Uncle, more or less shot himself in the face. I have a friend who's both friends committed suicide. Kind of makes you hate people who perform such an act of selfishness, huh?

I thought that, too, until I had some discussions of this topic with suicidal people...

There are now some cases in which I find it very hard to blame the suicide "victim"... Most notably of which is the case of clinical depression... This isn't the usual "I'm sad because my girlfriend left me" kind of depression... This is the sort caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain... Not by a consciously or logically controlled emotion or reasoning, but by screwed up brain signals...

It seems that these people really don't see a way out, and are virtually incapable of thinking rationally about the situation... Their very hormones won't allow it...

Even people who have cyclical bouts of depression (where they are fine most times, but it hits them periodically... not quite manic-depression, but along the same lines) say that even though they know that life is alright during the "ups", their brains simply forget it all when they are down... Either that, or they begin to believe that the "ups" were the false feelings, and that being depressed is the "normal" state...

They also say that they truly do believe that their loved ones will be better off without them...

So in cases such as these, it's very hard to simply call them "selfish" or "cowardly"...

I agree that in the cases where a person is in control of their emotions and reasoning faculties, and they still commit suicide, that that person is acting very foolishly, and selfishly... Some suicides do so for revenge ("if I kill myself, that'll show them!"), and that, too, is pretty silly...

But there really do appear to be some that just can't "help" it... And have no control over the way they feel and think about things...

What I'm saying is could his father have not stuck it out a little longer to make sure his kid was safe and in good hands. He spent months living with different families and it was really hard on him. I don't blame him for the depression he was obviously going through but parents are supposed to stick through the hard times for the sake of their children. My uncle was selfish to leave 3 kids behind with an non-working mother. The guys father was selfish to think his son wouldn't need him.

Imagine being the one who is on the phone with your friend. He says "Hold on a second, I'm going to go grab something from the deep freeze." And then silence. "Oh my god." and you hear the phone drop. You hear crying and screaming. That is what my best friend heard.

It's hard to convey my feeling on this subject. I do understand that these people are in a hell on earth situation. I know it is constant torture during the bad times. And I do feel sorry for them. They have all the sympathy I can give. But if they take the responsibility of a family or a marriage. Arent you supposed to put that before you?

If somebody can't help it, then I guess I would still feel this way. Because I wouldn't know. If I did, I would feel like a jackass talking about them right now. If my uncle couldn't stop what he was doing, he had shown no sign of it. No depression that he let us know about. No financial troubles. His last two children were just graduating. And his last note was on a receipt to a grocery store that said "I love you all." It wasn't a long winded revenge speach.

But does it matter? What's done is done. If people don't get the help they need, they will continue doing this.

SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:

It's hard for me to understand it as well... From where I'm sitting, I'm in control of my mind, and I can't comprehend the type of mindset or conditions in which I would no longer be able to control my thoughts or emotions... But, it does happen, apparently...

Imagine yourself developing an obsession with self-loathing, in which you think you're putting it on yourself by choice but even when you try to distract yourself with other things, it continues to linger in your thoughts. Think of it like a mental self-masochism, and you believe whole-heartedly that you deserve all that, and much worse.

I remember one instance several years ago, when I was walking down the hallways in school and I burst into tears just by looking at other people smiling.
(I'm currently taking medication for this, and I feel it is helping, though differences do come gradually. Though if you miss a couple of days...it can really snap back at you like a rubber band)

~Edit~

Oh, here's an example. My two sisters (more one than the other) are rather spoiled. My mother is a victim of "Munchhouser's by proxy", which means that because of her childhood, she's so fearful of abuse that she's more of a doting grandma than a mom at times. Not being able to stand to see us sad, she practically showers us with stuff (mostly at Christmas time). I feel like I'm "leeching" off of her when she gets stuff for me (typically, if it costs more than a small McDonald's meal I just won't ask for anything altogether) because my sisters often ask for things up the wazoo. So I get presents, I feel disgusted with myself, my mom sees me sad, thinks I need more, rinse and repeat. Shortly before I finally began seeing someone, I often contemplated suicide just so my mom wouldn't have to spend so much money, that she would be rid of a "leech" in the house.

Actually, sometimes the only way out is suicide.

Hitler commited suicide, and I think he chose the right decision.



Suicide IS cowardly though- because it's casting away all your problems, and possibly making someone else's life hell.

