Of course, suicide is not something you can just throw yourself at. It must be carefully considered long before you actually get down to the rather serious business of carrying it out. Now when I say ‘carefully considered’, I am not referring to the actual “to be or not to be” decision; naturally everybody knows that is a pretty important one to make (and is something I will cover a little later on). No, that choice has usually been made long before this point, and no doubt will be remade over and over again until either you succeed, give up trying or find yourself someplace where success is unlikely, for example, a room where your head does not hurt when you bang it against the wall and you find yourself scratching your back a lot.

The considerations I am talking about may seem mundane to the content reader, but to the suicidee they become critical, even to the point of obsession. Of course the washing up has to be finished before your departure date, and overdue library books must be returned or things are guaranteed to get messy. Loved ones have to go through enough already and should not be burdened with things like outstanding bills and your dirty laundry. But these details are only the beginning of what can become a pretty huge and forever lengthening to-do list. What if a brand new television series begins, which you have been dying to watch? Do you set a date before it starts, purposely avoid watching the first few episodes so that you will not care anymore, or push your departure date forward to just beyond the final show?

These choices are all part of a larger picture. Although the suicidee has a plethora of choices to make, none of which are easy, what really matters when you get down to it, is getting it done right. It is at this point where the choices can easily overwhelm the undetermined, and this is probably the reason why so many people live on the edge of the cliff for so long, unable to decide on a means and a method, yet unable to pull themselves back into a suicide-free state of mind. It is quite frankly incredible that anyone gets past this stage because motivation at this point is likely to be rock bottom. It is probably only once the apathy has become too mind-numbing to bear that you can urge yourself to start doing something about these thoughts.

First of all is how to go about doing it. Be it drugs, a noose, a bullet, or a giant leap (the list goes on indefinitely), this choice is never easy. Although, if the proper research has been done, you will no doubt settle on a few possibilities that you are both practically able to carry out, and feel comfortable with. I hear the content reader’s inquiring voice ask, “what do you mean by practically able?” Well, dear reader, it is not enough for an individual to have to suffer through the trauma of deciding to kill him or herself. No, society has selfishly chosen to increase the burden by making things twice as hard for the suicidee in the self-righteous belief that suicide is always wrong, and it is acting in the best interests of humanity. But that is something for another time.

So you are left with a variety of choices ranging from difficult to nigh on impossible. The best drugs (that is to say the fastest acting and least painful) are either illegal or require a doctor’s prescription, cars exhaust fumes have become about as lethal as a weak fart, tall buildings have tighter security than Fort Knox and you can pretty much forget about getting hold of a gun in most countries. The outcome of all this public concern is both amusing and tragic. More and more attempts leave people paralyzed from jumping of 4 story buildings, with permanent (but not fatal, of course) organ damage from overdoses of herbal tea, or even worse, damage to the pride of those who have tried to hang themselves on coat pegs. The only remaining option is to play games of noughts and crosses on your forearms as you spend a month of Sundays trying to find a vein that bleeds.

Eventually, the best of a bad bunch has been picked and you might even dare yourself to set a date if you are brave. Aside from the aforementioned prerequisites such as paying the bills, there are other concerns to worry our would-be suicidee. This new list can seem as daunting as the first. Are you going to be discovered too soon? Who is going to discover you (you cannot have your little nephew Jimmy come in to find your bloated, odorous body hanging from the ceiling, now can you?) Are your loved ones going to go crazy searching for someone to blame for your death (which should, of course, be yourself?) Once you think you have made all the necessary preparations and have accounted for as many extraneous variables as possible (you can never cover them all), then comes the self-preparation. Very few content people know this, but you have to feel just right about all these seemingly insignificant details before going anywhere near that ledge, that needle or the dangerous end of a gun.