Many times when looking for suicide help online, I have received the same recurring phrase. A phrase I see on almost every suicide help website.
“Suicide is selfish”.
A phrase I do not agree with at all. First off, when most people use that horrible phrase, they have almost no means of explaining how suicide is selfish. Not even a little “maybe your family depends on you” or “how will you business survive without you”. Just the phrase “suicide is selfish” with nothing to back it up, so if you’ve ever said that to someone and they’re not receiving it, maybe that’s why.
To me, it all depends on the person who is committing it.
Let’s take me for example. I am a teenager. And let me tell you there is absolutely not one person on earth that literally can’t survive without me. And when I say survive I mean it’s a matter of physical life or death, not emotional death . By emotional I mean years of perpetual sorrow. There will be no “how will your family survive without your income” statements coming towards me if I admit my suicidal feelings towards someone because that’s stupid. I do t even have a job????.
In no way do I support anyone so how would my physical disappearance affect anyone to the point of where it is physically impossible for them to live? And I mean without me they have nothing to eat drink no place to stay, nada. No basic means of survival.
So the next time you tell me that “I’m being selfish” or “I’m taking away something from someone” when I want to commit suicide, think about exactly what I’m taking away from them, and whether they need it to be a living, breathing being on this earth.
6 comments
What is selfishness? I mean, when someone says suicide is selfish, why do you think they’re saying it? I don’t think that most people operate under the assumption that a person’s worth is only weighed by income, or how many people are dependent on them. Really, if someone’s dead, it’s not like they’re sitting pretty in some mystical cosmic cave, greedily counting all the wealth they got to take with them. Most people, even those using that word (selfish) probably understand this, so my money’s on the idea that they’re using some other connotation of that word.
All of that doesn’t mean I agree with their idea in the least bit – suicide is what it is, and calling someone selfish for wanting an escape from the pain they’re in is just plain dumb and self-defeating. I think when someone plays that card, they’re trying to preemptively escape the possibility of future pain by rationalizing why someone might kill themselves; making it a character flaw rather than a response similar to their own. It’s probably a kind of emotional distancing.
I think when people say that it’s selfish, they are usually trying to guilt trip the person into living which is the most selfish thing in my opinion. If someone told me though, that I would be bringing the same kind of pain to my family that I am experiencing I would tell them that grief is different than what I feel. Those with situational depression like to fling around the phrase “it gets better” but what they don’t know is that for those with chronic mental illness, sometimes it doesn’t. Depression is such a common term now; it’s used for bouts of sadness due to a breakup; it’s even used for disappointment because one’s significant other hasn’t texted them back. People don’t understand what depression is so I wouldn’t take much thought into what the uneducated like to recant over and over.
Absolutely. People who say suicide is ‘selfish’ have obviously never been in such despair that they could not think of another way out.
Agreed zelda. I certainly would never use that term selfish. Why would I, I’ve tried three times myself…and will again.
I agree with the posts above.
In addition, if we’re talking about psychological harm to “family and friends” –
I would like to ask whether these “family and friends” know (or even care) what the person ending his/her life has to endure.
If these “family and friends” are more saddened by the death of the suffering person, than by their suffering (or by permanent lack of anything that’s worth to live for), then these “family and friends” are simply not worth to worry about. Because THEY are the selfish bastards, not the ones ending their own live.
C.O.T.U.,
I absolutely agree. “Suicide is selfish” is such an overly simplified statement toward an extremely subjective and complex issue that it’s almost laughable.
Personally, I feel that suicide is rarely necessary (I like to think that true hopelessness is very, very rare), but to me, at the end of the day … it’s a personal choice, one that should not be judged too harshy by anyone – especially those who have never been in that position.
L4Y
(L4Y@cogeco.ca)