45 Reasons Why Suicide May Not Be Such a Bad Idea After All

1. It's serious.

Anti-reason: When I consider my feelings seriously, others can too.

Counter: If life were serious, all the more reason to escape.  I'm clearly losing, so I should cut my losses.

2. It's a Joke

Anti-reason: When everything feels too serious, I need to look for the ironies and absurdities in my life.

Counter: If life were a joke, why bother living? Especially with such poor punchlines.

3. Mister Rogers

Anti-reason: People can like me just the way I am.

Counter: It doesn't matter if others like me. It matters if I like me.

4. Finality

Anti-reason: There are many experiences I could never have, including hugging my bear.

Counter: There are many experiences I will be glad to never have again.

5. My Therapist

Anti-reason: My death would make my therapist sad. If I can't imagine that, it's time to find a new therapist.

Counter: If I had one, I wouldn't care, S/He is just doing hir job... before you mention, "I'll make my friends sad, I think that my happiness should be more important to me than my friends' happiness. I wouldn't want to keep a friend alive if I knew S/He was always in pain.

6. Chemistry

Anti-reason: I might have a chemical imbalance that the right psychiatric drugs could make less severe.

Counter: Just another reminder that "you" are not really important, just the current batch of neurotransmitters. If it isn't important if I pour kool-aid down the drain, why should it matter if I dispose of my brain?

7. Vitamins

Anti-reason: I may have a vitamin deficiency.

Counter: I take vitamins If a simple vitamin deficiency puts me into such an emotional state, see 6

8. Insomnia

Anti-reason: Sleep deprivation is an ancient form of torture. If I haven't had a restful night, I shouldn't make irrevocable decisions.

Counter: I don't have insomnia, sorry.

9. Genes

Anti-reason: There may be a genetic link to suicide.

Counter: again, see 6. I'd like to think that I am somewhat responsible for me, even if not entirely.

10. Escape

Anti-reason: Alcohol and other drugs can lower my inhibitions and allow my suicidal feelings to defeat me.

Counter: thanks for the suggestion if I find myself lacking courage.

11. Courage

Anti-reason: The world needs more, not less, people of determination and courage who have faced death and said, "not yet."

Counter: Why does the world need this? What the world needs is less annoying plastic. Besides, in my experience, it takes more courage to end it, than to live. I've tried to leave, but found myself weak, so I continue to live. The coward truly does die a thousand deaths, as I die every day, either killing myself in spirit, or killing myself for being too weak.

12. Perfectionism.

Anti-reason: To think the world would be perfect without me is perfectly ridiculous.

Counter: do people actually think that?! I don't care about the state of the world after I die. And one of the reasons I want to leave is it's state of being far from perfection I really don't see how I could believe my absence could affect such a big change.

13. Control

Anti-reason: Maybe I need to learn that I can't control everything.

Counter: I know I can't control everything, I just wish most others would try to stop controlling me.

14. Risk to Others

Anti-reason: There is a risk I might kill a would-be rescuer, innocent bystander, friend, or family member in my attempt.

Counter: If I accidentally kill a friend, or innocent bystander, I would have a little bit of sorrow. If I knew that I would in the process of killing myself kill someone who is rude and arrogant enough as to try to "rescue" me, I think that that knowledge would give me the final courage I needed to leave. Someone goes thru the trouble, and the mental anguish necessary to get to the point that I can kill myself and you are going to just shit all over me and say, "Too bad, I won't let you." I could only dream of being able to kill such a person as one who tries to "save" me.

15. Funerals

Anti-reason: Funerals are expensive.

Counter: Funerals are for the living. If they decide to do more than the bare minimum, that is their own damn fault.

16. I'm not God

Anti-reason: Suicide implies I know everything, but I'm not God.

Counter: I exist, god doesn't

17. Sin

Anti-reason: Committing suicide is a sin and Hell might be worse than this.

Counter: My moral system does not treat suicide as a sin.

18. The Devil

Anti-reason: The devil can't make me do it, but he may be trying.

Counter: If the devil cares that much for you as to go to so much trouble to make your life poor, how little does that mean that god cares for you if he lets the devil do that? Which is another reason why I can't believe in a loving god, no loving god would have NOT killed me by now.

19. Being

Anti-reason: I am a human being not a human doing.

Counter: You took a quote, from a parody of self-help?!

20. Bad Manners

Anti-reason: Committing suicide is like dropping in on God without an invitation.

Counter: If I believed that the catholic god existed, and that committing suicide was like dropping in on him unexpectedly, this would push me over the edge so that I might be able to get some more blood (I'm sure there's plenty) on his domain, and possibly see him and spit in his face.

21. Unseen Forces

Anti-reason: Unseen forces, such as the moon's gravity or the length of sunshine in a day, may be affecting my mood.

Counter: see 6.

22. Choices

Anti-reason: Other choices exist, including making no choice at all.

Counter: Exactly right, I have the choice to not live, rather than doing the choice that most pinks choose, that of living (few choose this), or no choice (which most choose).

23. Ghosts

Anti-reason: I might end as a ghost in limbo, like Dickens' Jacob Marley, and have no recourse from my decision.

