No.

Wait.

I guess because so many people seem to be abstracting suicide off into the ozone, I ought to share something solid that I’ve experienced.

There was a moment when I was ready to kill myself. I'd sought help, but my efforts only seemed to result in angry calls from the psychologist’s office about how I’d missed my appointments and didn’t I know how much these health professionals’ time was worth.

So I cleaned my room, erased my hard drive and recorded a message on my answering machine about what I was about to do. Then I bought a box of sleeping pills.

This impulse wasn’t selfishness. It wasn’t lack of concern for my family. It was feeling like I was somehow profoundly wrong. Like the world existed for people who could move through it without these daily knocks to the ground and what the hell business did I have foisting my hapless, debilitated self into the thick of things. I wouldn’t say so much that I wanted to die as I wanted my life to not be something that was, as people here have said, painful and humiliating. But where was it, this nice life? Twenty-three years and no luck locating the step-by-step manual on how to dismantle that wall of alienation.

There have been times when I’ve felt like a marionette that I don’t quite know how to control, and I was feeling this acutely in those days. The tendons, strings, and limbs are all in good working order but the execution is all wrong. The affect is all wrong. I’m trying to say “hey how are you”, trying to be friendly and engaging but I’m communicating something unappealing. So I worked on the externals. Like that mermaid in the Hans Christian Andersen tale. Mutherfuck, story of my life. Changed my tastes, edited my words, re-fashioned my “look”, tried to be something other people could read. Unfortunately, I found myself so altered at times that I couldn’t even speak.

Obviously, I didn’t kill myself. I chickened out, for the reasons Ace was talking about: knowing nothing about death. Also, that exact same week I got a call saying that my aunt had died. She had three daughters and lost her battle with leukemia at 39. But man, she’d fought hard. She had so many reasons to live and her funeral was packed people who grieved her loss because she’d reached out to them and been generous with her warmth and concern. I looked around at that funeral, and it dawned on me: this is what it’s all about. I may be depressed, I may be weak, but I’m not dead and there are ways I can reach out to people with what little I have. My outlook completely changed and I started seeing things in people that I never saw before. Kindness, compassion, openness, need.

People, I really think there are things you can do before you decide to kill yourself. Get away from your parents and their warped values and expectations you can never live up to. Get the hell out of that heartless city where everyone you meet seems interested only in your accomplishments, attractiveness and status. Find some people who aren’t just listening for how cleverly you turn a phrase or concoct an argument. And for God sakes, come at me with your pathetic need. You’re amazing and I want you to live.

Thanks for posting that, tocharian.

It made my day.

x

tocharian wrote:No.

Wait.

I guess because so many people seem to be abstracting suicide off into the ozone, I ought to share something solid that I’ve experienced.

There was a moment when I ready to kill myself. I'd sought help, but my efforts only seemed to result in angry calls from the psychologist’s office about how I’d missed my appointments and didn’t I know how much these health professionals’ time was worth.

So I cleaned my room, erased my hard drive and recorded a message on my answering machine about what I was about to do. Then I bought a box of sleeping pills.

This impulse wasn’t selfishness. It wasn’t lack of concern for my family. It was feeling like I was somehow profoundly wrong. Like the world existed for people who could move through it without these daily knocks to the ground and what the hell business did I have foisting my hapless, debilitated self into the thick of things. I wouldn’t say so much that I wanted to die as I wanted my life to not be something that was, as people here have said, painful and humiliating. But where was it, this nice life? Twenty-three years and no luck locating the step-by-step manual on how to dismantle that wall of alienation.

There have been times when I’ve felt like a marionette that I don’t quite know how to control, and I was feeling this acutely in those days. The tendons, strings, and limbs are all in good working order but the execution is all wrong. The affect is all wrong. I’m trying to say “hey how are you”, trying to be friendly and engaging but I’m communicating something unappealing. So I worked on the externals. Like that mermaid in the Hans Christian Andersen tale. Mutherfuck, story of my life. Changed my tastes, edited my words, re-fashioned my “look”, tried to be something other people could read. Unfortunately, I found myself so altered at times that I couldn’t even speak.

