I still think you guys are wrong on suicide-as-cowardly.
Now, if you want to say "letting yourself decline mentally that far without getting help first is cowardly," that *might* be a different thing.
But the reality is that when someone gets mentally to a point where they are seriously contemplating suicide, they are already seriously fucked up judgment-wise. And expecting them to turn back out of "courage" is just unreasonable.
Lucky, yes. But at that point in the process, being courageous/cowardly simply is not the choice offered anymore.
Sure, they aren't paying attention to anyone else. I'll agree with that. But they aren't paying quality attention to anything
I have stepped back from that brink more than once. And the most recent times I did it because, in the end, I could put "faith" (not reason, faith) in my God. But before I had that faith as deep as I have it now, I have no idea what pulled me back.
It sure as heck wasn't worrying about what other people might have to go through, though. I can't say what people are thinking/not thinking about when they decide to step off, since I've always stepped back. But I will say that at those horribly bad times other people weren't even in my universe when I did.
I wasn't sane enough to reason.
All I was is lucky.
I remember the story of H. Beam Piper. For science fiction fans, Piper was one of the great science fiction writers of the "late golden age" (50s/early sixties). He was a lot like Heinlein, but not as prolific and not as long lived. He wasn't long lived because, at the age of 60 he killed himself. He was far from a coward, but he was deep in the demons of despair.
Here's the way Jerry Pournelle told it in the introduction of Little Fuzzy,
Piper shut off all the utilities to his apartment, put painter's drop-cloths over the walls and floor, and took his own life with a handgun from his collection. In his suicide note, he gave an explanation that "I don't like to leave messes when I go away, but if I could have cleaned up any of this mess, I wouldn't be going away."
On the one hand, the drop cloths suggest a rational decision. But the inherent contradiction in the whole thing suggests nothing to me that this brilliant, brilliant man had simply gone to a place where his mind wasn't working anymore.
I just can't see it as cowardly.
If suicide is cowardly, how is it that demonstrable war heroes often commit suicide?
If suicide is cowardly, how is it that so often the people around afterward say "he/she was a dedicated family man/woman and a person dedicated to making people's lives better"? If suicide is cowardly, how is it that those eulogists and survivors, in remembering the suicide, had him or her exactly accurate right up until the moment before he/she stepped off?
I just can't buy it.
And yes, I do feel sorry for all suicides. Even Judas. Because to me, the suicide has made the ultimate choice against self-interest. He or she has damned his or her soul to eternity. I can think of no bigger loss.
I believe that God was sad when Judas gave into despair, because he knew that by giving in, Judas had damned himself. And if God can be sad for Judas, I should be able to be sad for H. Beam Piper or anyone else who steps off instead of stepping back.
"Wade" wrote: