Suicide vs Suffering

If it is a take it or leave it kind of deal then I believe it' s their choice to make, not mine.

However if there is something they can actually do about it themselves instead of waiting for a miracle to fall from the sky (people who suffer due to family or people for instance) then I' d try to make them see it and lend a hand if I can. A shift in perspective can do wonders for emotional suffering.

On a side note, the final scene of The Mist (the movie, it' s not in the book) is the most sickeningly horrific illustration of this that I' ve ever seen.

 

I would agree to whatever you wish. But I'm guessing you are some how unable to tell me your wishes I bet.

So I would let you fight, for a time, till I truly so no hope or know of no hope of recovery. Which would probablyl be a long while, months, a year even.

 

I would not rather kill myself. The way I look at it is that people who choose suicide make the mistake of assuming that killing themselves, thereby ending the suffering, will benefit themselves. It won't, while it's true that the suffering is ended, so has your life, so you are not able to experience the benefits of what you have done to yourself, and there is no going back.

There are other ways to resolve these problems in most cases, and often times it seems like these are just dramatic teens, though it is impossible for me to fully understand every situation that led someone to kill themselves, so I'm sure in some cases it may be understandable, but to me it seems like a stretch.

Maybe I just value my own life too much to understand why someone would want to willingly let go of theirs. (unless like a medical situation where the value of life has been degraded to nothing)

 

I read the first post of this thread, stating the illness and what not on why people would commit suicide, from Wnaethoch. I have no further need to read what other people said, so if I repeat something that other members said, just know I wasn't reading what every posted.

I honestly think that when someone commits suicide it is very stupid, more less selfish. Now, medical treatment if you are sick, is a completely different story, but I am more focused on the people who commit suicide over bullying or other things going on at home.

Why kill yourself over bullying, first off. It's as easy as telling a teacher, or parent or a trusted adult about what is going on, and for the simple fact that kids are so scared to be called a "snitch" and just keep their mouth shut is their own fault. Honestly, if you want your "pain" and "embarrassment" to be over, then you should have opened your mouth when it first started instead of waiting for the high point to where you feel like committing suicide. It's selfish above all things, you are ending your pain, but what about your family. Sitting there knowing that you will never wake up, they will never see you again, and all you had to do was tell someone that you were being bullied or that you were thinking of suicidal thoughts. There are ways to do this without having you be known as a "snitch" or a "suicidal kid"

As for committing suicide over health issues, I have a friend who goes through constant pain in his chest every day, and on some days it is unbearable for him to breath without it hurting. But he is finding help everyday when he can to figure out what is going on, or to find treatment for it. Unless you are just so weak in the mind to give up so easily, all you have to do is find a way to get help, people with HIV are slowly dying. They start to lose everything in their body piece by little piece, but at least they have the will to keep living and not to give up so easily.

 

What if someone feels things are hopeless and will only get worse?

I've always fancied myself an optimist but with all the articles I read about civil liberties being eroded and conspiracy theories and such it makes me sad and makes me feel hopeless that things are incapable of getting better outside of a mass reset button.

It's only recently I've felt this way and with the comments I read on those alternate news site being all gloom and doom It's infected me and sometimes makes me yearn to end my life.

I'm not scared of death. Actually I welcome it's warm embrace. The only reason I haven't done so is because I entertain the hope things will get better.

 

Well, the thread did say constant torture. If for the rest of my life 24/7 it was filled with pain and agony, I would kill myself. I would be terrified of doing it yes, I'm no dummy, but if you had constant torture for the rest of your life no escape. Suicide would be the best option, you then have peace, also about the comments saying that people who commit suicide are idiots because of an illness, they have the right to choose their path of life. It is their life and their decisions. Life is your own path.

 

Become an activist ? I dare hope people wouldn' t let the government crap all over the burden of proof in my country.

No one can read the future nor minds, not even alternate news sites. Unless there' s a scientific consensus about it you should take anything you read with a shitload of salt and cross-reference everything. Worst case scenario Al Gore is right and you' ll have your big reset button.

 

I have an easy time finding hope spots, but if even I have run out of them completely, I'd have no qualms about pushing the eject button. The "but your family would be sooooooooo sad" argument holds no value to me because my life is arguably the only thing that's truly my own. I have no obligation towards anyone, and blackmailing someone into not doing what they want with their own life is sick.
Besides, if even one person cared enough I'd most likely feel loved enough to keep going. Like I said, I don't have much trouble finding hope.

 

The argument that "it's MY life, not yours!" is something I find to be both selfish and arrogant of the world around us. We aren't alone in this world, our actions affect others, deaths cause joy or sadness, realisation or confusion, in the end thought it affects us all to a degree.
Love should not be seen as blackmail. When you're in love, actions aren't anything but symbiosis, inaction, natural for no better word. When we do things for or with others we grow closer, bonded, whether the bond is as friend or foe it builds us each. To ignore that our lives are purely our own is subjective only to your experiences. We want to feel important in other people's lives and as a result we affect theirs.
I would fight for myself. Because for me I want to live with people I love. I want them to live with me. Because we've all touched each other.

 

And why would telling an adult solve anything? I repeatedly told my teachers and other authority figures that I was being bullied. I even had one teacher tell me that my bully 'secretly liked me but was too scared to tell me'. They just laughed it off and told me to ignore them. But I couldn't ignore them. Their laughter rang in my ears along with the crude comments and the names. The only time action was taken was when I was followed home by three boys. [to this day, I'm still paranoid about people walking behind me.]And a lot of kids who are bullied/threatened don't want to tell their teachers because of the reason they're being bullied. A lot of kids commit suicide because they were bullied because they were gay. Would a teacher be able to do anything about that? I was just 'the crazy goth chick who reads a lot', even if I was wearing long sleeve shirts in May to cover my arms to avoid questions.

As someone who has had suicidal thoughts[and I still do to this day but it's not as constant] and has made at least one attempt on their life. It's not just a switch you can turn off in your brain. You are constantly bombarded with these thoughts from sunup until sundown unless you have other things to distract you. This is part of the reason I had a near perfect attendance record in school. Because for those 8 hours were a distraction for me. Something I could concentrate on aside from wanting to cut myself, burn myself, hurt myself in any way because I felt worthless. I felt lower than dirt. It is selfish but when you're that low...you can't do anything about it.

It might as well be torture. I've had to claw my way back up from a literal pit of despair. It's been difficult.

 

It is selfish, arrogant and a while additional plethora of ugly words. That still doesn't make it wrong. Read on.
Love, friendship and kinship are cool and all that but I like to retain some measure of individuality, thank you very much. I can love and be loved but I don't want to be half of a whole, even when I move in with someone or have children.

I'm willing to share my time, my material possessions, my deepest thoughts and emotions with the person I love, but not my life. I'm willing to make some personal sacrifices. I'm not, however, gonna stick around for shits and giggles, or to put someone else's conscience at ease. I find this a reasonable extent of selfishness. And even so, do I really have to give everything in order to be called anything other than selfish? That's bullshit.

Nor should it be seen as placing a higher value on your life than you do on your own. No matter how much someone loves you, they don't know you as well as you know yourself. If I were to call it quits and my family would act more heartbroken over their loss than relieved that my suffering has finally ended, than they aren't being any less selfish than I am. Does your definition of love include wanting someone alive against their will? I should hope not.

You decided to ignore everything other than the quoted part of my post, didn't you?

 

It depends on how old I am. If this started tomorrow, I'd choose to live and suffer, because I haven't really lived yet. Assuming this pain doesn't require me to be hooked up to hospital equipment, I'd try to live through it and do things. I've always wanted to try skydiving...

However, if I was older and had children and grandchildren and had lived my life well, I'd choose to die. I wouldn't want to burden my family with the knowledge that I was in constant pain. At least they would know I wasn't in pain anymore.

 

I find suicide to be the coward's way out of their problems. Everything can be changed. The topic of suffering can mean either physical or emotional. If you are physically suffering and there is no cure for you, and your expectancy has been dwindled because of this, I can accept your decision to take away the physical strain on yourself. Now for emotional suffering, I disagree entirely with suicide. You are under the mind set that there is nothing more you can do; that every option left is futile. Bull ****. Everything can be changed. Take the time to change your view point. Try to work out your problems. They may hold you back for some time, but eventually your psych can be healed. Maybe not completely as psychology has shown, but there is no reason for your life to end.

 

As some one who use to want to commit suicide due to being bullied everyday and family issues, I would still continue to suffer.... Why?

