Suicide

I am not suicidal. My life sucks and I hate the way I am, but I don't feel the need to forcibly end it. Life is pretty short anyway, and I'm 23 already, so I don't see what the hurry is. Forty or fifty more years will go by soon enough. If people lived for thousands of years, that would seem unbearably long, but I can certainly do 80 years. Besides, I still have the hope, realistic or not, that someday I'll manage to find some happiness in my life.

Anti-suicide efforts often tend to irritate me, in a way. Society doesn't want people to kill themselves, but I suspect this is mostly for practical reasons. After spending two decades raising, clothing, feeding, and educating you, society expects to get many more decades of work out of you in return. If you die early, everyone else has been cheated of the payback they were expecting for all that effort they put into raising you. You can be as miserable as you want, but for God's sake, don't kill yourself.

Now, all of that said, as for what people who are suicidal should do, I can't give you some well thought out, logical answer as to the right course of action. I can only relate my own feelings on it.

I've known two people in my life who did commit suicide. Both were women who I'd only had a small amount of contact with, I didn't really know either of them. Both times, I heard about it afterwards, and I had the same reaction. I was very sad about it, I wished I had gotten to know them, I felt that if I had, I could have helped them somehow.

So I don't want anyone to kill themselves, and I guess I feel that no matter how much pain someone is in, their pain can be made bearable by talking about it with someone who cares about them.

Alright now, those last few paragraphs were far too positive and lacking in cynicism for me.