So What the Hell Do I Do Now?

You want the whole truth about suicide? I’ll tell you…
For the record, I’m usually very perspicacious in my writing, but for this post I may not be. I’m just pissed and upset and I’m going to tell it like it is.

I’m tired of feeling pain. I’m tired of having nothing to look forward to. It’s not right and I don’t want any part in it anymore.

First of all, I’m really tired of all the bias against suicide. These uneducated simpletons think that suicidal is inherently selfish or irrational. Granted, a lot of times it’s acted out without any real preceeding analysis or careful assessment, but that’s one hell of a generalization to say that it’s always “bad.” It’s not selfish, and you know what? Whether it is or not should not even be a factor. I believe that everyone has the right to do whatever they please with their own body. That includes drug abuse. How dare you force someone into rehab or force someone into a psychiatric ward simply because YOU feel it’s the right thing to do? It’s not your call. Now a lot of times it’s necessary, especially if someone is obviously not thinking clearly or is addicted to a drug. In a situation like that, I guess I don’t really have anything against force being used to make someone better. Chances are they want to get better, aren’t able to by their own means. It’s your body and you may do what you like with it, good or bad. It’s no one else’s call but yours. Even if they’re right, even if someone is right about something concerning your person that doesn’t mean that you must abide by their guidelines.

“Yes, I know that cocaine is harmful to me. Yes, I use it once a month and am not addicted. I do it because I like the high. I do it in a controlled setting and I limit the amount that I use. I enjoy the rush and I remain indoors alone when indulging in it. Although it may cause potential health problems, I have assessed that the high that I get from it is worth any possible health complication in the future. I choose to live a limited happy life rather than a long and less-interesting life.”

I have never heard anyone say that, but I’ll bet if they did, it still wouldn’t be acceptable, would it? And that’s what I mean. People love to interfere when they think they’re right. And I say that even if they are, it still gives them no right to do so.

Now I don’t mind advice, guidance, or suggestions. Those are words and people should have a right to voice their opinion toward your suicidal circumstances. What really bothers me is when I hear the same nonsensible typical responses over and over again when I express my story to various people. Some of the general responses I get are:

“Don’t do it, it’s selfish.”
“There’s always a way, you’ve just got to keep going.”
“Suicide is never the answer.”
“You need to ask god for help.”

All of those are meaningless to me. It’s selfish, huh? Why? Because if I kill myself my family and friends will be hurt by the loss? Isn’t it more selfish of them to tell me that it’s selfish? Yeah, because by saying that, they’re basically telling me to continue living and suffering so that they are not hurt or inconvenienced. They might try to rationalize that by saying that more people would be affected that way. I understand that a lot of times when someone says “suicide is selfish” they usually don’t really think about it. They just say that as a ploy to hopefully discourage you from doing it. It’s just one of those phrases they hope will work. Let me tell you something: If the thought of being deemed selfish was signifigant enough that it was solely responsible for preventing me from doing it, I would say that I wasn’t sincerely suicidal afterall. How suicidal are you if you’re willing to not do it because you are worried about how it will affect others? Yeah, that principle is more valuable to some more than others, but I would think that if the pain was great enough you would learn to override that principle by carrying it out anyway. How long can you go without killing yourself for that reason anyway? Maybe it keeps you going for another 2 or 3 years, but you inevitable end your life anyway. All you did was extend the amount of time you had to be in pain, and unnecessarily.

There’s always a way, is there? I have to keep going? Why? Says who? I know it makes sense to you that I should and it isn’t a natural act for an “animal” to do, but we have intelligence so we aren’t as primortial as any other animals. There isn’t always a way just because you think there is either. How do you know there is, and what is it? Sure, I may have not exhausted all of my options. Surely there’s something I haven’t tried yet to get better. Must I try all of them before I am justified in killing myself, though? That would take quite a while and my tolerance grows thinner everyday.

Here’s another thing: Suppose you haven’t tried therapy or medication. You finally start it and a year goes by and you still feel suicidal. What then? You know what people will tell you? “You’ve got to try it longer.” 3 years later, what will they tell you? “Well, just keep trying. Sometimes it takes many years.” That response never ends, so it’s just as arbitrary as it can get. We don’t need to justify our suicide to anyone but ourselves, if that. I get real mad when I hear people say that suicide is never the answer. Sure it is. I have a problem. I’m depressed most everyday and it’s so bad that I want to end my life. I end my life. No more pain, problem solved. Sure, it would be great to end the pain AND live so that I may see another day and enjoy the pleasures of tomorrow, but if that isn’t attainable, or attainable soon, I might just leave. And I’m not gonna apoligize for it either.

I’m an agnostic atheist. I don’t believe in god. God is nowhere in the equation for me and suicide. I am indifferent to the concept of god. I figure that when I die I will black out and know nothing and that’s the end of it all. I have no reason to believe that anything else will happen while acknowledging that I don’t in fact know what will actually happen when I do die. I used to a Catholic. Later, I recognized the absurdity of it, got mad at god, and years later realized that there is no god to be mad at. If fear of going to hell is a concern of yours, and powerful enough a principle to discourage you from suicide, ask yourself “aren’t I already in hell?”

I acknowledge that generally when I feel suicidal, things could almost always be worse. To top everything off, I could be missing an arm or a leg or be homeless or paralyzed or whatever. Those things would just cause me to kill myself sooner, that’s all. Just because we recognize that things can be worse doesn’t mean that they’re not bad enough already. It’s really dumb when I tell someone that I’m suicidal and then they say “Well yeah, but what about all those starving kids in Africa?” What about them? You mean to say that they’re circumstances are worse? They probably are. But circumstances don’t cause suicidal ideation. Perception does. The intensity of my perception causes me dismay wheras someone who’s starving in Africa may be more optimistic than I am about my “better” circumstances. I could take from that that if they can be optimistic, so can I, but at what point do I finally decide that I’m tired of trying to make everything positive to blind me from the truth; that I’m unhappy. You can’t sugar-coat it. That’ll only last a while. And then you’re left feeling worse because your still suicidal and with one less option to try; the placebo effect.

