Nobody Signed Up For This
Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2011 1:36 pm
"Suicide is the cowardly thing to do"
"It's going to get better/ be alright" - "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
"It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem"
"Life is a gift"
"It's against God's will"
Instead of writing an essay, let me list all my points in response to the typical comments above against suicide:
1. How do you know what the person is facing to be able to call them a coward? What do you know of their life, their losses, their mental state? If someone was about to be murdered and/or tortured, what else do you want them to do? Sit back and take it? For what? To prove to the world that they are brave? A world that doesn't care, and never will? Isis women's international cross-cultural exchange tells of a woman gang-raped in Uganda saying " “I was tortured, raped, beaten and my son and husband killed. My home was destroyed, -everything. I have suffered too much. Now I hear of war coming from Congo. Well, I have my poison
capsules ready. If they approach my village, I will swallow them and die. I can’t live through more war”. [14]." If she did eventually end up committing suicide, would you blame her? Or call her 'coward'? Are you in that situation to even have the right to do so?
2. Suffering can make you stronger depending on the degree. Minor to mild suffering can make you stronger. More intense suffering (war, loss, sexual abuse, poverty, etc) can bring you depression, PTSD, mental, health, and emotional disorders, etc. Severe suffering can even cause insanity. And it doesn't always get better, believe it or not. War veterans suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for years, and victims of child sexual abuse get flashbacks and emotional disorders for decades afterwards. Others might remain poor their whole lives. People with Cancer, AIDS...incurable. How about them? Are you going to make them stay in hospital beds, slowly dying, with nobody around them to support them? For what? They're going to die anyway, if they want to end the pain and torment sooner than later, that's their decision.
3. The reply to this would be the same as in my second point. Suffering or sickness isn't always temporary. It seems ignorant to think life always gets better. Sometimes it gets worse. Think of the people in Japan, or in Haiti (who were poor to begin with), who lost everything from their savings to their families. Would you blame them for committing suicide? Even those who have absolutely nothing left and would be doomed to living on the street for the rest of their lives? Is that temporary?
4. A gift? For some, this might be true. However, think of people all over the world. The poor, the sick, the homeless, the lonely... those who have nothing to live for. For them, death is a gift. Death means peace, rest, ease. Life means suffering, pain, loss, and work. If life is a gift, it's a pretty bad one to receive. For me, my definition of gift is something that brings happiness, or something that somebody wanted that I gave to them. I look around me, I look at other people from young to old. I can see some of the happiness and good, but most of it is covered by the shadow of all the blackness and cruelty, and I have to say, that of all the things life is, 'gift' is not one of them. Some people don't want to be alive, and don't receive happiness from it. Thus, life is not a 'gift' at all.
5. God's will was to make the world, and look where that led us. Gods' will was to place a tree in the garden of Eden. God's will is to send people to hell for not believing in him. God's will is find suicide unforgivable, but not murder. I couldn't care less what God's will is, to be honest with you. He obviously couldn't care less about the plight of people down on planet Earth, much less the suffering they went through that led them to suicide. I mean, didn't he make the world like this in the first place for reasons unknown, knowing that it would turn out this way?
Yes, suicide can be selfish at times, like poet Sylvia Plath committing suicide with her two children in the next room. And I do agree that there are times when the problems faced are temporary. But I'm not talking about 'Oh, someone just broke up with me, I'm going to go commit suicide now' suicide. I'm talking about suicide-suicide. Where the person is undergoing this huge amount of suffering, has nothing left, and wants out.
For those people, I have but one thing to say. Nobody ever signed up for this. Nobody asked to be alive. If they have nothing left, and want out, then it is their right. It's their life. They can take it away if they want.
Because it's pointless to live simply for the sake of being alive.
"It's going to get better/ be alright" - "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
"It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem"
"Life is a gift"
"It's against God's will"
Instead of writing an essay, let me list all my points in response to the typical comments above against suicide:
1. How do you know what the person is facing to be able to call them a coward? What do you know of their life, their losses, their mental state? If someone was about to be murdered and/or tortured, what else do you want them to do? Sit back and take it? For what? To prove to the world that they are brave? A world that doesn't care, and never will? Isis women's international cross-cultural exchange tells of a woman gang-raped in Uganda saying " “I was tortured, raped, beaten and my son and husband killed. My home was destroyed, -everything. I have suffered too much. Now I hear of war coming from Congo. Well, I have my poison
capsules ready. If they approach my village, I will swallow them and die. I can’t live through more war”. [14]." If she did eventually end up committing suicide, would you blame her? Or call her 'coward'? Are you in that situation to even have the right to do so?
2. Suffering can make you stronger depending on the degree. Minor to mild suffering can make you stronger. More intense suffering (war, loss, sexual abuse, poverty, etc) can bring you depression, PTSD, mental, health, and emotional disorders, etc. Severe suffering can even cause insanity. And it doesn't always get better, believe it or not. War veterans suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for years, and victims of child sexual abuse get flashbacks and emotional disorders for decades afterwards. Others might remain poor their whole lives. People with Cancer, AIDS...incurable. How about them? Are you going to make them stay in hospital beds, slowly dying, with nobody around them to support them? For what? They're going to die anyway, if they want to end the pain and torment sooner than later, that's their decision.
3. The reply to this would be the same as in my second point. Suffering or sickness isn't always temporary. It seems ignorant to think life always gets better. Sometimes it gets worse. Think of the people in Japan, or in Haiti (who were poor to begin with), who lost everything from their savings to their families. Would you blame them for committing suicide? Even those who have absolutely nothing left and would be doomed to living on the street for the rest of their lives? Is that temporary?
4. A gift? For some, this might be true. However, think of people all over the world. The poor, the sick, the homeless, the lonely... those who have nothing to live for. For them, death is a gift. Death means peace, rest, ease. Life means suffering, pain, loss, and work. If life is a gift, it's a pretty bad one to receive. For me, my definition of gift is something that brings happiness, or something that somebody wanted that I gave to them. I look around me, I look at other people from young to old. I can see some of the happiness and good, but most of it is covered by the shadow of all the blackness and cruelty, and I have to say, that of all the things life is, 'gift' is not one of them. Some people don't want to be alive, and don't receive happiness from it. Thus, life is not a 'gift' at all.
5. God's will was to make the world, and look where that led us. Gods' will was to place a tree in the garden of Eden. God's will is to send people to hell for not believing in him. God's will is find suicide unforgivable, but not murder. I couldn't care less what God's will is, to be honest with you. He obviously couldn't care less about the plight of people down on planet Earth, much less the suffering they went through that led them to suicide. I mean, didn't he make the world like this in the first place for reasons unknown, knowing that it would turn out this way?
Yes, suicide can be selfish at times, like poet Sylvia Plath committing suicide with her two children in the next room. And I do agree that there are times when the problems faced are temporary. But I'm not talking about 'Oh, someone just broke up with me, I'm going to go commit suicide now' suicide. I'm talking about suicide-suicide. Where the person is undergoing this huge amount of suffering, has nothing left, and wants out.
For those people, I have but one thing to say. Nobody ever signed up for this. Nobody asked to be alive. If they have nothing left, and want out, then it is their right. It's their life. They can take it away if they want.
Because it's pointless to live simply for the sake of being alive.