Counter: I might not end up as such. these options seem incredibly weak to me. That's like saying, "I'm not going to work today, because a piece of some building might crumble and kill just me."

24. Regret

Anti-reason: Those with near-death experiences after suicide attempts report regret for what they did and a renewed commitment to life.

Counter: Of course they say that... if they didn't, do you think they might get out from the locked room the psychologists are keeping them in if they say they just wanna attempt again? And those that truly do feel this way should have used a method like attempting suicide to try and get help. Such people ruin it for the rest of us, who would like others to respect our choices.

25. Reincarnation.

Anti-reason: If there is reincarnation, I might have to come back and suffer this again.

Counter: If there is reincarnation, you'll come back as something anyway... at least if you kill yourself, you quicken the selection of a new life, you might get lucky. Even better, no conscious recollection of this life!

26. Role Model

Anti-reason: Whether I like it or not, I am a role model, who discourages and encourages others by my behavior.

Counter: encouragement is one thing. However, I do not put the gun up to someone else's head and shoot them. All people make their own choices. Or we are merely a product of chemicals, and, frankly, it doesn't matter to me.

27. My Children

Anti-reason: Day care for my children is more expensive than therapy.

Counter: Don't have any, don't want any

28. Friends

Anti-reason: Suicide disturbs even casual acquaintances of the past and present.

Counter: My presence also affects others... how am I to know which is better for them, my being or my non-being? I can't. So, I remove them from the picture.

29. My Husband

Anti-reason: My husband could never find everything he needs to file the income taxes.

Counter: I stay distant from any potential partners for this purpose.

30. Love

Anti-reason: Suicide denies me the opportunity to find out how much love is in the world and in myself.

Counter: I'm not sure whether to say, "Bah Humbug", or suicide allows me to avoid the possibility of finding that there is no love for me after all. At least this way, there is some ambiguity.

31. Success

Anti-reason: What if I die when I only meant to cry for help?

Counter: Suicide is a poor method for one to ask for help, and as I stated earlier, I think such people ruin it for the rest of us.

32. Failure

Anti-reason: What if I live and severely disable myself when I wanted to die?

Counter: I wish I could say something about this, but this is the only reason that I actually have for not having left (not just the only reason on this list, but the only reason I can think off). Still looking for the sure-fire method. In a better society, it would be okay to recognize that some people want to die, and grant them such a simple wish.

33. Law

Anti-reason: A suicide is subject to criminal investigation and for good reason.

Counter: For good reason? Yeah, you can't pay your taxes if you are dead. There are lots of unjust laws, anti-suicide I feel to be one of them. More to the point, I have no respect for the law once it becomes invasive (with the exception of forbidding me from becoming invasive in other's lives).

34. Shame on Me

Anti-reason: Even a court should not decide if I deserve a death sentence for my behavior.

Counter: Should not, yes. but will anyways, depending on state. Personally, I don't view it as a sentence/punishment. I view it as the best treat I can give myself.

35. Shame on Them

Anti-reason: Someone else's abusive behavior shouldn't mean a death sentence for me.

Counter: at least in my case, it isn't because I was abused.

36. Stories

Anti-reason: Society, by definition, includes the stories of everyone, even the most despicable person: me.

Counter: Personally, I hate society. Society does its best to make sure that if I have stories to tell, that I tell them to very few.

37. Marilyn Monroe

Anti-reason: Marilyn Monroe was glamorous; her suicide was not.

Counter: I care not about celebrities, be it Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Manson, whoever was most recently elected(!) pope, or Kurt Cobain.

38. Heroism

Anti-reason: Suicide denies me the chance to be my own hero, my own rescuer.

Counter: You saw before what I thought about rescuers. I don't want them, I want to die.

39. Magic

Anti-reason: There may not be hope right now, but something magical or miraculous might happen any minute.

Counter: Yes something magical might happen, like pigs flying, or me enjoying life. Hope is the cruelest daemon pandora ever let out of her box.

40. William Styron

Anti-reason: Author William Styron is a hero to those who survive severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

Counter: ?! I don't know him, but I have no heroes, and I'm not depressed.

41. Recovery

Anti-reason: The highest priority is survival, not the overwhelming details of life.

Counter: The highest priority of the instinctual animal is survival. I like to attempt to rise above my instincts.

42. E-motion

Anti-reason: Sometimes what I do to make myself feel better makes me feel worse.

Counter: This was supposed to be a reason *against* suicide?

43. Gift

Anti-reason: Although my life looks worthless now, I am curious to discover its worth.

Counter: Although my life looks worthless now, I would like to be spared the discovery that it is.

44. Suffering

Anti-reason: There is meaning in my suffering and I want to find it.

Counter: There is no meaning in my suffering, only more pain.

45. Truth and Lies

Anti-reason: Suicide is a lie and cover-up and I want to learn the truth.

Counter: ?? How is suicide a lie? It is perhaps the time when a person is most likely to be honest to one's self. No more of this, "Life just *might* get better" BS, just final acceptance, and a statement of, "No more."

-Y

Last update: Thursday, June 28, 2001 20:36