Sometimes, suicide is the answer. I believe suicide is the answer for me. And it very well could be for you.
But not likely. Most people who commit suicide are not thinking terribly rationally. If you’re having really hard times right now, things do get better. (On average.) If you’ve just broken up with someone and are feeling extremely depressed, suicide is almost certainly a bad idea. If you’ve just suffered a large or huge financial loss, it’s very likely that if you just hang in there you’ll be just as happy in a couple years as you were before (even if poorer). People’s happiness is sticky like that. It tends not to change over large time periods. Fluctuate, yes, but not change permanently. (There are some exceptions to this. If you’re friendless, making friends will make you happier. If you get into an accident and become disabled, your happiness does go down some, but not as much as you would think.)
This essay is really aimed towards people like me: people with treatment-resistant depression. I have chronic major depression, and it has not responded well at all to many different medication combinations. My suicidal thoughts have never really gone away. I have no support structure, and no chance of forming one—I have rather severe avoidance issues. No friends, largely unsupportive family. I hate people, deeply. Mostly people I’m not close to. I don’t hate humanity, though. If I did I wouldn’t be writing this. I do hate the world—the system as a whole, in which people play the part of small cogs. The world screws people over. (I understand this isn’t an especially unhealthy feeling.) I feel sorry for those people as people, even as I hate them as individuals.
Overall, emotionally, I am severely fucked up. This isn’t going to get better. I’ve spent the last 8 years trying to make it better. I made some progress, in easing my social anxiety and in increasing how well I understand social cues and such. I’m not autistic or anything, just a late bloomer. (I do have non-verbal learning disorder, which involves social awkwardness.) But I’ve stopped making progress. There is no more progress to make on this front.
My life right now is not worth living. It hasn’t been for three years. And I can’t foresee that changing for at least four years. Four years of probably pointless therapy and stupid self-reflection and even more medication changes and dealing with idiotic insurance and bills and the other stuff I can’t stand to deal with. Before I start to get better. In the best case. And by then, I won’t even be young anymore.
It’s not worth the terrible anxiety and lack of purpose* and continued isolation and the ups and downs. I’m even starting to think that, maybe, there is no way out of the emotional corner I’m in—that my hate of people has such a great amount of real support in people’s behavior that I won’t be able to change the attitude and still be able to be intellectually consistent, let alone content.
* Anhedonia, really. I think happy people are able to feel plenty purposeful without trying too hard. I believe people make their own purpose; they don’t get it handed to them. But you can’t find a purpose if you can’t feel anything.
Why write all this? Because it makes me really fucking angry that so many people out there would read this and think that I’m crazy. Out of my mind. Not rational. Not able to validly come to this decision. I feel that it is my right to decide to end my life, and that I’ve been plenty rational. There’s a little trick that they pull in this argument, you see. They define rational partly based on the person’s feelings, rather than solely based on their processing of those feelings. If I’m having suicidal thoughts, that means, ipso facto, that I’m being irrational. The slightly more nuanced position is that if I feel that my life is not worth living in its current state, that I’m being irrational. Because every rational person has a will to live. And that is such complete bullshit.
And it’s kind of funny, actually: there’s a closely related position that I actually agree with: Death is bad. If I could cure death by aging today, I would do so. If I could spend every last penny of my savings and all of my future earnings for the next 40 years to cure aging five years sooner than it would otherwise happen, I would do so. (My making such a huge difference is extremely unlikely, though, so I’m not inclined to be that generous.) Because death is just that bad. But.
If you want to commit suicide, for the right reasons, having thought through everything you can be expected to, then you should be able to go to the hospital and get put down. Being a reader of this blog, you probably know some good ways to do it, like ******** or carbon monoxide asphyxiation.
Now, I myself don’t have any dependents, but suicide for those who do does raise some moral questions that I’m not sure how to answer. On the other hand, it is a person’s right to commit suicide regardless of the pain that they might inflict on friends or family. I think in many cases, perhaps even most, it might be wrong to do so, but that doesn’t impinge on the right. Again, I’m speaking abstractly here because these considerations don’t apply to me. My parents would be the most upset by my suicide, but besides them, I don’t think anyone would really be too disturbed. And they helped put me in this huge clusterfuck in the first place, so I’m not shedding any tears for them.
And as for society? Do I have any sort of obligation to society to remain alive? FUCK NO. Society can fuck itself in the ass with a poison-tipped mace as far as I care. “Society†doesn’t care one bit about its people. Some of its more altruistic members have been trying to change that, since, like, forever, but so far their overall effect has been minimal. And believe it or not, I’m actually mildly optimistic about the future. But that doesn’t change my condition, right now. Society is not yet worth being a member of.
These judgments are very contentious, of course, and legitimately so. But regardless of whether there’s a consensus on these issues, I have a right to, motivated by these judgments, end my own life. I can’t be put into the crazy-house because I think society isn’t worth living in.
This essay closely follows the one I wrote a year ago here.
7 comments
Do you have Windows Live Messenger? I have read through several of your posts on your blog-site. I really want to speak to you, I am a 19-year-old male who is going through the same mental torment as you.
