The thing that make me doubt the most about killing myself… it’s that I fear I would not really get this relief feeling that I’m searching for. You know, you’re in pain, and you just don’t want to feel it anymore… but I think that when you’re dead, you don’t even realize that the pain is gone, ’cause you know, you’re not alive to feel it. If I could be guaranteed that there is something after death. That there’s another world where you can enjoy not to be alive anymore… i would be gone for a while now.
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One’s belief of what happens when they die really boils down to one’s religious beliefs and personal philosophy. There are plenty of arguments to be made that certain things (or simply nothing) happens when you die. It just depends on how you think. I do my best to keep my religious/after-death views away from SP in order to stay neutral.
The long-story-short, however, is that we’ll never know the true after-death experience because it’s impossible to get that information from those who have moved on. If you’re unsure about what’s going to happen, perhaps you can work hard toward making your life as pleasant as possible. Perhaps it won’t be perfect… but maybe you can be a little happier?
There was a time when I was feeling particularly suicidal… And I was actually talking to my dad about it. That doesn’t happen a lot. But he said something that made a lot of sense.
When someone commits suicide they are thinking selfishly…
They leave without thinking of the pain that those who love them will be forced to go through.
Your Dad is a smart man… In many respects, that is true. Sadly, there are also instances in which people have reached the point of no return. They are upset, devastated, and their emotions are driving the train. It’s often not a conscious decision to bring pain upon their loved ones… It’s simply that things are at the point where they no longer want to suffer and that determination to end the suffering takes over.
Someone who perceives that they have no “loved ones” or that nobody will miss them is often wrong. Unfortunately, by then, it can be too late.
“When someone commits suicide they are thinking selfishly…
They leave without thinking of the pain that those who love them will be forced to go through.”
False.
Look around at this very website. You’ll see countless tales of people who feel compelled to exit, but worry about how it will impact their family and friends.
I guess that’s no true for everyone.
Didn’t mean to offend.
HealingInHisWings: Some don’t even seem to think that their death will affect anyone.
Anyway, I guess I could at least be a little more happier like you said, distant.road. Thank you for your comments.
I don’t want to bring up religious opinions.. I just feel I wouldn’t get the satisfaction I seek in suicide, as if feelings were only for living people.
It’s not that i’m offended, i’m just saying… that stigma is largely incorrect, even though there are certainly many people in the world who do not care to be considerate of the impacts their actions will have upon others. From what i’ve seen and experienced, i have to reckon that most people who commit or consider suicide, certainly have extensively considered the impacts it might have on those who care. And i’d be just as quick to contest it, when someone claims to believe that no one cares. That’s rarely true. Someone almost always “cares,” even if they suck at showing it, or can’t/won’t help you. Someone, somewhere, will be deeply saddened, in most cases of suicide… but, you know, probably not 100% of them. “There is always an exception; even to this rule.”
The stigma of suicides being “selfish” bothers me. A lot of people end up killing themselves due to being overly concerned with what other people think… which is anything but “selfish.”
One of the last things my dad said to me, is that i’m “over-thinking.” Guess how much that pissed me off. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just part of a generation who were taught to just do things and not think about it. That’s how we got into all this mess! People need to think *more,* not less.
Plus, that whole “suicide is selfish” thing, goes directly against one of the primary witticisms rendered to the depressed: “you have to love yourself, before you can love someone else… (and before anyone else will want to love you, in many cases)”
So, if you tell me to “love myself,” on one hand, but call me selfish on the other… am i not supposed to notice the hypocrisy? Of course; i think too much. lol.
Foreverisalongtime, I couldn’t agree with you more when you wrote, ” If I could be guaranteed … that there’s another world where you can enjoy not to be alive anymore… i would be gone for a while now.” I obviously can’t speak for anyone else who’s suicidal, but if I knew such a place existed I’d have committed suicide at 9 on one of my long walks home, terrified of the daily bullies. And if somehow I hadn’t done it then, then likely my freshman year in college, isolated in a hell of not belonging. And if not then, without the slightest doubt the moment my mother died, wracked with pain and disfigured. I’d have gone so fast a temporary vacuum would have been left where I was standing the second she died.
As it is, the intervening years have just seen me wither nearly away, to the point I just don’t matter in any sense to anyone anymore. What an utter waste.
Oh, and about the “selfish” assertion, why is it any less selfish to, say, divorce someone who’s in love with you and who hasn’t done anything “wrong,” but whom you realize you just don’t love? Her/his life can be shattered, but she/he is supposed to, so the experts tell us, just go on, learn to adjust. Her/his feelings are not sufficient to preclude divorce. Nor are even children enough of a justification, so the experts, again, tell us, to remain in a relationship we no longer want. Then why should it be any more selfish, any less permissible to decide we no longer want life and to leave on our own terms?
I don’t mean to be offensive, but the “selfish” argument has always seemed specious to me. We’re a culture of selfishness. Selfishness is interwoven throughout our genes. But on this one issue we’re supposed to stay our hand from pursuing what we feel to be good and right for ourselves? Doesn’t seem at all rational to me.