charliesmum | (no subject)

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CNN.com has a brief article on the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson. I just need to say that it was an incredibly selfish thing he did. His 6 year old grandchild was in the house, for crying out loud.

Suicide is a really selfish act, and believe me I know what I'm talking about. Suicide means you don't care about what happens to the other people in your life, because your pain is the most important pain in the whole world.

Don't get me wrong, I have great pity for people who feel their lives are no longer worth living, and people who shoot themselves especially are not using suicide as a 'cry for help'. They mean it. But it is selfish. Everyone in the world has pain, other people get diseases and actually manage to end their last days peacefully rather than tramatising their loved ones with a violent death.

Huh. That's a pretty depressing rant for a Friday. Sorry. Will write something cheery later.

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No, I totally agree. Survivor's guilt is a terrible thing, and I've met those who survived a close relative's suicide and were almost destroyed by it.

It's complicated by the suicide (or would be suicide) firmly believing they are doing all around them a favour by bowing out. There's no excuse though, for making a six year old a party to it in any way.

I've met those who survived a close relative's suicide and were almost destroyed by it. You've met another one, if you count me.

Then you know precisely how wounding it can be. I cannot imagine much worse to have to deal with that.

There was a story in the news recently about a woman who approached her ex-husband while he had the kids with him in the car, shot him, then killed herself. Quite horrifying, really. Those poor kids.

I hope nobody would ever have to live through that! I would just hope that maybe just maybe they would stop and think of the others in there life before pulling the trigger or taking the pills, its just not worth it, and does not solve anything.

I have a very good friend whose father committed suicide.

But he had a terminal illness, was 86 (I believe), and informed the family well in advance of what he was going to do and why. (And it wasn't anything messy like a gun.) So they were supportive of his decision and had time to come to terms with it.

In those kind of circumstances, I think suicide is okay.

But Thompson's death... while he was talking to his wife on the phone?! That's cruel. And it doesn't make sense to me how he can go from chitty chatting about her coming home and about working on his column to shooting himself with seemingly no transition.

My sister (now 20) tried to kill herself two years ago, and I don't really condemn her for it. It's just sad to think that she thought death would be better and a way to solve her problems. Of course, the whole thing seems kind of unreal to me because she didn't succeed and because she's fine now.

Yeah. It's not like I have anything against people who do what your friend's dad did, it was how Hunter did it that bothers me.

I'm glad your sister didn't succeed.

Agreed. I actually support the right to choose suicide (I'm thinking here of terminal illnesses and other serious decisions, not terminal-teenage-mopiness), but part of the "right" has to be the responsibility of acknowledging that suicide will affect other people.
If you make the decision by ignoring the pain you're going to cause others (or by acting completely irresponsibly, as in this case), then you aren't even being honest with yourself, let alone fair to anyone else.

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