I remember as a kid finally learning that the M*A*S*H theme song had lyrics and they were… dark as hell, about suicide. I was so fascinated by this weird morbid song from a hugely popular TV show that I recorded it on a tape recorder and played it back for my parents, and they were, uh, not amused by my interest in this song.
Of course, they dropped that song pretty quickly from the TV show and it became a generic instrumental. Did you know the song was written by 14 year old Robert Altman’s son, and was stipulated to be “the stupidest song ever written” during composition? It’s true!
Suicide is a bad idea. Let’s get that out of the way to start with, so we’re 100% crystal clear. If you have any relationships with other human beings, the cost of suicide on those relationships is, to put it mildly… dire. I actually think this Cracked article on it is one of the best I’ve read. It’s downright inspiring.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15658_the-ten-minute-suicide-guide.html
But, you know, life is a process. One thinks about things.
I met a guy once, one of my wife’s friends, who later killed himself. I was wearing a Sam & Max t-shirt when I met him, and he remarked that he loved the game. He was babysitting this small dog that was perhaps the best behaved dog I’ve ever met; I remember the dog’s name. Bailey. He seemed like a perfectly nice guy. I only met him that one time, and now he no longer exists. He’s just, y’know, gone forever. This bothers me on an abstract level, but I barely knew this person.
I appreciated The Leftovers extended take on this, the residual trauma of sudden disappearance on your relationships, where you don’t even know what happened to the person, or why. They’re just gone. That seems, to me, to be remarkably similar to suicide. There’s no form of closure, no saying goodbye – one day you suddenly find out that person is gone forever. And that’s it. That’s all you get. It kinda … breaks people.
(You should absolutely watch The Leftovers. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and it had many powerful moments in 3 seasons.)
I don’t think there’s any way to responsibly end your own life, except perhaps when you’re 80 years old, on life support, and maybe already a vegetable. Everything I’ve ever read, watched, or experienced indicates the effects of suicide on your relationships are devastating. I can see why suicide is considered a mortal sin in many religions, because what you’re really saying is, my suffering is more important than any of you, and now you have to emotionally (and physically) clean up after me when I’m gone. And now the people left behind are debilitated, demoralized, maybe even completely broken people as a result. At its deepest level, suicide is selfish, isn’t it? No wonder religions would want to outlaw this, from a moral perspective.
I guess the only exception is people who have no other relationships with other humans. But how many people like this exist? Is it even possible not to have relationships with other humans? Maybe if they are only superficial relationships? But everyone has a mother, right? You gotta get born. And that alone is a profound relationship, a deep connection. Maybe the deepest connection that there is, to create a person and raise them from a baby to kid to adult. Maybe if your parents are already dead, and you have no siblings? No outside love relationships, ever? I really struggle to come up with even a contrived scenario here that could possibly make sense.
Thus, I have questions.
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I am curious, what are your experiences with suicide? Has it happened to anyone you know? Did you ever feel that it “made sense”, in any circumstances? Like living with real, long term medical complications or birth conditions or something like that, where the person’s suffering was too great and the calculus of life didn’t add up, even factoring for relationships?
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Does engaging in long term risky or self-harmful behavior that results in your early death count as suicide? If not, why not?
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Does disappearing, leaving, walking away and leading a different completely disconnected life from your old one count as suicide? If not, why not? If you are alive, but nobody knows you are, does that count?