Obviously, I didn’t kill myself. I chickened out, for the reasons Ace was talking about: knowing nothing about death. Also, that exact same week I got all call saying that my aunt had died. She had three daughters and lost her battle with leukemia at 39. But man, she’d fought hard. She had so many reasons to live and her funeral was packed people who grieved her loss because she’d reached out to them and been generous with her warmth and concern. I looked around at that funeral, and it dawned on: this is what it’s all about. I may be depressed, I maybe weak, but I’m not dead and there are ways I can reach out to people with what little I have. My outlook completely changed and I started seeing things in people that I never saw before. Kindness, compassion, openness, need.

People, I really think there are things you can do before you decide to kill yourself. Get away from your parents and their warped values and expectations you can never live up to. Get the hell out of that heartless city where everyone you meet seems interested only in your accomplishments, attractiveness and status. Find some people who aren’t just listening for how cleverly you turn a phrase or concoct an argument. And for God sakes, come at me with your pathetic need. You’re amazing and I want you to live.

Thank you so much for that post, tocharian. It reminds me of something that a Tibetan Buddhist monk once told me. My mother-in-law had died--at 46, ending a pretty tragic life--and I started having some semi-paranormal experiences immediately afterward. I'm not one to put much stock in ghosts and spirits and the like, but these experiences were strange and unsettling. So I decided to ask Geshe Tsetan about it.

He told me that death reveals to us how interconnected everything is, and when we're deeply touched by a death, we can have deep insights into life's interconnected nature and our role in it. It sounds like this is what you experienced at your aunt's funeral.

I think that this is why Whitman called for "great poems of death." He knew that death is a great teacher and that our American fear of aging and death is at the root of so many of our maladies. I've never seriously contemplated suicide, but I imagine that one impetus for it might be the feeling--whether inspired by depression, loneliness, self-absorption, or relentless bad luck or trauma--that one is not any longer connected to the world or the other people in it. Here's what D.H. Lawrence had to say about it:

What man most passionately want is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolate salvation of his "soul." Man wants his physical fulfilment first and foremost, since now, once and once only, he is in the flesh and potent. For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. . . . There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

So that my individualism is really an illusion. I am part of the great whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connections, break them, and become a fragment. Then I am wretched.

"the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them"

i can see how some folks get completely crushed by this world. it is painful to those they have relations with, but there's a reason they weren't consulted with instead.

tocharian wrote:No.

Wait.

I guess because so many people seem to be abstracting suicide off into the ozone, I ought to share something solid that I’ve experienced.

There was a moment when I ready to kill myself. I'd sought help, but my efforts only seemed to result in angry calls from the psychologist’s office about how I’d missed my appointments and didn’t I know how much these health professionals’ time was worth.

So I cleaned my room, erased my hard drive and recorded a message on my answering machine about what I was about to do. Then I bought a box of sleeping pills.

This impulse wasn’t selfishness. It wasn’t lack of concern for my family. It was feeling like I was somehow profoundly wrong. Like the world existed for people who could move through it without these daily knocks to the ground and what the hell business did I have foisting my hapless, debilitated self into the thick of things. I wouldn’t say so much that I wanted to die as I wanted my life to not be something that was, as people here have said, painful and humiliating. But where was it, this nice life? Twenty-three years and no luck locating the step-by-step manual on how to dismantle that wall of alienation.

There have been times when I’ve felt like a marionette that I don’t quite know how to control, and I was feeling this acutely in those days. The tendons, strings, and limbs are all in good working order but the execution is all wrong. The affect is all wrong. I’m trying to say “hey how are you”, trying to be friendly and engaging but I’m communicating something unappealing. So I worked on the externals. Like that mermaid in the Hans Christian Andersen tale. Mutherfuck, story of my life. Changed my tastes, edited my words, re-fashioned my “look”, tried to be something other people could read. Unfortunately, I found myself so altered at times that I couldn’t even speak.

