Lately I've been musing a lot about suicide.
It's not, as you might think, my own, though I've survived multiple suicidal crises - and one attempt - in my life. In these dark economic times, and considering my own situation, I've thought quite a bit about what, exactly, drive people to suicide. My views are hardly universal truth, and certainly wouldn't apply to everyone. But after 20 years of therapy and my own personal experience staring into the Abyss, I wanted to share my thoughts on suicide to a wider audience.
Follow me below the fold, if you are interested.
"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you."
-- Frederick Nietzsche, "Beyond Good and Evil", Aphorism 146 (1886).
What Nietzsche failed to mention is that if you stare long enough into that abyss, or suffer a deep enough hurt, the Abyss doesn't just gaze back into you. It begins to beckon to you.
What led me to my own near suicide? Back in 2003, I had just narrowly escaped being kicked out of graduate school a second (and final) time, due to the machinations of a malign advisor, before joining my department chairman's lab. I had gone through one of the single most stressful periods in my life, and I had a little bit of PTSD-related depression as a result, according to my therapist. Then several women friends, in very short succession, all came to me and said the same thing: you make a wonderful friend, but they never had the least bit of romantic interest in me. Between depression and stress, and the prospect of facing life completely alone, with friends all around me already married and having kids, something broke within me. And I ended up spending the night with a vial of a very potent neurotoxin, sodium azide. If I'd taken that, there would have been no rescue. But fortunately, my close friends got wind of what was happening, and online, they spent the entire night trying to convince me to stay. Obviously, they succeeded, or I wouldn't still be here.
It led to positive change - I took romantic matters into my own hands, and after a series of failed relationships, I finally met a wonderful (if poor) woman who shared my life's passions. We've known each other 6 years now, and are well on the way to being married.
But I had stared deep into the abyss, and its mark has never left me. I still think, often, about suicide, though I've never gotten near so close to it again as that fateful June day in 2003. And finally, I figured out why.
It's fear.
Fear that I will end up in a situation that there is no way out of; fear that I will be trapped, with the alternative being a slow, painful death, with my friends unable to stop it. This has come up again and again in my life - when I got ulcerative colitis, for example, and could not afford the treatment that would save my life. A friend saved me there, too, ponying up five figures to pay the co-pays and medical bills the surgery and illness generated. And now, in the midst of the worst job market in my field since the Depression, money running out and my job due to end in a few months, it's starting to come back again to me.
It's how I respond to being cornered, in a situation I feel I can't change or stop. It isn't cowardice. It's hopelessness and fear and pain. Some people respond to that by lashing outward, looking for scapegoats to blame for your downfall. (Tea Party, anyone?) And some of us look inward...and make that scapegoat ourselves. In a way, it's a final form of taking control, if nothing else works. And I do think that in a Depression, it's the reasoning many, many people follow. They don't want to see the endgame. They resign before the last move is made.
What is the answer? I am truly not sure, as many people get caught in the whirlpool that is a bad economy, cast down through circumstances no fault of their own. The abyss always beckons. Perhaps, the best advice to give, besides seeking help if you get truly close to the edge (as I did) is cherish whatever you can cherish, especially your friends, family, and loved ones. They cannot solve all problems for all people, but they are the reasons to stay when all you want to do is go.
That's all for now. I hope that this does someone in this vast community some good. If it does, perhaps it was not all for naught.