Nearly 45,000 Americans killed themselves in 2016, twice the number who died by homicide.
OK, you can curtail your churlish condemnation of the Anonymole pointing out that suicide might be a drastic, selfish solution to a (potentially) soluble problem.
I think of death daily. (Yes, I really do. The tape measure is out and I’m down on my knees measuring my anguish vs the benefits of existence — nanometer by nanometer.)
But, what existence has in its corner is this: the pain I would cause is always more than the pain I endure.
Bottom line. Bottom measure. Bottom of the barrel looking up — those looking down would suffer and suffer and suffer — no doubt about it.
Now, if I had no one, nobody around who depended on me, or felt deeply attached to me, and who, I know, would not steep in a decade long malaise of loss, then I’d take the first train to never where. CLICK CLICK, TICKETS PLEASE.
Alas, that is not my kettle of fish. My fish swim and feed and breath and look to me for presence, support and, potentially, guidance in the coming years and decades. And so, I scope with a narrow lens the trauma my absence would cause to my fish and know, in my heart of hearts, that to take my life, at this time, would induce far more spiritual agony than it would alleviate.
And the strange source of this examination is a quote from a “Blacklist” episode where Raymond Reddington says, “How could one do that to the people they love?”
Well? How could you?
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-two-faces-of-suicide
Gotta mention Albert Camus and his Sisyphus quote.
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It IS selfish, and unless we go there, we’ll never know why the option of living seemed so dark. death is never about the dead, but the living. And too much “grief” is “self pity.” Someone learned once said that they often think they’re doing us, as well as themselves, a favor. Knew a woman livied in a postcard in Carlsbad, Ca. Throw a rock and hit turquoise water. Two barley teen age kids. Drank a quart of vodka, went to the condo pool and blew her brains out at 50. At 19 she had 4 demonstrably different personalities. If you were to ask someone in the know, Kate Spade has been slowly pulling the trigger, so to speak, for forty years. And that is a dark path for a soul that those who don;t walk it will never know.
Yeah, it is cowardly and selfish. But who are we to judge? One of those times that “a mile in their mocassins” isn’t possible. Nor advisable.
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I don’t know that I’ve ever been that low as to make that estimation, but your commentary on it makes utter sense to me. As does Nothing’s reply. The only simplicity I can offer is that it is not simple at all. I wish no one got that low. That is all I really have.
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Very thought provoking post. I agree with Mr Nothing on this one; whilst we would all like to think that we would put others before ourselves, human beings are, essentially, selfish because it’s a basic survival instinct. Very few of us have ever or will ever be in a position where we will be asked to choose between our own life and the life of another; we’d all like to think that we’d sacrifice ourselves but, if we were actually faced with that situation, I bet that very few would. This same ‘survival’ instinct can be applied, in reverse, to people who commit suicide; they are so utterly, utterly desperate to escape whatever it is that is causing them pain that they take the only route that they see as being available to them – death. They hanker for death in the same way that most of us will do anything to stay alive. Whilst this causes pain and suffering to their loved ones, the person that took their own life did it at a time of their own choosing for reasons that only they could fully understand; the majority of us will not be able to choose the time and will, invariably, not understand why death has come to take us.
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Suicide – the most personal of decisions.
Thanks for joining the conversation.
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Of course, I do agree that others will mourn and suffer too.
I also unequivocally doubt that the author truly understands the depth of the malaise of those that have come to that point or have breached it.
‘The tape measure is out and I’m down on my knees measuring my anguish vs the benefits of existence — nanometer by nanometer,’ does not even for one painful moment describe what happens inside a person driven to such desperation and very often complete clarity.
“How could one do that to the people they love?”
Because no matter what it would be a relief for everyone.
Because it is your own right to terminate.
And, to say it is selfish etc., that argument applies to both sides: those that want life and those who don’t want it any longer. Yes, we are selfish beings, so what now?
I totally reject the superficial assumption of a (potentially) ‘soluble problem’ when all avenues have been exhausted, which they have, when you reach that stage.
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Dissuasion tactics are mostly the result of good intentions 🙂
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My argument was not a catch-all assumption. But, it’s one that when all other considerations have been made, and one is not terminally, or living in abject pain and misery, must be examined.
Blog posts often pose a broad conjecture, many times with the understanding that the proposition will be controversial.
Thanks for responding.
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