Obviously, I didn’t kill myself. I chickened out, for the reasons Ace was talking about: knowing nothing about death. Also, that exact same week I got all call saying that my aunt had died. She had three daughters and lost her battle with leukemia at 39. But man, she’d fought hard. She had so many reasons to live and her funeral was packed people who grieved her loss because she’d reached out to them and been generous with her warmth and concern. I looked around at that funeral, and it dawned on: this is what it’s all about. I may be depressed, I may be weak, but I’m not dead and there are ways I can reach out to people with what little I have. My outlook completely changed and I started seeing things in people that I never saw before. Kindness, compassion, openness, need.

People, I really think there are things you can do before you decide to kill yourself. Get away from your parents and their warped values and expectations you can never live up to. Get the hell out of that heartless city where everyone you meet seems interested only in your accomplishments, attractiveness and status. Find some people who aren’t just listening for how cleverly you turn a phrase or concoct an argument. And for God sakes, come at me with your pathetic need. You’re amazing and I want you to live.

i sense that i, like others in this thread, sounded to you and a few other posters as being making abstractions about suicide, therefore belittling the feelings that lead to that act.

unfortunately, in my case, my thoughts are born out of direct experience, one that i find too painful to share with you. i feel unease at letting go some of my past issues, as i like posting on this forum and i, like no one else, don't want people to judge in a wrong way. i appreciate your courage in telling your story, though.

let's just say i am lucky, that i saved myself and i was helped saving myself.
like you, the thought of death, how just phisically painful must that be, stopped me.
that and the rediscovery of my sense of humor and sense of the absurd, through therapy helped a lot. and letting go of my pride on a few issues:
i trusted some people who treated me nice, then i started trusting more and more people, and started being forgiving (in those times i would have used the word "merciful") with those who i felt "sucked" (again, back then i would have used the expression "were evil").

the bad thing when you are open about this kind of issues is that you set yourself to judgment on your sanity.
but i know myself that, long ago, i was not sane enough to embrace life with optimism. luckily, very luckily, i feel a lot better now.

i have come to know a few of people who felt like me, totally desperate.
and i've also come to know that the chemical balance in the brain is a huge factor in triggering certain thoughts. i guess it's in the genes.

i also feel that some people who "succesfully" go "to the other side" are beyond help. sometimes you just can't help them, some of them are determined not to be helped. but they must be helped. i believe the concept of VALUE of life must be helped.

there, i (partially) showed my cards. i'm sorry if i sounded rude to you or to anyone else, i didn't mean it in the slightest.

we should start a new poll: suicide: act vs band.

Wood Goblin wrote: (1) There hasn't been a single known instance in which somebody committed suicide by jumping off the Bay Bridge. Furthermore, ~90% of jumpers faced the city as they jumped, and the remaining 10% jumped from the other side of the bridge. This suggests that the subset of people who kill themselves by jumping off of bridges in San Francisco idealize/romanticize suicide, even if they're incapable of realizing it. It's not a beautiful or noble or poetic way to end your life; it's sentimental and childish.

Despite the smugness of the style they are couched in, the majority of your statements prove nothing. The rest don't even make sense. "Factual" you might be. But that does not mean you have given us the final word.

dabrasha wrote:There is no pedestrian access to the Bay Bridge. GG Bridge is lousy with walkers/cyclists.

No one wants to look at Oakland, anyway.

Exactly. To expand on this a bit..

1. The Golden Gate Bridge is almost nine thousand feet long. It has six lanes for automobile traffic and two walkways for bicyclists and pedestrians. The American Society of Civil Engineers has called it a "modern Wonder of the World". The editors of Frommer's travel guides say it is " . . . possibly the most beautiful . . . bridge in the world".