Social Isolation.
Not being able to enjoy life.
Extreme loneliness.
Incurable depression.
Eternally single, broken and fucked up.
I very much doubt I’m half as intelligent as you are, but for some reason I have a strong hunch that we have similar underlying and unspoken personal issues. I just want to see if you are somewhat similar to me before I do kill myself. I almost did it 2 weeks ago.
pdf23ds, you said that you “are actually mildly optimistic about the future”,
and that is also my current position. There are actually now more & more findings that this might actually *really* be the case. just google terms like “indigo higher consciousness 2012” . You might at first NOT believe it, and I can understand it, but try just to keep an open-mind at 1st. Like how people at 1st wouldn’t believe in people able to land on the moon, or fly in the sky (ie: airplane), but if you just keep believing & open-mind, it might even give some HOPE for you.
Yes, ‘society’ might be all too fucked-up,..but I’ve learned that if you try keep being open-minded and seeing possibilities, you’ll perhaps learn that hey it’s not all fucked-up. Like you rightly believed, there IS still hope to humanity, to this earthly LIFE!
Perhaps you try to live for another day, another week, another years even, you’ll eventually stumble upon ‘the Answer’, and by then you probably won’t regret that you’ve choose to keep LIVING, accomplishing your purpose that you have always *KNOW* deep inside what you want to do (don’t deny it, don’t neglect it. it’s your inner soul telling you. or you’ll forever be ‘haunted’ by the small voice and even regret it), and eventually die/rest in peace.
And no, I don’t and will never judge you as being “irrational” for wanting to commit suicide.
if there’s anything I’ve learned from this website, I’ve perhaps come to realize one thing: Death perhaps is really not THAT bad! and as crazy as this might sound, I’m even more keen to believe now that it might provide to another ‘gate’ of living, as proven by our soul/consciousness (there are many ‘weird’ yet interesting theories so abound if you just go google about it “Death and afterlife”).
But I do think that there’s still so MUCH in this Life and humanity that you perhaps haven’t *fully* explored yet.
There was once a great message (or I’d say ‘teaching’) from one poster in this website (nicknamed “Splinter”), that said that there are not many ‘EVIL’ people in this world, there are just many ‘CLUELESS’ people, whom if given proper enough guidance & lead-by-examples, it is very possible that they would get touched, inspired by the Change you’ve made, and even perhaps started to become the agent-of-Change themselves!
This world, and specifically mankind, is still NOT all hopeless.
You will find Hope, if you truly deeply search for it.
and if you somehow ‘feel’ there’s something lacking in Hope, then go Create one.
“Be the Change that you wish to see in this world” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
And never underestimate any ideas, however small it is.
“An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contageous and the smallest seed of an idea can grow.” – Inception
and maybe *that* is your ‘Purpose’ for your existence, for YOU to ‘feel’ all these ‘sensitive’ things.
google “free MBTI online test” and take one, and you might be surprised with the results.
also google “Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)” and also “Indigo”
you’ll perhaps feel that you are NOT all alone.
there are MANY like you,..just probably scattered in all corners, but take heart, there’s an increasing findings that the amount of ‘Indigo’ or ‘HSP’ is on the rising/increasing (and something saying that this planet will rise & shift into a ‘Higher Consciousness’ one, especially after year 2012…it might have some rings of truth in it).
There IS still Hope.
I want to die to
“* Anhedonia, really. I think happy people are able to feel plenty purposeful without trying too hard. I believe people make their own purpose; they don’t get it handed to them. But you can’t find a purpose if you can’t feel anything.
Why write all this? Because it makes me really fucking angry that so many people out there would read this and think that I’m crazy. Out of my mind. Not rational. Not able to validly come to this decision. I feel that it is my right to decide to end my life, and that I’ve been plenty rational. There’s a little trick that they pull in this argument, you see. They define rational partly based on the person’s feelings, rather than solely based on their processing of those feelings. If I’m having suicidal thoughts, that means, ipso facto, that I’m being irrational. The slightly more nuanced position is that if I feel that my life is not worth living in its current state, that I’m being irrational. Because every rational person has a will to live. And that is such complete bullshit.”
that’s pretty much it
“And as for society? Do I have any sort of obligation to society to remain alive? FUCK NO. Society can fuck itself in the ass with a poison-tipped mace as far as I care. “Society†doesn’t care one bit about its people. Some of its more altruistic members have been trying to change that, since, like, forever, but so far their overall effect has been minimal. And believe it or not, I’m actually mildly optimistic about the future. But that doesn’t change my condition, right now. Society is not yet worth being a member of.”
same here
“And as for society? Do I have any sort of obligation to society to remain alive? FUCK NO. Society can fuck itself in the ass with a poison-tipped mace as far as I care. “Society†doesn’t care one bit about its people. Some of its more altruistic members have been trying to change that, since, like, forever, but so far their overall effect has been minimal. And believe it or not, I’m actually mildly optimistic about the future. But that doesn’t change my condition, right now. Society is not yet worth being a member of.”
+1 (for the majority of society)