Abraham wrote:Yes, life has ups and downs, some very tough, but killing yourself and leaving your Mother/Dad/Siblings/Other relatives and friends devastated, you (the suicidee) won't be getting my sympathy.
Mom/Dad/Loved ones and friends yes, you have my deepest sympathy, but you the weakling who checked out, I hope you rot in heck.
And yes, I quite distinctly remember what it was like to be a teenager. And yes, I remember some tough times, but who doesn't at that age and all the others that follow...?
Smoke yourself, nah...very selfish and not worthy of my sympathy.
Also, a very close relative, my BIL, killed himself a few years ago, because he found life to hard. I don't feel much sympathy for him and his weakling approach to life His Mom and Dad are forever haunted, not to mention his sister and friends. What a jerk!
Abraham, I understand where you're coming from, but there are so many exceptions to this "iron clad" rule of yours, that it makes you look like you haven't thought this all the way through......like you were being pretty narrow minded, which I know is not normal for you.
I am like you in that I tend to think of suicide, particularly failed attempts at it, as usually a self-indulgent pity party gone wrong. That's my default position, but I had my eyes
forced open one day........
I moved here to Texas in 2006 because the company I worked for in California at the time was pulling up its roots and moving to Texas. I came here with my job. The owner of the company, a guy named Jim, was a long time friend of mine. We were both members of the same adult Sunday school class at church, since we first met in early 1994. We went on retreats together, camped together, worshipped together, and had a large circle of friends in common. We remained friends all that I knew him. He hired me in December of 1999 to work for his company. I worked for him until September 2007, when he committed suicide on the 29th of that month.
Jim was 44 when he took his own life. He had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder back in high school. He was an All American swimmer in college, at the 400, 800, and 1500 meter distances. He was in extraordinarily good condition. He was the successful owner of a small business, and was married with two kids. He fought his Bipolar Disorder successfully for three decades, taking his medications, and having regular followups with a psychiatrist.
Most of the time, in fact, almost
all the time, you'd never know he struggled. Only those of us who knew him well could tell when he was having difficulties. The problem was that his medications (I don't remember what they were) would work fine and keep him stable for long periods of time, like years, and then at some point, either the choice of drug, or the dosage level of that drug stopped working for him. That's when he'd start to struggle and experience the bipolar rollercoaster. This happened several times over the years that I knew him. Then his psychiatrist would either adjust his dosage, or change the medication, and the rollercoaster would begin to level out again. In August of '07, Jim started struggling again, and as he spiraled downhill, it became as bad as I've ever seen it. His doctor tried changing his medication. The new medication made him feel even worse. In desperation, he started playing with the dosage without notifying his doctor.
I last spoke with Jim on Thursday, September 27, 2007. My father in law has passed away the night before, and I had taken a day off of work. Jim phoned me. He was in California, visiting his mom, having left here the day before. He sounded the happiest I had heard him in a long time. We chatted about work related stuff, about our mutual friends back in California.....stuff like that..... and I asked him when he would be back in the office here. He told me he'd be home on Tuesday, October 2nd. Great, I said, I'll see you then, say Hi to your mom and our friends for me. On Friday the 28th, I went in to work, where I spent most of the time discussing with his brother who also worked there about what we could do to make Jim's load easier when he got home, because we were both worried about him.
On Saturday, September 29th, I got an 11:00 a.m. phone call from a mutual friend of ours to tell me that Jim had killed himself that morning. He started by trying to asphyxiate himself by running the car in his mom's garage, but it wasn't fast enough. Then he tried an OD of something, and slit his wrists in the bathtub, and that wasn't fast enough either. Finally, Jim hung himself from a patio arbor, right outside the kitchen window......which is were our mutual friend found him and cut him down, beginning CPR, but it was too late.
It was devastating. It wasn't just the emotional loss for his family, or his friends. I had moved 1500 miles from home and dragged my family here, and we were still rebuilding our lives in a new state. So had others. Suddenly, I no longer had a job. Neither did the other employees who moved here. Combine all of that with the normal reactions of shock and anger over the suicide of someone close to you, and it was overwhelming.
But every time I considered any anger toward Jim, I couldn't do it. In the end, this is what I decided: Jim had a disease.....not some vague emotional disease, but a real
medical disease, treatable (but not curable) by an
MD with medication in many cases, but it was a
disease. I had to ask myself, if Jim had died of cancer after having valiantly fought it for decades, would I be angry with him? No, I would not. To be angry with someone who dies of a disease like that, particularly when there are no guarantees of outcome, would have been the height of selfishness on my part. Jim died of his disease. I can no more be angry with him than if he had died of cancer.
Was it senseless? Sure. Could it have been avoided? Possibly, but not certainly. He bravely fought his disease for 3 decades, and then he lost.
I cannot not be as uncharitable about it as your response expressed.
