Why I haven’t killed myself (yet).

We know what suicide is and we know that it’s a fact and it’s real. What we don’t know is WHY people kill themselves. As for myself, I know why I haven’t killed myself. Death is messy. I am somewhat of a neat freak and that’s the main reason why so far I have refrained from the act. Who is going to dispose of my stinky cadaver? I guess it could be organized but not without causing someone else a lot of trouble and I don’t want to make any trouble–which brings me to why I want to be dead and why in general people want to kill themselves. The main reason why I want to die is to free myself from the burden of existing. I also believe that other people and the world at large will benefit from my absence even though it might not feel so at first. Can you see what a mess Andreas Lubitz, the Germanwings pilot who crashed his plane in the French Alps, has left behind? An entire mountain side is littered with scattered human limbs oozing disgusting fluids, tons of personal effects, assorted garbage, and plenty of non-biodegradable materials. True, co-pilot Lubitz doesn’t have to live with the mess. My concern with mess is wholly illogical: if I kill myself, I will not be there to experience the mess of disposing of my own body. But my only truly compelling reason to kill myself is to spare myself and the world my existence and its burdens. Provided that it is true that Lubitz did as the evidence seems to suggest, why did he do it? And why take 149 people along? He had depression and a detached retina as far as I can see in the news. And he loved flying and being a pilot. So if he killed himself out of fear of not being allowed to fly, he did so because on some level he hated himself or hated the prospect of living with a version of himself who could no longer work as an airline pilot. That’s what depression does. I am depressed too. I hate myself too. But I would never in my wildest moments kill anyone except myself. And even the thought of killing myself, with its ‘end of pain’ and ‘lifting of burden’ reasoning, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because I can’t know the future. This terrible moment I am living now will pass and even if I can expect that it will be followed by another terrible moment and then another I can still not know for sure. Did Lubitz feel sure? The scientific literature on the matter suggests that love and burden are the main components in the reasons for self-killling acts. Love is important because those who kill themselves apparently need a lot of it. My mind goes often to David Foster Wallace, whose suicide touched me because I had heard him speak in public a few years before his death. Why did he kill himself? He was depressed. He once eloquently described what it feels like to be depressed by saying that depression feels like knowing that every minute part of every minute part of one’s entire being is diseased and there is no cure. From the amazing prose he left us and the interviews and materials I have accessed about him, I have persuaded myself that, just as I feel, he might have also felt that it was impossible for him to be loved by anyone (including himself). I want to end my life and I would have done it already if I could just will myself into nothingness with minimal disruption. I would like my sister to get whatever little money I have and I would like needy people to profit from whatever earthly possessions of mine they might enjoy using. No mess left behind. The nature of suicide is such that most people perceive it as a final act with some sort of meaning. In my experience of my own desire to die, however, I don’t feel that my act of removing myself from existence has any meaning whatsoever except the fact that I end. Period. The meaning of suicide is a thing only for survivors. The dead are dead. I can’t wait to join them. This is what I believe Andreas and David might share. But while I could perhaps do as David did (though I am not suggesting he was right or wrong in doing it), I could never do what Andreas did–kill 150 people just because he can. We judge and I judge that judging is not my job. My job, as I have decided today and try to decide every day, is to stay alive. I am doing my best even if it does not feel like it’s a whole lot.