Reflections

Greetings and Salutations,

I've been meaning to write down some thoughts about Chicago and house hunting, but something has been on my mind that I want to put on paper for the sake of getting it hopefully out of my mind.

After reading an article about a man jumping in front of a train in the Bay Area, and then finding a Go Team, Internet! thread about the inconvenience of the suicide relating to that article, it has gotten under my skin a bit. Extending from experiencing a recent suicide way too close for my comfort or for my REM sleep, I have to say I'm equally agitated and amused at the comments in that thread. I've always had mixed emotions about this type of thing, but since experiencing it first-hand, I've ended up hating the living hell out of anyone attempting suicide. It is the number one most selfish thing a human can do. They don't realize how it will affect those that love them, or maybe their pain is just too much to deal with, all the while there are countless depressed and miserable people walking around everyday feeling too much to smile. But they deal with it. And they usually smile anyway.

I deal with it. I deal with it every day. My boyfriend deals with the loss of his brother every single day. His parents deal. They don't decide to end their lives because of one girl, who was, to put it lightly, a mother fucking bitch whore. But she still wasn't worthy of ending a life over (in the least bit). Pain comes and goes. Depression can get better. Those nights where you're at the bottom of a very tall well and the only way out looks so tempting aren't every night. That's why there are friends and counselors and therapists. For nights just like those. Brandon didn't call anyone. He didn't reach out for help. He had tunnel vision and at the end of his tunnel was a gun.

How in the world can someone be so selfish that they would take away the one thing that so many people loved and counted on for twenty-three years? I don't get it.

Did he not think how it would affect his daughter's life before he did it? Of course he did. He turned her picture around, so his beautiful girl wouldn't see what her daddy had done. Did he not think about his brother before he did it? Of course he did. He locked his door and knew his big brother would have to break down the door to find his body on the night of his graduation. Did he not even think about his fucking little yappy weenie dog before he did it? OF COURSE HE DID. He wrote a fucking note to his dog.


Back to the BART suicide. I understand how such a public display of complete stupidity can ruin so many commuters' day and I understand what a hard time it would be to clean up that mess and fix the damages to the transportation system. Yes, it would be easier to end a life in your own home, without bothering or potentially horrifying others; however, at the same time... HAVE SOME FUCKING COMPASSION. This person was clearly retarded as shit, sure, but it's still a human life that's gone. A life, a person, a consciousness that is no more and will never be again. It's deep and sometimes it's hard to comprehend. But bitching about how you're inconvenienced by this person's death will do nothing for you other than make you seem like a cold-hearted person who has never experienced a tragedy like this. Maybe they haven't. And that's fine -- that's lucky. But they would still understand the amount of emotion and mood swings that come with suicide.

Suicide is one of those things that people will never understand unless they experience it themselves (then they would be dead, so that's not really a structurally sound group, I guess) or those that survived an attempted suicide. I don't get it either, but I know when to hold my tongue, even on a silly website or in a coffee shop. You never know who you're going to offend and agitate by stirring up buried resentment, anger, or bereavement.

Freedom of speech, yeah. Being able to say whatever you think and think whatever you want, yeah. I understand all of that completely. But the rest of my night is ruined. I'm probably going to end up taking a chill pill and lying in bed pretending to be asleep for the next five hours.

I agree with what Celisse said, that she doesn't, "respect or sympathize with people who don't have respect for life." That makes complete sense to me. I get so mad and end up hating the good memories out of those who have ended their lives for stupidity's sake. But I still think putting your inconvenience and bad day ahead of a family's complete and utter numbness to what just happened is kind of low. Yeah, that's not word for word, but it sounds like that is what's trying to be conveyed.

So, my question is this: Is someone ending their life and, in present outlook, ending the lives of loved ones equal to waiting in a long line at Starbucks only to realize they stopped making your grande soy latte with extra froth?

Sincerely,