suicide

[RidonKs]

i've found that if there's one horribly misconceived common notion out there, it concerns suicide, its causes, its effects, its psychological underpinnings, and the rest. there was a thread on here a few months ago i think that really indicated just how misunderstood the suicidal condition really is.

so i'm reading another roth book and just came across a passage that does a wonderful job describing it and elaborating on it... i guess in a way describing its inexplicability or something, which doesn't sound very helpful but with something as personal as taking your own life, it might be all that could make sense

maybe somebody else will be hit as hard as i was reading this excerpt (takes place in a mental ward or a psychiatric hospital or something btw)

Each of them remained immersed in the magnitude of his or her suicide attempt and the ignominy of having survived it. That people could really do it, that they could control their own death, was a source of fascination to them all - it was their natural subject, like boys talking about sports. Several described feeling something akin to the rush that a psychopath must get when he kills someone else sweeping over them when they attempted to kill themselves.

A young woman said, "You seem to yourself and to everyone around you paralyzed and wholly ineffectual and yet you can decide to commit the most difficult act there is. It's exhilarating. It's invigorating. It's euphoric."

"Yes," said someone else, "there's a grim euphoria to it. Your life is falling apart, it has no center, and suicide is the one thing you can control."

One elderly man, a retired schoolteacher who had tried to hang himself in his garage, gave them a lecture on the ways "outsiders" think about suicide. "The only thing that everyone wants to do with suicide is explain it. Explain it and judge it. It's so appalling for the people that are left behind that there has to be a way of thinking about it. Some people think of it as an act of cowardice. Some people think of it as criminal, as a crime against the survivors. Another school of thought finds it heroic and an act of courage. Then there are the purists. The question for them is: was it justified, was there sufficient cause? The more clinical point of view, which is neither punitive nor idealizing, is the psychologist's, which attempts to describe the state of mind of the suicide, what state of mind he was in when he did it." He went tediously on in this vain every night, as though he were not an anguished patient like the rest of them but a guest lecturer who'd been brought in to elucidate the subject that obsessed them night and day.

One evening Axler spoke up - to perform, he realized, before his largest audience since he'd given up acting. "Suicide is the role you write for yourself," he told them. "You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged - where they will find you and how they will find you." Then he added, "But one performance only."

i really feel like he touches on just about every base i've ever heard touched on regarding suicide, and he does it in such a dismissive way that he manages to subtly underline just how inexplicable, or just unworthy of explanation, the entire ordeal is. people do it for control, people do it out of cowardice, people do it for love, for shame, for pride, people do it just for the single act of doing it as a performance, etc etc

i dunno, no conclusions to draw really, just something to meditate on.

thoughts? lool

[Kebab Stall]

If I had to sum up suicide as best I could, it would be...

It can't be explained or summarized.

[RidonKs]

yeah that's pretty much what the excerpt amounts to as well, just takes a longer more thoughtful time to get there.

but then again, while thats sorta an acceptable conclusion for an optimistic successful happy person to arrive at looking around and seeing folks making the absolute most inconceivable decision imaginable... you still have to see some degree of rhyme and reason. why do people do anything? there's always an explanation, just not a universal one perhaps


btw i looove that 'boys talking about sports' simile, picturing these narcissistic hyper reflective pictures of depression... talking openly and almost cheerfully about simultaneously their worst nightmare and their dream... strange and interesting

[Kebab Stall]

there's always an explanation, just not a universal one perhaps

This part of your post is why I can't understand people (they're all over this forum as proved by previous suicide threads) who say things such as,

he was weak
he wasn't strong enough
what a coward
he was selfish
etc, etc

Everyone has different reasons. Everyone has different thought processes to reach their decision. We shouldn't be able to act like we know what went through their minds.

I'm also sure we have a few posters here who have atleast thought about suicide, I know I have, but never enough to even think about acting upon it. Even though I've had those thoughts, I don't think it's fair to act like I know what someone else wold have been thinking.

[heyhey]

One evening Axler spoke up - to perform, he realized, before his largest audience since he'd given up acting. "Suicide is the role you write for yourself," he told them. "You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged - where they will find you and how they will find you." Then he added, "But one performance only."

that's a deep passage. the performance aspect of suicide is not something I have thought about before but really it often is carefully orchestrated and often done in a selfish way to elicit the most emotion and anguish from the ones that are left behind.

off topic but one of my favorite line about death describes it as the second before a sneeze, and then no sneeze.

[-p.tiddy-]

I hate when people declare it is for cowards, weaklings, etc...I can't even imagine being in such mental torment that I have to call it quits, and I pray I never do.

A friend of the family commited suicide who suffered from extreme bipolar disorder...I don't blame anything but his mental illness...

[RidonKs]

Yep. It's not nearly as complicated as these dudes make it sound.

... that's not what he said. at all. its complicated not that its always impossible to understand but that its nearly impossible to pin down in each case, so much of a person's life remains unsaid and secret that you lose the necessary evidence to formulate the right conclusion

but seriously, major lulz at suicide of all things being simple. gimme a break.



and heyhey, care to elaborate on that 'second before a sneeze' quote? i like the analogy but i dunno if i really get the backbone of the metaphor without the context of wherever you came across it. i take it you don't just mean the "its coming, ITS COMING" feeling..