My main reason back then was 'There are people who are worst off then me' second was 'my life will get better' and my life is much better now. And when someone I know shot themselves in the head with a nail gun (They are still alive) I unwillingly lost respect for them (Mainly since his reason was because he hit his wife, but she pushed him to hit her). So people who try to kill themselves should have a very good reason for it (I know this makes me sound like a mean person but this is what I believe).

 

Everything can be changed, I agree with you there. However, when you are at the point of contemplating suicide, you are at an extreme low point. I had a voice telling me day in and day out that I was pathetic as a human being. That everyone would be better off and the world would be a better place without me.

And you know what? I eventually started believing that voice. Because when you tell a human being something enough times and they'll start to believe it. And I didn't want to burden anyone with my problems so I suffered in complete solitude. No one knew.

It took a complete emotional breakdown and a Suicide Watch in the hospital to convince my family that I needed help. That something was wrong.

It is VERY easy to tell someone to change their viewpoint in life. It is not so easy in application however when they have been beaten down into the dirt time and time again. When they are in a pit not of their making. The walls are very high and slick. The situation looks hopeless to them to the point all they want to do is just curl up and end their own suffering.

I'm speaking from experience. Because every person that told me to smile or to "cheer up" was just making my pit that much deeper. Because I felt like I had nothing to smile or be cheery about. I felt I didn't deserve to be happy.

I am still dealing with the emotional scarring made years ago. Even if the physical scarring has healed over, the emotional scarring is still there. I still do not trust people. I'm still very paranoid. However, the frequency of my suicidal thoughts has rapidly declined.

I made myself sad with this post.

 

It annoys me when people underestimate the power that depression can have over you and the extreme suicidal thoughts you can have. You can't just cheer up like Laurence_Fox said, but I believe that these people can be helped and saved from their torture if they just hang on, I'm forever the optimist and will always believe in something better.

So, I would continue to suffer and endure it as long as possible. We all live knowing we'll die one day and if this is the only life we get then we shouldn't waste it, I've had siblings that died at birth, it saddens me that they never even got a chance at life and seeing how terribly it affected my parents breaks my heart every time. I have had a lot of suicidal thoughts in the past and that thought was what kept me going, I couldn't let my parents go through it again, I couldn't hurt my sister like that. I know that if I lost my sister then I would not take it well, I think it would be one of the worst things that could happen to me (losing someone very close) and I fear it daily but I've become used to it. For that reason I would suffer for the sake of my family and friends- will I be in pain? Yes and my friends and family may be as well from seeing me suffer and knowing there is nothing they can do about it, I would be brave for them and try to find the good things in it. If I lost everyone I loved in a freak accident and that was my constant torment then I honestly don't know what I'd do as I'm not in that situation and I don't want to think about it, I suppose though I would try to hang on to the positives but of course I can't imagine how horrific it'll be.

 

If anybody really thinks this, I'm guessing said person hasn't had someone close to them on the verge of suicide due to depression (or physical pain). Living with a mother who suffers from bipolar disorder, paranoia, and depression, I've seen it firsthand: my mom, when she has one of her depression spells, simply cannot acknowledge that things will get better. The bad in her life is emphasized to her and the good is understated. It's not as simple as "I can try to work this out and it'll be better;" that thought is almost impossible for certain people in this state of mind. Yes, some people can push through and force themselves through it, but it's much more than just a matter of one's outlook on life or someone's willpower to not think about suicide. I remember reading before that to those who consider suicide, they consider it because death seems much more appealing than life. It's not really doing it to take the easy way out, it's doing it because it'll make their life (using 'life' in a different sense here) better. Especially for those who acknowledge that there is no form of afterlife and they won't exist to care how it affects other people.

Not to mention that if some trauma is so bad that you would consider suicide, your suicide won't be generally been by you as traumatic to others. The logic that I've most heard of here is "I can't get over this, but they'll be able to get over me." It's a thought hardwired into someone's psyche.

 

I think this video explains depression really well, I remember watching it and just thinking "Yes, yes YES! This is a great way of explaining it." It's an anxiety disorder associated with low moods but it's more than that, it's life sucking and it's horrible.

Of course, I believe people can be helped but it's convincing them to keep trying that is the hard part but I hope to spend my life trying to help people with depression.