No. Suicide is an act of desperation for people who are in so much pain and anguish that their only option to stop their suffering is by ending their life. They literally see no other solution to their problems.
The worst part about suicide is that there are people out there that can never fully understand why suicide is their only option.
It’s never an easy decision; the internal and external guilt that they are inflicted with over their “selfish decision”, the knowledge of who they inevitably will hurt, the shame of feeling too weak to fix it themselves, the loneliness and abandonment they feel because they can never tell anybody how they genuinely feel, and if they try then they get to be made to feel like garbage for it.
The tightness in their chests, the twisted knot in their throats, the ever present choking feeling from their sadness. It’s ever-present, and washes over you like the waves of the ocean. They push and pull you in uncontrollable directions. Sometimes you get knocked over. Sometimes you get stuck underneath the crash of the wave. You lose your sense of direction, and cannot tell up from down. You’re just trying to gasp for air, but are afraid to breathe too deep for you might drown yourself.
You so desperately want to feel better. You want someone to hug you and tell you it’s going to be okay. You try to reach out and explain things, but it never quite comes out right. People get mad at you for it too. They accuse you of being dramatic or “silly”. If you’re a guy, you’re a “pussy” who needs to “man up”.
But you know what feels worse than all of that?
Attempting suicide and failing. Oh you might think it’s a great thing to have failed, because hey, you’re still alive. It doesn’t work like that. Have you ever come to realize that you’re such a horrible person that you can’t even do one “simple” thing like killing yourself right? That you already fail at everything you do, including this? And now you have to live with that too. And that’s one more thing you can never tell anybody about, because God Forbid how they may look at you after.
So you lie. You tell them some story why your wrist is bandaged up. They believe you too, because they don’t want to face the truth. You could tell them the stupidest reason why you have a huge gash on your wrist, like “I got my hand stuck in my engine trying to work on it,” and no questions will be asked.
No, suicide doesn’t one into living doesn’t help either. You don’t blame a person when they break their arm? If anything, it just makes them feel worse, and further alienates them from reaching out for help. Living with this pain slowly eats away at you from the inside out. It’s slow, painful, and dare I say, inhumane.
How would you treat a loved one who stubs their toe or breaks their arm? Maybe their appendix bursts and they need emergency surgery. How selfish of them, right? They should’ve thought about how it’s make their loved ones feel; then they would’ve thought twice about getting sick or hurt.
I would like to think so. Mostly it’s up to the person if they’re ready to let someone be there for them. You can’t make someone be ready, but you can at least be available to them. It’s different for everyone, so it may take some patience.
If anything, they need grace. You will need grace too. I can only imagine how tough it is watching someone you care about suffer in silence and denial. It’s probably exhausting, so make sure you take care of yourself as well. It’s okay to draw and hold boundaries.
The broken arm thing is a bit of a false equivalency, no? No one really decides to break their arm, it just happens. Whereas suicide at the end of the day (no matter how deep the desperation) is a choice.
Here is why I disagree with you (and it’s my fault for how I worded things):
Breaking your arm and suicide are not exactly equal, because one is something that happens to you, and the other is a means to deal with something that happened to you. N other words, you don’t feel the act of suicide itself. You feel like you want to commit suicide.
So with the broken arm analogy, I should have worded it differently. Maybe I should have said that you wouldn’t ridicule or chastise somebody who put their arm in a cast because it was broken. Suicide is a choice made by a person who feels that all other choices have failed them, and they see no other option to stop hurting.
Maybe they’ve tried therapy, medication, talking to a friend or loved one. Maybe they’ve just touched it out in silence for years; maybe they are still touching it out now. They feel like they are in a cluttered room, the lights went out, and everything keeps moving so they keep bumping into stuff finding their way out.
For some people suicide is not a choice, though they wish it were. So they sit in their dark little room, frozen and afraid to try to find their way out because they know the furniture keeps moving around. They sit and they wait, quietly praying that every time they go to sleep that by the grace of <deity>, they won’t wake up. Or maybe that they’ll be driving down the rose — by themselves — and get hit by a drunk driver in a head-on collision. This is called Passive Suicidal Ideation. It’s real, and just as bad as suicide itself.
Here’s a secret: suicidal people do not want to end their life. They want to enjoy life, just like everybody else does. The difference is that they feel burned out, backed into a corner, and desperate to find a way out of this situation. It’s like recoiling and protecting your broken arm from being touched. You don’t want to make the pain worse.