[RidonKs]

that's not what it sounded like but w/e, i have no problem with peeps expressing their opinions on the web. even if they suck, ish wouldn't be the same without em.

but yeah, i maintain my position. if you can reduce suicide to utter simplicity, you can reduce practically anything to utter simplicity. and in that case, the simplicity isn't a product of the subject being studied, its a product of the student doing the studying.

[RidonKs]

that's cool if you don't want to have a conversation about it. i'd actually be quite happy to hear your thoughts and i'd respond in turn, seriously consider what you think and offer up my thoughts/analysis... clearly you have no interest in hearing them. your opinion was one line and doesn't leave any opening for a response. that's why i said it sucked. nobody is saying they're an expert, and if you really want me to state that i haven't written a masters thesis on the subject, i will.

and its not an article, its an excerpt from a book



sigh. why do people so quickly run to the defensive?

[RidonKs]

Uh, I do want to have a conversation about it, I commented on the thread didn't I? My response was one line because that's all that I had to say about the subject. It's not complicated, it's just a state of mind, people who are truly serious about wanting to kill themselves don't sit around and talk about it, and think about why they want to kill themselves...

quotes like these:

"there's a grim euphoria to it. Your life is falling apart, it has no center, and suicide is the one thing you can control."

"Suicide is the role you write for yourself," he told them. "You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged - where they will find you and how they will find you." Then he added, "But one performance only."


were ridiculous to me.

that's fair enough if that's your interpretation. but keying in on one particular thing you just wrote above; you really don't think people sit around wondering why they want to kill themselves?

here's what i think: the very act of contemplating suicide -- and we obv aren't going to pretend carrying out suicide isn't preceded 99% of the time by contemplation of the act, should i or shouldn't i, etc -- literally implies analytically running through in your mind the why's and why not's of the act itself. is it because an ex dumped you? an employer fired you? an assh*le raped you? and it goes way beyond those exaggeratedly oversimplified examples but that's just to give you hypotheticals of why it wouldn't at all be simple. there would be 500 reasons, backed up by a million experiences and memories of feeling inadequate, feeding into each and every factor and forcing your hand.

let me ask you; do you think depression is complicated? say more or less complicated than suicide? do they go hand in hand? most of the time, all of the time, never?

i think if you substitute 'homocide' for 'suicide', everything you just wrote would be much more accurate. but the act of taking your own life is completely different from the act of taking someone else's.

thoughts?


(thanks for not flying from the discourse, most would, and i acted like a d*ck lol, props)

also, i can honestly say i've never been there or really even close to that state of mind, so obviously i'm lacking in experience to even the bare minimum degree and maybe thats grounding my opinions in something unfounded or off the mark

[stax]

Uh, I do want to have a conversation about it, I commented on the thread didn't I? My response was one line because that's all that I had to say about the subject. It's not complicated, it's just a state of mind, people who are truly serious about wanting to kill themselves don't sit around and talk about it, and think about why they want to kill themselves...

quotes like these:

"there's a grim euphoria to it. Your life is falling apart, it has no center, and suicide is the one thing you can control."

"Suicide is the role you write for yourself," he told them. "You inhabit it and you enact it. All carefully staged - where they will find you and how they will find you." Then he added, "But one performance only."


were ridiculous to me.

Yeah maybe. The quotes sound more like Suicidal ideation.

[RidonKs]

Yeah maybe. The quotes sound more like Suicidal ideation.

especially the second quote about acting and performance, like leaving an iconic memory by really dramatizing your own suicide, even if only in the form of a note

for a lot of people, the decision that you want to go is maybe even easier than the decision of how you want to go

[Kebab Stall]

Homocide is still a complicated issue.

I don't mean, the part whether you killed someone or not, that's very much black or white, you either killed someone or you didn't (although, you do have manslaughter and you have to take into consideration intent and whatnot, but that's a whole nother kettle of fish), but the events leading up to it, what was going through their heads, etc, can make the situation a bit more complicated.

Still though, with suicide, there is no black or white, it's completely grey.

[RidonKs]

but by and large less complicated than suicide, and at times, totally thoughtless, even the 'premeditation' in a lot of cases only really involves the impulsive decision to do it, for revenge or for w/e

i think if everyone who ever murdered took the time to think over their actions for 24 hours, there would be waaaaay fewer murders. can you say the same thing about suicide? methinks not. generally speaking of course, we already touched on huge variation, case by case bases, etc etc

and of course there is plenty of soul-torturing homicide out there, just not at the same ratio

[Kebab Stall]

Oh I agree when it comes to such things as revenge murders. They are thoughtless and driven by passion and can easily (I say that loosely) be prevented with some thought/taking a step back.

If someone has their mind set on killing themselves though, they will do it. There's not much thinking they can do or anything anyone else can say to them that will convince them otherwise. If they're set on doing it, there is no stopping them.