My father committed suicide when he was fifty-eight years old. My grandfather, my father’s father, also committed suicide when he was fifty-eight.
My father suffered from lifelong depression. He lived reclusively, avoided relationships of all kinds, and drank and smoked to excess.
He developed widespread cancer in his fifties. When it progressed and made him weak, he shot himself in the head.
I never knew my father. He and my mother divorced when I was an infant.
He withdrew from my life and avoided relationships with me and his other daughter, my sister. He continued to avoid relationships with his own children right up until the day he died.
I tried repeatedly in the last ten years of his life to establish an ongoing relationship with him. He always avoided it.
When I heard that he was sick and in the hospital, I wanted to drive down to San Francisco to visit him. His mother, my grandmother, told me not to because he wouldn’t want that.
I knew she was right, so I didn’t go. A few days later, I got the phone call that he was dead.
I was in the middle of a painful period in my own life and struggling with mental health issues myself at the time.
His death infuriated me. Suicide is the ultimate fuck-you to the survivors. It’s a strong, clear message that the person doesn’t give a shit who they hurt as long as they don’t have to deal with the fallout.
I hear this story from the surviving relatives of suicides all the time. Suicide doesn’t solve anything. It doesn’t make anything better.
Suicide accomplishes only one thing. It dumps your problems onto the people left behind.
As bad as you think your life is right now, you would be passing the buck to your surviving loved ones for them to solve those problems in your place.
This is the lowest, most despicable, most cowardly thing any human being can do.
In many cases, committing suicide makes the problem worse. That is the mess you are leaving for your loved ones to clean up while you escape out the backdoor with your tail between your legs.
Most people who feel suicidal think to themselves, “I don’t want to live anymore.”
Think about it.
What you’re really saying is, “I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
Things can change. Things can improve. Whatever your problems are, the resources exist somewhere in the world to solve these problems.
There is no reason on God’s green Earth for you to believe that things will stay like this forever.
Everything changes. That’s the one iron rule of Life 101. Nothing stays the same.
You’re playing the victim card if you believe you’re trapped in this situation forever with no way out.
You’re making an excuse so you don’t have to do the work, roll up your sleeves, and put in the effort to change your circumstances.
Most likely, you’re a chronic complainer who focuses exclusively on the problem instead of the solution.
You get your kicks out of bitching and moaning about how bad things are.
In reality, you’re just a weak, pathetic coward who would rather complain than actually do the hard work to fix whatever it is you’re complaining about.
If I sound like I’m ranting, you’re right. I’m the surviving daughter of a father who committed suicide.
I’ve also spent many years suicidally depressed, so trust me, I know what I’m talking about.
Suicide is the coward’s way out.
My father could have spent the last years, weeks, and days of his life giving me something I never had from anyone else.
He could have helped me. He could have told me that he loved me. He could have made me feel like I had a father instead of leaving me completely on my own.
He did none of those things.
People who commit suicide are the most selfish people on the planet.
They are so self-obsessed and self-centered that it never once crosses their minds that they might gain some fulfillment from dedicating themselves to others.
There will always be someone somewhere in the world who needs your help. You’re suicidal right now because you aren’t looking for these people. You aren’t thinking about what you could do for them and how you could help them.
Your experience—the pain you’re going through right now—is the very thing that would help them. It is the one thing someone needs from you the most.
The movie Me Before You offers us a perfect example of this.
Will, the male lead of the movie, is paralyzed from the neck down, severely depressed, and decides to end his life. He makes a pact with his mother that he will stay alive for six months before he commits suicide.
In that time, he develops a romance with Louisa. Their relationship brings new joy to his life, but in the end, he still chooses to end his life even knowing how much it will hurt her.
This is such a classic example of suicidal mentality. Will is so consumed with his own imagined problems that he would deliberately hurt the woman he loves.
He never considers that his pain might be worth the cost so he can give something to her, be there for her, and support her in developing her own life.
He never considers that he might be the thing she most needs in the world.
I can hear the howls of protest now. Some of you are probably already telling yourselves that I’m being insensitive to people who suffer from suicidal depression.
You’re probably telling yourselves that this is the disease of depression—that it stops us from thinking outside ourselves and seeing the larger picture that might give us the hope to go on.
Remember what I said earlier. I have been suicidally depressed. I spent years battling the urge to drive into town, buy a shotgun, and blow my brains out.
This attitude is not a disease. The only disease is the disease of cowardice, selfishness, and an addiction to blaming everyone else for your problems.
It’s a disease of weakness and refusal to take accountability for your life and solving your own problems.
It’s a disease of kicking everyone else in the face to soothe your own pathetic ego. It’s a disease of always putting yourself first at the expense of everyone else, including your own children.
If you have children, consider the message you would be sending to them if you committed suicide.
Believe me, I speak from experience on this.
You’re sending your children a message that they are worthless, that their own parents don’t give a shit about them, and that suicide is the example they should follow.
I have two generations of people setting this example for me. When I spoke to my grandmother about my father’s suicide, she said, “It’s genetic.”
My first thought was, “Well, where does that leave me?”
Suicidal depression is not genetic. It isn’t a medical condition. It’s a choice—a selfish, cowardly choice that only weak, selfish, cowardly people make.
Take this is a message from one of the loved ones you plan to leave behind—the loved ones you will leave holding the bag of all your problems along with all the additional problems they will have to face as a result of your despicable choice.
Be the bigger person. Change your life if it’s so bad. No one can do it for you. Grow up and stop being such a whining, complaining quitter.
That’s what you are if you commit suicide. You’re a quitter.
Trust me when I tell you that many, many people have faced what you are facing now or circumstances far, far worse.
These people rose up. They seized their problems by the horns. These people dug in and wrestled that problem into submission.
These people are true heroes. They overcome. They become something a thousand times greater than they were.
They don’t stop until they claim the happiness that is rightfully theirs. They build lives of promise, success, and fulfilment that bring joy and prosperity to everyone around them.
That could be you.
You could be the person everyone admires. You could be the person inspiring a generation with your story, your courage, and your service.
You wouldn’t feel any desire to commit suicide if you did all that. Your life would be too rewarding, too meaningful, and too overflowing with love and happiness.
There is only one thing standing between you and that life.
You are the only person standing between you and that life. You can make that choice right now. You can start living that life right now.
You can make the decision to get off this path and start following another path—a path that will give you all the happiness and interconnectedness you could ask for.
You can start that right now. Nothing is stopping you. You can do it without even taking your eyes off this page.
You just have to make a choice.
You have no one to blame but yourself if you don’t.
The people left behind will hate you for abandoning them and leaving them to solve your problems for you.
Those people you claim to love so much will have every right to hate you. You will be proving them right, and once you’re gone, you won’t ever be able to take it back.
Think about that before you consider committing suicide. Your life could actually mean something if you only wanted it to.
You can decide that it does or you can decide that it doesn’t. No one does that for you.
It’s your own fault if it doesn’t. The choice is always yours, so let’s not fool ourselves about this being a disease or any other ridiculous excuse.
Do something about it.
You don’t deserve of pity or support if you don’t do something about it. You deserve contempt.
Your surviving loved ones are the people who deserve pity and support. That starts with you. Take care of them. That’s your job, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and go do it.
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