2. The Bay Bridge is 19,436 feet long, more than twice as long as the Golden Gate. That's a challenging walk, made even more challenging by the fact that the Bay Bridge possesses no pedestrian walkways. But that's for the best. Who'd really want to walk across it, anyway? It's an ugly bridge. If your plan was to leap from the middle of it, you'd have get a ride there. You could drive yourself, but that would mean stopping your car, getting out, etc. and there's really no place for such behavior. The Bay Bridge has no shoulders. You're better off getting someone else behind the wheel. Since you can't tell this person your plan (people are born meddlers) you can't expect her to stop, and that means you're going to have to leap from the car. Which brings up another romantic method of doing yourself in - the speeding vehicle exit. I knew a guy who did that years ago, before it got trendy like it is now. Anyway, this guy was named Richard, and his younger brother went to high school with me. Richard was an interesting man. Quite mild mannered, almost shy, but with a pretty good sense of humor. And I'll say this; I still haven't met anyone with a larger record collection. Richard came of age in the early seventies; a child of Alice Cooper and Black Oak Arkansas. I remember playing board games with his younger sister and brother while we watched Rock Palace, Midnight Special, and crazed preachers demonstrating backwards masking techniques; evil, gurgling voices in use by the recording industry to subvert the young. When I was enamored of the Jefferson Airplane Richard introduced me to his collection of Airplane bootlegs, and I think I still prefer the look and feel of those bootleg records and their packaging to anything else. They looked old even then, but I guess they were. Where'd he get them? No ebay back then. When I knew him, he was picking up most of his records at Tower and Licorice Pizza. He saved every single receipt. He put them in an empty Frussein Gladje ice cream canister, a weirdly bomb-shaped grey plastic thing which was always perched on the arm of the reclining chair, in the middle of his room, amongst the rows of records. He might sound like an old fogey, but he stayed current. For example, he had every Psychedelic Furs album. I remember talking to him two days after he saw the Clash at the Hollywood Palladium. His head still hurt. Even with ear plugs inserted, he said it was the loudest show he'd ever been to. A few years later he opened the passenger door of a pick-up truck and stepped out onto the moving asphalt of the Pomona Freeway. Maybe it was rush hour and speeds were slow, or maybe he simply got "lucky", but for whatever reason, he didn't die. That's what his brother told me. Richard lived, though I never saw him again.
Was he a coward? It's hard to say. "Coward" can be such a subjective designation. It's hard to find agreed upon criteria, and I never heard anybody call him that. I did hear him called "schizophrenic". Another vague label, I agree, but not quite as vague as some.

3. If you are going to jump off a bridge, would you jump from the side facing the city, or the side facing the boring, limitless expanse of the Pacific ocean? I don't know about you, but I always found the ocean to be a bit lonely, cold and unsettling.

4. From the above information, a statement like ". . . people who kill themselves by jumping off bridges in San Francisco idealize/romanticize suicide . .. " is just as valid as " people who jump off bridges are just seeking attention, they don't really want to die, because if they did they'd knock out their teeth and choke themselves to death with their own fists."

5. Here in Los Angeles we don't have too many bridges. I'd say the most impressive is the St. Vincent Thomas, in Long Beach. There is one in Pasadena, though, known for its appeal to suicides. I can't recall the name, but I will tell you that the water the bridge was originally built to carry you over has long since dried up. Nowadays the bodies are easy to find. Dredging is almost never required.

It's your life. Deal with your shitty life or don't.

Rick Reuben wrote:

that damned fly wrote:also, you antisuiciders, where do you stand on abortion? not to say the two are the same, i just wanna know where you stand and how you draw that line.

None of the pro-choice anti-suiciders are going to answer that question?

Why is it a woman's right to terminate a life that would emerge from her womb if it wasn't terminated, but her right to terminate her own life is fair game for a challenge?

It look like the pro-choice anti-suiciders are giving women more right to kill others than to kill themselves.

Why don't you pro-suiciders put your money where your mouth is and kill yourselves?

But seriously though, I'm not saying people don't have a RIGHT to do it, but that doesn't make it the right thing to do.

If you're so miserable, that's the only way you think you can end it, how is that not crap? If you're going to make friends and loved ones mourn your passing, how is that not crap?