I go on this site, but none of my stories compare with the majority of posts here. I made a poorly planned attempt, I wish I had gone through with it, et cetera, but it makes me wonder, because there’s also that feeling of guilt when I am on here: What if someone kills themselves and I didn’t reply in time? What if I didn’t even try? I guess that’s the extremely selfish reason why I try to convince people not to kill themselves: I would feel too bad. Does that make me a bad person, and shouldI just hold that feeling in?
For the record, though, I lurk on the forum quite a bit right now, and try to reply to as many as people as possible…
9 comments
Your not a bad person at all. We all try to talk each other out of going through with suicide. No one wants to know they were involved in someones life and couldn’t do anything but sit and watch as they take their life. Even for someone who is suicidal I don’t want people to kill them selves. Maybe that is selfish but I don’t really care.
Another reason I feel guilty is that I always wonder if I am actually improving things, or making them worse.
Well from all the comments you have left me have always been helpful. As long as your intent is to help that is the best you can do. You can never be sure how someone will take what it is you have to say. The bottom line is you can’t help someone who does not want the help.
Everyone has a unique life with unique experiences and responds to those experiences in unique ways. Depression and suicide aren’t about what happened to you; they are about how you feel about it. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Your pain is legitimate, and you deserve support like everyone else.
I guess you’re right, but maybe I will take a break from the forum tomorrow. It’s a nice resource to have, though it brings up some uncomfortable questions.
You’ve commented on a couple of mine and I greatly appreciate it. Discussion and understanding help me out. Thank you. I’m glad you’re still here.
Feeling bad over the prospect of not saving someone’s life? That’s the polar opposite of bad my friend.
What is a bad person?
The thinking is un-skillful, can a person identity be defined by a thought, or action.
Isn’t’ that what gets us into trouble in the first place!
We define ourselves by a single quality or experience instead of a whole!
We have a negative thought and become a bad useless person; a positive thought well that doesn’t count.
We’re told that to be real the experience must be objective and so we become only an object to the moment, never the subject and it is only the subject that can be known.
It’s funny/interesting/sad that such a personal choice like suicide is experienced by others as… well personal.
Perhaps the one act that a person commits for themselves, fully and totally because it is how they feel/think/view themselves, becomes, when viewed by others as being about the observer. (Even in death it doesn’t get to be about the person who dies. (Which is ironic if you think about it. )
Suicide becomes about the ‘I’.
Why do I feel guilty, did I do something, was it my fault, could I have done something?
Why am I so angry, is it because I feel forced to have to face the question of suicide, is it jealousy, is it because I feel forced examine meaning, hope…
I guess it’s understandable that suicide becomes about the witnesses…
It seems to me that bearing witness is part of what we’re doing here, and maybe that’s all that matters?
Only here maybe when we bear witness to others in pain we allow the person to be subjects of their own experiences and not just a object and a reflection of our own fears. In doing so maybe allowing, if only a small part of who they are to be known?
Once upon a time, a woman named Linda, called me on the phone and asked me to borrow a gun. I asked her what she wanted the gun for. She said she wanted to kill herself. I asked her how she intended to return the gun, if she killed herself with it. She said she hadn’t considered that. I told her if she couldn’t return it, I wasn’t going to loan her a gun, she’d have to buy one of her own.
She bought herself a 12 gauge shotgun, and was dead within 24 hours.
Did I conveniently forget some of the details of the last conversation between Linda and I? I dunno, I forget. I should have taken her seriously, and I did not, I thought she was only talking.
Shooting herself through the heart was her way. She was absolutely fixated on it. It was a statement she needed to make. She didn’t care about pain, but she did care about getting it right. In her case, she’d chosen her way long before I ever met her, all she needed was a few details she didn’t have.