much as it is about pain and stopping pain.

It is cruel to stop someone from committing suicide when in the end that action will only serve to make you feel better but without easing the horrible burden of suffering of the person who wishes to die. Why don't people get this? Why does anyone feel they have the right to stop a suicide when they haven't done much, if anything at all, to alleviate the pain that brought on the desire to die?

I truly, passionately believe that if you can't help me slog through Hell, then you haven't paid the price of admission to discuss my final options. Screw you if you think you do. I know what it's like to feel abandonment. I know what it's like to realize that at the most painful, godawful time in your life, you are going down that path alone...very alone (see link). Don't act like you've been with me all along when you really just jumped out of the bushes at the last turn.

So, here's the irony. I've started to receive newsletters via email from a suicide prevention and support organization. Now, I spend a fair amount of time on the Internet and I certainly have visited my share of message boards and made extensive Google searches on topics of a personal nature. Never, ever have I compromised my privacy by doing anything under my real name. Never. Imagine my surprise, then, to find these e-newsletters coming to my work email address.

I am not a detective, but I can connect very obvious dots. In this case, I think it's safe to conclude that someone else signed me up for this "help." Un-fucking-believable. My immediate reaction is to be profoundly offended and outraged by the presumptuous, arrogant attitude of the person who, having taken stock of my deficits, thought they should "suggest" I need help. If I knew who this person was, I would say, "Where were you a year ago when I was seriously grasping for a lifeline? Where were you 18 months ago when I was actively planning my own death? Why do you think it's OK to imply I need help, yet you are such a coward, rather than just ask if I'm OK, you sign me up for something behind my back? Why can't you sit down, present your suggestion, and discuss it with me? Why do you think it's OK to comment on my life via anonymous suggestions? What's coming to my inbox next, Weight Watcher's coupons?"

After my initial outrage, I realized that irony snakes throughout this situation. Sending this newsletter to me is like buying a rosary for a monkey. It's poorly thought out and ultimately, a wasted effort. I'd have to say that I'm the last person who is open to the concept of "suicide aversion." No, no, no. I'm the woman who believes you get to choose how you die, just as you get to make all of the other big decisions that come with being human.

Both my husband and my therapist asked me if I really mean it that I wouldn't stop another person from committing suicide. My husband took it a little further and said, "What if it was someone you loved?" Well, if it were someone I loved, I would talk it over with them to make sure they understood the implications of the decision. If that person was really adamant about suicide and there was no way for me to provide comfort, then yes, I would respect his or her decision and step away. I would not, however, send anonymous email suggesting that the person needs an intervention.

I cannot respect the suggestions of a person who not only doesn't respect my right to choose, but who also can't look me in the eye or tell me to my face that they think my emotional health is somehow theirs to comment upon. This is not a case of someone showing concern or trying to be a friend. It's a case of someone blatantly passing judgment on me in a complex situation they are not equipped to understand.

Screw that.

Suicide may or may not be painless, but if it's not yours, stay out of it

Have you ever reached a point in your life where you felt like the only reasonable option for you was to end your life? Maybe it was a wisp of a thought, flitting through a troubled mind; maybe you were truly desperate. Then again, maybe you realized that killing yourself was not only possible, but just one of several viable and completely valid avenues available to you.

We are culturally programmed to find the very thought of suicide--our or anyone else's--abhorrent. For some, the stigma is enough to hold off from committing suicide. For others, religious conviction keeps the desire in check. Then there are the 30,000 Americans per year who go ahead and get it over with. Who are we to argue about that extremely personal choice? For the past couple of years, thoughts of my own possible suicide have come and gone with unnerving frequency. I have spent countless hours trying to understand the psychological and biological factors that cause these thoughts, as well as the things that keep the impulse contained. At the end of all of my reading and questioning, I learned that the decision is ultimately a choice to end unbearable pain or to avoid a future of hopelessness or suffering. Why anyone thinks that these feelings are so invalid that they have the right to interfere with another person's end-of-life decisions is a mystery to me.

Several years ago, a coworker lost his wife in a tragic car accident. My coworker's son had been at the wheel, and in a split-second of poor judgment, he made what turned out to be a fatal left turn at an intersection. My coworker's wife was killed instantly, and my coworker himself was seriously injured, his body a collection of shattered bones and bruised organs. The driver, the son, had no physical injuries, but the psychological trauma caused him to suffer without relief until just a few days ago. After years of unmitigated guilt, loss, and emotional devastation, he reached his breaking point and took his own life. Having been strong in his conviction, he made sure to do it right on the first try. At work, everyone was shocked and deeply rattled, deeming this event a tragedy, a tragedy of the worst kind. I'm inclined not to agree. My coworker--the father of the young man who died--is suffering this loss terribly, and that is understandable. Still, his son was obviously not recovering from the accident, even years later. Where were all of the people who are now mourning him? Why did they feel he needed to be strong and move forward, yet nobody was there to comfort him along the way? Why is it considered the right thing to "live with what you did," but so wrong to die when that very event causes intolerable emotional pain? America hates a quitter is my take on this paradox.