Not to mention, that typically people will try to point out someone who has it worse than you. The “kids in Africa” is a very popular example, but people always like to believe that “someone else out there has it worse.” So what do you tell that someone who does have it worse than you? The same thing? And what of the next person? And so on? Which makes the whole idea arbitrary again. You don’t need to compare your situation with others to justify feeling good or bad or suicidal or whatever. It is what it is, and you may learn a thing or two by seeing how others in better or worse situations handle them, and you might even have a different outlook afterwards, but if you don’t, that’s absolutely understandable.

Since I mentioned that perception is the real issue, I often hear “well change your perception.” Like I haven’t thought of that…It’s not as easy as it may seem. First of all, even if I am successful at slightly altering my perception, I’m going to be upset that I had to alter it in the first place to be happy. Why couldn’t I just be predispositioned to be happy? Why do I have to work at it? It’s not that I’m lazy or against work, but THAT guy didn’t have to? Why do I have all these curbs and bounds to go over? It’s not about fairness, it’s just about the cards I was dealt. They suck. And for someone like me, it’s extremely hard to change your perception, especially if you’re a realist.

I am a realist. I’m not optimistic and I’m not pessimistic because neither have to do with truth and “what is.” However I may feel about something, it is what it is. Knowing that, I feel that being optimistic about something is irrelevent and meaningless. I try to be, but it often doesn’t work so well.

Oh, and I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. If you think that it does, where’s the consistency in it? I don’t believe in karma either. It’s all just superstitious nonsense and it doesn’t interest me. Same thing with horoscopes. It’s make-believe to give you comfort and fake meaning behind things. A placebo, if you will. You know it.

I’m not a simple-minded dolt. I’m very perspicacious and I say that without bloviating. How the hell can I bloviate anyway if I’m the one feeling suicidal and the simple minds aren’t? Ignorance is definately bliss-usually. I see people and how they operate. Everyone’s obessessed with raising a family and doing their job and making sure they have alchohol on the weekends and whatever. These things, these secular things are of no real value to me. You see, I’m a fan of fun, so if drinking and smoking weed make you happy, do it. For me, I just never was a big fan of it. I never had weed but alchohol just makes me stupid and sick and I don’t need it to have a good time once in a while. I always shake my head when I realize that people get upset and leave parties when there’s no booze. It’s like they’re inadvertantly convinced that they can’t have a good time without altering their mind. Interesting…maybe that’s why I’m depressed. I never really alter my mind….hmmm

But one of my biggest problems is the lack of a value-system. I don’t really have any. I hardly have any principles or morals, either. I’ve never stolen anything or commited a crime, but I’m not die-hard about it either. For example, I don’t look at a lot of sex offenders and pedophiles as freaks. I look at the one’s who commited rape as insecure men who did something terrible and I don’t condone it one bit. The ones that did a sexual act with a minor, consentual act, mind you, I don’t really have much to say about. They obviously seem to have a “fetish” for the younger breed and they are only in prison because it was illegal. You see, the way I look at it, I may be wrong about this, but I feel that society puts a HUGE and unnecessary emphasis on sex. If, for example, a man was do perform a sex act of a minor that wasn’t against the minor’s will or require any force, would it be mentally harmful to the minor if this act was recognized by society as bad? I think the child may remain indifferent to it. He or she would only feel violated after learning that they were violated because society says they were. I’m not trying to defend sex offended by any means, but the point of this example is to show that a lot of morals and values are made up. They aren’t absolute. None of them are absolute actually. I seek absolutes and my father once told me that the only thing that’s absolute is that there are no absolutes. I just have a hard time adopting any real values when I see that there are flaws or inconsistencies in them. It’s often easier to break a principle than to uphold it for simple convenience in a matter. So how die-hard could I be about a principle if I even had one? Who knows, but I’m pretty die-hard about what I have to say about suicide.

I figure that suicide is ultimately done for at least 1 of 3 reasons. 1)Hopelessness. You feel that you will never feel better and that your circumstances will never change. Why stick around. 2)Impatience. You feel that you can and probably will get better some day, but that day is too distant and not worth the pain you will have to go through to get to that point. Perfectly understandable. 3)Intolerance. You may feel that you will get better soon or not, but the pain is just too much and you just can’t take it anymore. Time to go.

I have experienced all 3 at one point or another. Sometimes all at once. The simple prospect of a better day isn’t always enough to keep someone going. We recognize how long it may take to get there and that we will be suffering throughout that whole time. Even if we make it, did it end up being worth it? Maybe and probably, but on a timeline of my life, I wouldn’t want to include half of it spend suffering. Recognizing that early allows me to decide that none of it is worth it at all then. I don’t want my life to consist of that much misery as a whole. It just isn’t right.

I often refer to the people of society as “monkeys” because they’re very very simple-minded. They believe what they’re told and if you were to question any of their values they would look at you like you were nuts. If you asked me how I felt about something, even if I felt very strongly about it one way or the other, I would at least be able to acknowledge an opposing viewpoint and say so. I don’t just shut out things that I disagree with. I assess things. I consider myself a realist and a master-assesser. It really hurts when although these people are so simple and stupid, they have a good time. They “get with the program.” They go to school, have relationships, get married, do whatever. A part of me wants that. Another part of me despises a lot of it because it’s too traditional and not always necessary. I just can’t seem to get with the program. I’m the one with the insight, but it does me nothing but disharmony. What am I to do?