This isn't necessarily a political subject; I understand, but it's a controversial statement about my views on morality, and I'm warning readers right now who don't want to read it. I don't blame you if you don't, but it's one of those things I feel I have to get off my chest before moving on.
Shortly after Justin "JewWario" Carmichael commited suicide, I made one of many of my infamously controversial, arguably cold opinion posts on the Donkey Kong Vine Forums (from which I am incidentally suspended as of typing this); calling him out for what I labelled a "dick move". Somehow, the idea of a man blowing his brains out in the bathroom while his distraught wife pleaded for him to stop from the other side of the door, aroused more rage in me than the mourning typical of everyone else. I was attacked rather fiercely in the comments.
Were I to believe much in karma, I might conclude it's hitting me right now, because three days ago, a friend close to me--whom I'll call "Ann" here--killed herself. The details of how she did it haven't been revealed, but she posted a brief suicide note on her FaceBook account (which I am not linking), which was followed by many grieving posts from others.
Ann, too, was married. She did not have children, but she had multiple pets she loved, and who loved her back, and many people who cared for her. At one point, she was my boss, and a good one, too, before a bad depression attack prompted her to leave the company. She stayed in contact, though, and provided a good reference for me when I applied for another job. Her thought patterns were obviously something apart from the norm, of which I saw more evidence when I went to a party at her house, and she put a lacey, effeminate dress on her pit bull. Still, the worst seemed to be past her, and she was rather chipper in the days leading up to her suicide; celebrating the Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage, amiably texting me about my new job (the one she gave me a reference for) and my cats; her death was a shock.
So having suffered a suicide closer to home, can I say that I finally feel more understanding than I did with JewWario's. While on the one hand, my greater amount of sadness means I can't be so angry this time, on the other, the event seeming so eclectic, as mentioned above, means that no; I still don't get suicide, and I'm content to remain ignorant.
The suicide of any person who is valued by any other person is, objectively, a selfish crime. I'm going to ignore the great unknown about what happens to people when they die, and instead focus on the very-much known quantity of what happens to those around them--they typically get sad; sometimes to traumatic levels. Even if we are to assume that someone can find relief in death from the woes of life; in taking their own life they've just created woes for other people. By those criteria, suicide is as vile as relieving oneself of poverty by stealing all of someone else's money.
That is the sort of statement I get called an ignorant jerk for expressing. They say that my cold, rational mind is simply incapable of understanding the different mindset of suicidal people, and I should stop judging them. My go-to retort is that few people extend the same benefit of the doubt to homicidal people; despite them being comparable on multiple levels--they're acting in their own interests against those of others, they're making others miserable by taking the life of one they love, and they are often in a different state of mind than normal people.
Not that the different emotional reactions to homicide and suicide aren't understandable or somewhat forgivable, because suicidal people bring in previous perceptions of them; homicidal people don't tend to have as many who cared about them; or at least, those who cared about them aren't the same people they victimized. Yet in a way, that almost makes it worse--at least if a homicidal person killed my loved ones, I could hate the killer with no qualms. Yet when it's all the same person, then it's hard to know what to feel; where does the innocent victim end and the psychotic murderer begin?
So once again, it's all very confusing, and to the naysayers who claim I'm completely ignorant of what goes through the heads of the mentally unwell, I say that I am fine living with that ignorance--because living I continue to do. Perhaps I could venture to empathize with whatever sort of chemically-imbalanced mind that can conceive of a moral excuse for suicide, but if I stared into that abyss I'd be worried it would stare back. I don't want to know their rationale. Also, contrary to the naysayers; I have known depression, and at one point I inflicted self-harm, but at no point did I conclude suicide was at all useful, and I got through it. I got cats who depend on me, and a circle of online friends who care about me and collaborate with me, and they justify my existence; as lonely and drab as it gets sometimes. I will miss you Ann, but I will not be that person who left a comment saying she respected your decision; anymore than I respected my half-sister's decision to continue smoking cigarrettes or my brother's decision to drive under the influence. Reveling in my higher sanity is how I deal and soldier on, and if you're thinking of telling me how disgustingly self-righteous my coping method is, I remind you that I haven't taken the life of anyone you love; be it my own or another's.
With that rant done, we move on.
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