Suicide and the Counterrevolution

If you’re here, it is fairly likely that the specter of suicide is in your life.

Maybe you have attempted it before, or many times like me. Perhaps the fifth anniversary of your most serious soiree into intentional drug overdose is on 6 March, like mine is.

And maybe, in the last five years, you have come to understand that at some level suicide will remain in the back of your mind. The bitter temptation of self-murder, when it translates into serious action that isn’t simply an attempt to gain perfectly understandable emotional support, is a cankerous thing. Each attempt makes the next more and more likely. And after the seventh attempt of suicide, or the ninth attempt of self-mutilation, or the eleventh serious consideration of blissful death, it becomes harder to believe that your life will end peacefully.

But I can feel it. Through raw and unadulterated love, I can feel it. Even though, analytically speaking, 6 March 2007 wasn’t likely to be the end, I have to feel as though it was. And analytically speaking, loving yourself enough to understand that the reasons for suicide are fleeting and that your soul demands introspective tenderness is a force that defies statistics.

Past patterns are meaningless if the conditions that support them are destroyed, and the first is hating yourself. This ended when I made a discovery that I will share with you: suicide is not merely “giving up.” It is letting the reactionary, counterrevolutionary, and anti-difference institutions of human society make you believe that you are not beautiful and worth cherishing.

Are you queer, reader, like I am? I ask you to investigate whether or not you’ve internalized the homophobia of your surroundings. Do people tell you that you’re worthless, dirty, or perverted? That isn’t you. That is their own counterrevolutionary peevishness, reader. They want to make you to be the one with the problem because they subconsciously realize that there is something wrong with what they’re saying. That is why they need to dehumanize you by calling you these things. If history is any lesson, they’ll eventually be dragged from their discomfort, and reserve their hatred for matters that don’t directly affect you. Dare to dream. Please.

Are you non-white, reader, like I am? I ask you to ponder on whether or not your sorrow is caused by the xenophobia of your time. Perhaps people have told you that you are not part of their state because you came here illegally. Maybe your politics have made you more enemies than allies, and you believe that the whole world is this way.

It isn’t, reader. I thought the whole world was a counterrevolutionary cesspool on 6 March 2007. Five years later, my people have mobilized in revolutionary activity all over the Muslim world. I went to Tahrir Square. I can’t believe I almost missed that. You can’t even believe how your perspective of the world is dependent on certain institutional repressions always being their until a moment when they all suddenly collapse. Do new repressive institutions take hold? Until they collapse as well.

I was bullied as a child and teenager, reader. Bullying exists on the playground because, when encountered with something you do not understand, it is easier for a person to enforce the status-quo and feel personally comfortable. That is why everyone dresses the same in school hallways, thinks the same people are hot, and tries to like the same music. There are entire industries designed on exploiting how children and teenagers are taught, both directly and indirectly, by adults to enshrine the status-quo.

Maybe you’ve noticed. Perhaps it makes you different. Cherish that observation. The world needs more of it.

The fact is that the counterrevolution, with all of its conservative repression and peevishness, requires you to relent to the status-quo somehow. And for the bullied, it is either to abandon the difference that causes that bullying, whether racial, queer, or otherwise, or to withdraw that difference from the playground. From the hallways. From the schools. From the institutions where the status-quo is being enforced.

In other words, suicide is part of the counterrevolutionary enforcement of this status-quo. It allows people to feel more comfortable by getting rid of the difference in their lives. And despite their tears, they win the day.

I urge you to not let them win. The reason I am alive is because I never want to let them win. Difference is good. You feel sad for a reason– because you know that being bullied for being different is unfair. The world needs more difference and variety, because the status-quo clearly isn’t working. Love yourself enough to cherish that difference. One day, there will be other people who do as well.