Thoughts on Suicide

It’s a hell of a thing to have THIS as a topic for my return to writing…

So last Tuesday I was listening to the radio while getting material gathered for an experiment I was attempting involving paper mache.  It was playing as background noise when a story caught my ear.  It involved a suicide at the local university that happened a couple months ago.  The parents were releasing their son’s five page suicide letter explaining why he did it.  And that reason was that he was tired of living…

…with the horror of an overactive blushing reaction.

He evidently blushed nonstop, which ultimately became unbearable for him to live with.  He had put in his letter for his parents to spread the word about this, to shed light on this horrible affliction.

I was less than sympathetic.

I have two thoughts on suicide, one of which I will get to later.  But the one relevant to this part was that I am floored by the reasons some people decide to end their life.  This kid ended it over BLUSHING?!  He couldn’t handle life with this going on?  I know people with FAR worse afflictions who live productive lives.  For example, I live with a condition that makes my skin look like I lost an attack from several cheese graters.  Yet I carry on.  I know people without eyesight who have a love for life that is rather infectious.  There are people who have no use of their limbs that still live more fulfilling lives than most of us.  Hell, the world speed record for the 100 meters is held by a man with no lower legs.  And yet this person cannot handle constant blushing. 

In these circumstances I bring up Kurt Cobain as the perfect example of truly pathetic excuses for ending it.  He had parent issues and stomach issues.  Did he really think he was the only one?  He had more opportunities to try and fix what he thought was wrong with himself, but instead he chose the easy way out.  To this day I have no respect for the man and what he did.  I had originally planned to have this just a rant about this, but then once again synchronicity- a topic I have talked about before- came into effect.

Two days after the newscast, while these thoughts were coalescing in my head, I get a call at night while at work from my Aunt Sue.  My cousin Matt had recently broken up with his significant other.  More accurately, she left him for another man.  He had been inconsolable, despite the best efforts of Sue and the other aunts I have (whom I call The Sisters).  He seemed to go deeper and deeper into rage and despair over this, and The Sister’s efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears.

The call I got from Aunt Sue was that he had been found dead.  He had hung himself.  

 

He left behind three children.

As you can guess everyone was in turmoil.  Sue sounded emotionally empty as she told me, and it sounded like it would be a long time before she would be back to normal. The Sisters have been emotional wrecks, particularly his mother, my Aunt Sheila.  And I offered any consolation I could offer if needed.  Now for the last several days I have been wondering; why did these two events happen in the order they did in my life?  Was the first event to prepare me for what was to come?  Was the second event to make me reevaluate my thoughts on suicide?  I don’t know.  Maybe I will figure it out.  All I know right now is how I feel about my cousin, the suicide, and my family.  I have sadness in my heart- but it is not for him.  No, I am feeling a completely different emotion towards him.

I am angry.  VERY angry.  Pretty much pissed off.  This brings me to my second view on suicide.

To me suicide has always been the ultimate selfish act.  While most people who feel pain and suffering want to try and stop it and live normal lives, there are those who decide that they don’t WANT to work through it and instead feel that it is their duty to make EVERYONE feel the sorrow and pain they do.  And this is the result.

My cousin, despite the fact he could have called, seen, written, done ANYTHING to get support from family or friends or coworkers decided instead to say ‘Fuck all you all- I don’t care about any of you- it’s ALL about ME!’  It’s bad enough he did this to his mother, his brother, his aunts, his grandparents, his cousins.  At least we are all (relatively) adult.  But the fact that he did this to his three children is what really gets me angry.  He has pretty much guaranteed their childhoods are destroyed.  This is unforgivable.  And while the family will mourn his death, I will mourn the living death he has put upon us all.  Him?  Nothing but my anger will suffice.  And right now this rage is so raw that even any scorn from my family over my views on this will not bother me.  Yet another reason I am the grey sheep of the family…

So I am sorry to all my family.  I am sorry I cannot pretend he cared about us, that he just lost his way.  All I can see right now is a mother completely inconsolable.  All I can see is the disarray and chaos of a family coping with this. 

All I can see is three young kids who wonder why their Daddy left them.

I wish I was a better man and forgive this, but I cannot- not right now…

A quick postscript:  When I am talking about suicide, I am not lumping self-sacrifice where one dies to save others or euthanasia in with this.  These are not the same, and are possibly topics for a later time…