I hope this hasn't already been covered (I only scanned the thread, sorry):

If a single mother (with no relatives), couldn't take the stress of having kids (and maybe other reasons to add to it), and commited suicide- leaving that child/ren alone to defend for themselves, that is most obviously cowardice.


-Oh, and suicide spots?
The Suspension bridge, Bristol.

Mud river at the bottom.

One lady jumped off (Victorian times, etc.), but her extravagantly billowing dress caught her, slowed her decent and blew her to the side of the hill.

What an anticlimax for her, eh?

Of course. One thing of three that kept me from seeking to kill myself was 1) religion. Can't exactly avoid going some place bad if I did that, when avoiding bad situations would be a factor why, 2) I'm a wuss, and can't take pain, 3) It's not exactly undoable, and I wouldn't know what I could be missing that happens in the world if I choose to leave it early. x_x


You're right that she'd lose it. Some time ago she admitted to me that I was her "favorite" child, so now I feel guilty over that. >_<;

~Note~
Just to bring this up before someone else might, I didn't type any of that with the intent of seeking attention or anything. I brought it up to try showing an alternate (albeit distorted) viewpoint, namely how I've felt for almost a decade. I've felt this way although I really don't seem to have a reason to (always food on the table, two loving parents, etc). In a way, that's one thing I fed my self-loathing - that I'm no good because I feel this way without having any "right" to.

JordanUl wrote:

What I'm saying is could his father have not stuck it out a little longer to make sure his kid was safe and in good hands. He spent months living with different families and it was really hard on him. I don't blame him for the depression he was obviously going through but parents are supposed to stick through the hard times for the sake of their children. My uncle was selfish to leave 3 kids behind with an non-working mother. The guys father was selfish to think his son wouldn't need him.

I'v personally been through this experience, and I can't say I'd call my father selfish, ever. I lost my father when I was 10 years old, he had been fighting with himself for years due to manic depression. It was obvious that when he was really depressed or suicidal that it was not him actually wanting to be like that, or act like that. It was really bad my early years, he would try to control himself for so long but every once and a while he would just break down. I can remember the first time he did it, I can remember it clearly even though I was only 4 years old. I remember sitting there in the den and seeing my dad yelling at my mom while he held a gun to his own head, and I could remember not even really realizing it was my own father until after the whole experience when I finally realized that I had not been having a nightmare. This continued to happen a few more times, but in his last 2 years of life he continually tried to end his depression through meeting with psychologists, taking retreats, and taking medication.

The thing with medication, though, is that once the medication starts wearing off the user has to take it again before his/her mood drops, since extreme paranorma is a trait a lot of manic depressives have, and taking pills is something that they are especially paranoid about(Well this is kind of ranged based on the person), they require heavily on keeping in a good state of mind in between periods of treatment. Then one day he just didn't take it and snapped, and without any big show he committed suicide in the garage of our house.

It's hard to convey my feeling on this subject. I do understand that these people are in a hell on earth situation. I know it is constant torture during the bad times. And I do feel sorry for them. They have all the sympathy I can give. But if they take the responsibility of a family or a marriage. Arent you supposed to put that before you?

It has little to do with responsibility. When issues like manic depression, which is caused by chemical balance issues within the brain, come up a person really has little choice in what they do and feel. It's like telling somebody who is suffering from hallucinations due to being hit on the head really hard to just stop seeing imaginary things and grow up, but that would be incredibly useless since they can't.

If somebody can't help it, then I guess I would still feel this way. Because I wouldn't know. If I did, I would feel like a jackass talking about them right now. If my uncle couldn't stop what he was doing, he had shown no sign of it. No depression that he let us know about. No financial troubles. His last two children were just graduating. And his last note was on a receipt to a grocery store that said "I love you all." It wasn't a long winded revenge speach.

I don't get why you would still feel like someone is a coward for committing suicide if they had no control over their initial actions. Well besides from what you pointed out, which was not wanting to feel like a jackass for talking about people who have done it, which really is wrong to just not accept something since you don't want to feel bad. On another note, your uncle could have been suffering from depression. Some people don't even show that they are feeling bad, because it will make them feel worse, and so they try to lead a normal life. There are also a ton of ways for a person to just become psychologically depressed due to how they view the world, and some people will just out of the blue go into this down mode and think life is pointless. Such spawns the philosphy that if life is pointless, why live?