No. Suicide is an act of desperation for people who are in so much pain and anguish that their only option to stop their suffering is by ending their life. They literally see no other solution to their problems.
The worst part about suicide is that there are people out there that can never fully understand why suicide is their only option.
It’s never an easy decision; the internal and external guilt that they are inflicted with over their “selfish decision”, the knowledge of who they inevitably will hurt, the shame of feeling too weak to fix it themselves, the loneliness and abandonment they feel because they can never tell anybody how they genuinely feel, and if they try then they get to be made to feel like garbage for it.
The tightness in their chests, the twisted knot in their throats, the ever present choking feeling from their sadness. It’s ever-present, and washes over you like the waves of the ocean. They push and pull you in uncontrollable directions. Sometimes you get knocked over. Sometimes you get stuck underneath the crash of the wave. You lose your sense of direction, and cannot tell up from down. You’re just trying to gasp for air, but are afraid to breathe too deep for you might drown yourself.
You so desperately want to feel better. You want someone to hug you and tell you it’s going to be okay. You try to reach out and explain things, but it never quite comes out right. People get mad at you for it too. They accuse you of being dramatic or “silly”. If you’re a guy, you’re a “pussy” who needs to “man up”.
But you know what feels worse than all of that?
Attempting suicide and failing. Oh you might think it’s a great thing to have failed, because hey, you’re still alive. It doesn’t work like that. Have you ever come to realize that you’re such a horrible person that you can’t even do one “simple” thing like killing yourself right? That you already fail at everything you do, including this? And now you have to live with that too. And that’s one more thing you can never tell anybody about, because God Forbid how they may look at you after.
So you lie. You tell them some story why your wrist is bandaged up. They believe you too, because they don’t want to face the truth. You could tell them the stupidest reason why you have a huge gash on your wrist, like “I got my hand stuck in my engine trying to work on it,” and no questions will be asked.
No, suicide doesn’t one into living doesn’t help either. You don’t blame a person when they break their arm? If anything, it just makes them feel worse, and further alienates them from reaching out for help. Living with this pain slowly eats away at you from the inside out. It’s slow, painful, and dare I say, inhumane.
How would you treat a loved one who stubs their toe or breaks their arm? Maybe their appendix bursts and they need emergency surgery. How selfish of them, right? They should’ve thought about how it’s make their loved ones feel; then they would’ve thought twice about getting sick or hurt.
Is it possible to help someone going through this?
I would like to think so. Mostly it’s up to the person if they’re ready to let someone be there for them. You can’t make someone be ready, but you can at least be available to them. It’s different for everyone, so it may take some patience.
If anything, they need grace. You will need grace too. I can only imagine how tough it is watching someone you care about suffer in silence and denial. It’s probably exhausting, so make sure you take care of yourself as well. It’s okay to draw and hold boundaries.
The broken arm thing is a bit of a false equivalency, no? No one really decides to break their arm, it just happens. Whereas suicide at the end of the day (no matter how deep the desperation) is a choice.
Here is why I disagree with you (and it’s my fault for how I worded things):
Breaking your arm and suicide are not exactly equal, because one is something that happens to you, and the other is a means to deal with something that happened to you. N other words, you don’t feel the act of suicide itself. You feel like you want to commit suicide.
So with the broken arm analogy, I should have worded it differently. Maybe I should have said that you wouldn’t ridicule or chastise somebody who put their arm in a cast because it was broken. Suicide is a choice made by a person who feels that all other choices have failed them, and they see no other option to stop hurting.
Maybe they’ve tried therapy, medication, talking to a friend or loved one. Maybe they’ve just touched it out in silence for years; maybe they are still touching it out now. They feel like they are in a cluttered room, the lights went out, and everything keeps moving so they keep bumping into stuff finding their way out.
For some people suicide is not a choice, though they wish it were. So they sit in their dark little room, frozen and afraid to try to find their way out because they know the furniture keeps moving around. They sit and they wait, quietly praying that every time they go to sleep that by the grace of <deity>, they won’t wake up. Or maybe that they’ll be driving down the rose — by themselves — and get hit by a drunk driver in a head-on collision. This is called Passive Suicidal Ideation. It’s real, and just as bad as suicide itself.
Here’s a secret: suicidal people do not want to end their life. They want to enjoy life, just like everybody else does. The difference is that they feel burned out, backed into a corner, and desperate to find a way out of this situation. It’s like recoiling and protecting your broken arm from being touched. You don’t want to make the pain worse.