Posted by December15 on February 9, 2010, at 20:59:43
In reply to Re: Is Suicide Ever A Viable Option? » Sigismund, posted by Cherry Carver on February 8, 2010, at 23:46:19
This one really hit home for me. I'm going to give the Reader's Digest version of a fairly complicated situation but I'll be happy to answer questions if necessary.
About ten years ago someone very dear to me committed suicide. I was with him much of the evening but he didn't want me to be there when it happened. He wasn't depressed although I'm fairly certain he had ADHD and/or OCD. We were friends for years although the distance factor limited visits; this wasn't a sexual relationship, we just understood each other while most people saw as "interesting", "eccentric" and the like. He was one of the only people in my life I've ever known who loved me *without* sex, drama, et al.
Over the years he developed obsessive interests and fetishes, then grew bored and found something new - until he focused on guns. I knew of the obsession but hadn't a clue of the intensity, nor that he was funding all this illegally. He worked at a steel mill and was stealing barrels of alloys to sell. (This really *is* the short version <g>.)
One evening I received an email from him; "FBI came today. No way out. Sorry." I called and made him drive in to see if I could help him somehow but - I honestly couldn't think of anything. I would probably have done the same were the positions reversed. He had so many guns and so much ammo that the FBI had him classified as a threat to national security. He'd stolen well over $200,000 of alloy - they had video. He wouldn't have lasted a month in jail - skinny highstrung white boy with the street sense of a poodle puppy; he'd lost further employment at the only trade he knew, he'd been fingerprinted every time he bought a machine gun or the like so he couldn't run and he'd shamed his family.
I couldn't deny his truth, couldn't offer any alternatives. All I could do was to not let him die alone and promise to take care of his pet chinchilla afterward. He shot himself in his truck and I will never know whether I made the right decision or not. His family believes I killed him and stole his money because they couldn't fathom spending that much on guns. I still think about him for one reason or another every day; I miss him.
I do think suicide is an individual decision and the government has no right in most cases to grant or refuse permission. That being said I believe many people choose "a permanent solution to a temporary problem". No-one talks about it so they don't know that almost everyone thinks about suicide at some point - but what they want to kill is their life, their problems, not themselves.
But.....if anyone out there is thinking along this path, please try *everything* else first, including whatever it is you fear the most. You owe it to yourself...and to everyone you'll leave behind to live with your decision.
December
poster:December15
thread:935487
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100204/msgs/936533.html