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Friday, August 15, 2014

My final words on Suicide.


TL:DR

"We have constructed pyramids to honor our escaping"

                                                      Jim Morrison

Suicide

Defined as "to kill oneself”, the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair. As I sit here this morning, I could have used 1000 words to replace “despair.” Escape, political or misguided religious expression, even martyrdom to save others. I suppose, surrounded by an overwhelming enemy and taking the option to jump onto a thrown grenade is despair.  Drinking the Kool-Aid as everyone around you dies may be despair. Despair, like Suicide, is a monster that can take many forms.

The last few days Suicide has filled so many of our minds. Everyone has a view, everyone has a thought, and everyone proposed a cure. But with nearly a million of us falling to the release of pain through Suicide each year, maybe we should spend a minute to consider what is it and how does it reveal itself?

Suicide takes many shapes. In our spirit individuality, it takes on many forms.

Most of us, through popular media, envision a slashed bloodied wrist, a handful of pills swallowed, the stepping off of a stool of finality as Suicide. It is Suicide, a scream of pain or at least a manifestation of a type of Suicide.

I am afraid though we experience more subtle Suicide, less immediate instances every day. It is common. We are surrounded by it. Suicide takes forms that we often overlook. Suicide is not exclusively depression, although it is a component. Suicide is frustration. Suicide is a sensation of having no control where we desire control over our existance. (We have little to no control over our lives, but we frequently are told we do). Suicide is loneliness. Suicide is emptiness. Suicide is addiction.

There are many paths to that final action, that final culminating of life expression.. There are many ways to commit Suicide.

Watch someone drink alcohol. Watch them drink to excess, to a stupor, to a temporary blindness. Watch them drink to a black out. That is Suicide. Remember Suicide is defined as the act "to kill oneself."   And it has so many possibilities. They can attempt to drive a car, kill themselves, maim another, or destroy their family.

Drugs, prescription pill abuse, isolation, being a “workaholic”, chronic pain, hopelessness, eating disorders, even failing to care for their health are all forms of Suicide.  Gambling to excess, to the point of losing all, to the point of losing family and friends and possession.  To be left alone and inert without contact. To be removed from life. They are all ways we employ to deaden the pains we have absorbed in our lives. They are all ways that we build walls of separation, instill blindness, or to numb the reality we refuse to accept. Isolate of selves from anything that defines a reality, our existance

Even hate can manifest as Suicide.

I don’t even have to address anything about life. We already know that life is the gift we have been given and what we do with it is our decision.  This is no place for me to even attempt to offer any direction on how you can improve the gift you have been given. I just felt like saying that there are many forms of Suicide.

It is up to you to recognize it in others. It is up to you to recognize it in yourself. Rarely do we have any opportunity to alter the path of another. Ultimately they must face their own challenges. They must face their own demons to which they have given birth. We can only face our own reality and change our own   course.
In commercial and Social Media, I have only seen the tears of loss, mourning the loss of another through Suicide. I have not seen many recognize the precursors, expressions and forms of Suicide that surround us every day.  Someone warned me the other day that hugging someone, maybe trying to replenish the falling spirit by grasping them tightly and pulling them into your self as if to refill the emptiness, may do more harm than good. It may reinforce with them “I am full and you are empty.” I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. But they do leave us to wonder: what could we have done to change their course? Could we have had any impact? Could we have effected any change?

It may be that simple. It may just be a hug. It may be acceptance as simple as talking to a stranger in a café. Some feel it is a chemical imbalance that drives us to a point and that introducing chemicals will provide a viable solution. Or it may have required that an entire reality would have had to be altered. A society, our society, may push the buttons and drive someone to a point where Suicide is the only escape. It may be somewhere in between.

  

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