When my coworker's wife died in the car accident, there were cards, phone calls, cooking, and a barrage of condolences for the surviving members of the family. This time, people have been avoiding my coworker with their eyes downcast, mumbling mundane greetings as they hurry by in the hall. It's as if people perceive a suicide as a shameful act even more than a tragic one. They whisper about it as if the young man died while engaged in a sordid activity. Death is death. There is no shame in death. I'll concede tragedy, maybe. Kids get killed by drunk drivers, innocents are murdered, a baby falls from a balcony; that's tragedy. Death is inevitable and has many causes. Suicide is only one of them, and it is a decision, a personal choice, no different than the cancer patient who forgoes treatment, or the heavy smoker who gets lung cancer, or the morbidly obese man who just keeps rolling on his bed, eating and waiting for congestive heart failure to claim him at last. Unhealthy choices, yes. Shameful? No. The end of something unpleasant? What's the problem with that? Why would you have us stay alive with no end to the suffering? What's the benefit?

I don't think there's anything wrong with a person who makes a conscious choice to stop the madness and pain in his or her life. I would be furious and flat-out hostile if someone interrupted me that way. Suicide ideation, planning, or completion do not necessarily indicate the presence of severe mental illness. That's an arrogant and irrational assumption based on one's views about their own preferences for end-of-life decisions. Being comfortable with death--even welcoming it--may show an inner peace and wisdom that most people can't understand. Probably because they shut down at the mere mention of death and because they can't imagine their own demise, they assume you are mistaken in planning for your own.

Can 30,000 Americans per year all be wrong and irrational?

Because I said so, that's why.

I don’t have children, and let me be clear: It’s because I never wanted any. It took a lot of tries before I found a man who felt the same way, but find him I did, and we live contentedly child-free.

I don’t dislike children on principle, but I know my limits both emotionally and organizationally, and it would have been grossly irresponsible on my part to have attempted parenthood. This is a sentiment that, when expressed openly, immediately makes other people (usually parents themselves) insist that I would have been a wonderful mother, an excellent parent, and the producer of very smart offspring. This only proves to what degree they don’t really know me. Some people were never meant to be parents, and I am one of them.

This wasn’t a decision I came to late in life; in fact, it was something I knew in my early teens. At that time, I babysat a lot. By “a lot,” I mean I babysat in what seemed like every waking moment that I wasn’t in school. I loved the money, but couldn’t relate to the kids. I didn’t tell stories or play games mostly because it never occurred to me that this is what one does in the presence of small children. There was just no connection for me whatsoever—a fact that never changed with exposure or with age. It’s possible I couldn’t entertain children because I never thought like one myself, even when I was a child.

Of course, by my late teens, I knew there was something terribly wrong with me as a human being, and although I didn’t know the source of my defect, I knew it should never, ever be passed onto another person. It was a conviction I could not be talked out of then and never could going forward. I have great respect for genetics, and I do not harbor the kind of hubris that would have me procreate to continue my lineage rather than not procreate in the name of preventing more suffering in the world. Have I made worthwhile contributions to the world? Maybe. Small ones here and there, I’m sure. Don’t we all do that? I am average—just as average as about, say 33% of the population (the other 66% being above or below average, in case your math skills didn’t kick in while reading that). I am so average that I do not see and never have identified anything so extraordinary in myself that reproduction would be a positive contribution to the world.

I don’t know how people with BP manage families. Maybe they end up with terribly broken or dysfunctional families. A good portion of my life has been skewered by the warped perceptions and erratic moods inherent to BP. I honestly believe that had I opted for parenthood, any children I had would have been forcibly taken from my home years ago. In the end, I prefer to be criticized for not having children than to be vilified for having unwanted children I could not care for. There is no social demon quite like the woman who is accused of failing in motherhood.

Why do people feel they must argue the point of another person’s decision to remain childless? Do they doubt their own choice to have children and need validation by seeing others choose likewise? Do they honestly believe we have a biological mandate to reproduce? Do they just want to see somebody suffer through an unwanted experience? I don’t know the answer, but for the past 20 years, I have had to defend my decision, and frankly, I’m tired of it.

I don’t have kids because I didn’t want any. I don’t regret my decision and I never have, not for a second. It doesn’t mean I’m selfish. Selfish is having children to satisfy your own egotistical need to pass on your DNA. Selfish is having children because you think you should and not because raising a family is something you are passionate about. Selfish is having a child you aren’t all that interested in. I could say it’s selfish to have a kid even though you know you have a genetic defect that could be passed on and it could cause untold pain and suffering for that child, but that’s not really selfish; that’s irresponsible. End of argument.