Every now and then there is a topic where I don't really know how to start. This is just such a topic. It's been exactly one year now. We also had the 5th of August a year ago when I tried to take my life.
This was not the first attempt. Before that, there were a number of attempts and I assume that this will not be the last, because choosing suicide as an option for solving all problems is very tempting.
I'm sure some people are thinking this way: “Oh God, what is this topic? Oh God, what's the attitude?’ If we look sober all the time, as a depressed person, it's really the solution to all the problems. The end of suffering. The end of all problems. The end of everything. It's very simple.
I don't want to go into too much detail now, because I think that would be wrong at this point. It would not be right to report on why and why I did this. I just thought that everything that was important to me and I love will change at some point and that thought was so unbearable that suicide would have been the best and easiest solution to all the problems.
You could say that this is the wrong attitude or that it is cowardly, but let's be honest: Problems are there to be solved. Yes, that's true. But if you are already depressed anyway and have hardly any strength to master and shape the daily rhythm in everyday life by putting something meaningful on your feet, then this is an unresolved problem. Just when everything that was important to you somewhere is gone.
I know that with this step you leave an incredible amount of suffering and many questions unanswered or left behind, but from the point of view of the perpetrator it is totally easy. I once read a quote and found it very good.
‘Every suicide has the willpower that could actually turn dozens of lives to good.’
Andreas Staeck
There's a lot of truth in it. You need a lot of courage and determination to do this, even though you are not able to do anything else at the time. You can do that without having a problem with it and that's amazing. I have to say that I have felt incredible peace every time I try.
Nevertheless, it is an incredibly selfish act, because he does something that hurts others, only to improve and alleviate his own life. But it causes great suffering in others, in whom some love and this cannot be just.
When I think about it that way, I'm a very selfish person, even if I'm not that way in life, with a few exceptions. This is something I absolutely have to work on.
What did I learn from the failed attempts? Not because the technology or tools were unsuitable, no. Rather, because I survived it, even though I felt bad for days afterwards – physically seen. I was in pain and yet I learned something for myself.
Either there's something else going on with me, or I have the amazing talent or ability to be unbreakable, with less of that coming from looking at my current state of health.
I cannot guarantee that there will be no further attempts in the future. I know it's unlikely to be selfish and cruel to those who love me, but it is.
Every animal that suffers is given the redemptive syringe. It's called falling asleep, and just because people think that a human life is more important than an animal life, people are convulsively kept alive. Now mental illness cannot be compared to a serious or even fatal physical illness – or can it?
If you now start from the point of view of suffering, suffering because you have pain from cancer or suffering because you are superfluous to life and no longer see anything positive for yourself is not the same suffering.
Sure, one is deadly – at least sooner or later. The other is also deadly – sooner or later (and not only in one way, but by suicide. Only suicide is not tolerated or accepted in our society).
But let's assume that a person suffered from severe depression for at least half of his life and actually only torments himself with it because he suffers from it. Does he have a life worth living?
I know these are very philosophical and ethical questions, but it is permissible to ask them.
I for my part and from my experience can only say that this kind of suffering is also suffering and it does not matter if it is now the suffering, because I have severe pain or because I am tired of life. Suffering is suffering, there is no difference.
What do you think about it and what are your experiences with it? I'd be interested in that.
Your Sasha
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English
To put it in a nutshell:
I think that a person can only endure a limited number of sufferings until he goes out into the street and screams, or wants to find this one, last way out.
This is certainly not the same number for every person and therefore simply very individual. Where one can ‘still’, the other gives up.
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As a human being, you can't decide for yourself when you die is bad. Nevertheless, it is a difficult topic, the question of attributability always arises. Maybe in a few months/years your own feelings will look different, maybe a therapy could help , but then it's too late.
On the other hand, one should have the right to say ‘I have enough and want to go NOW’.
Suicide can be selfish. But it is just as selfish to keep someone ‘here’ just so that you are not sad yourself.
It's like moving away. If you prefer to stay there (in the city) where the people are who mean something to you and to whom you mean something yourself OR you go away to another city and start anew, away from everything that used to be.
However, this is not supposed to be a ‘per suicide argument’, leaving it rather detached from ethics.