NochNoch.com

Had a conversation with Cara this afternoon. She champions a project, “Talking about suicide – because it’s not a taboo.” I was sharing my experience with her, and also sparked off some inspiration for this post. Indeed, just yesterday with my shrink, we discussed my friend’s suicide earlier this year and how I felt.
I struggle with myself every other day, if not every day, on why I should stay alive. It frustrates my fiance and my shrink I guess, that after my suicidal attempts, and as I am out of that bottomless pit of dark days although “still in remission”, I continue to have these “suicide ideations” (I’ve picked up some medical jargons here and there). It’s not “normal”, so they say.

But what is normal? Just because everyone thinks that I’m thinking wrong doesn’t necessarily make me wrong? Dude, I detest it when anyone says to me “don’t think like that”. So what, think like you? Then that makes me you, and not me. More often than not, I wake up these days, and consciously have to put the thoughts “I really want to die” out of my head. So I busy myself with calligraphy class, cooking and trying out recipes, walking Bamboo, and rearranging and tidying things in the house. However, when I’m busy I feel like I have no time for myself, so I stop and try to read a book. Yet, once I quiet down, I start thinking about ending my life again. So, I start to busy myself once more – and the cycle keeps repeating itself.

Very tiring.

So many times I’ve sat on my window sill ready to jump down, and then I start thinking: I will miss my dog, who will make smoothies for Timmie, I can’t play the new Angry Birds updates anymore, my Spanish is not fluent yet…. And my head floods with all these things I want to do.

Then I think, “well, all that won’t matter anyways after I die.” The thoughts go round and round until eventually I get too tired thinking, and fall asleep on the bed adjacent. And anyways, the 6^th floor is not high enough to get me killed I don’t think, last thing I want is to break my spine and not die, and have to hang on in a coma or something for the next 30 years.

Indulge me – if the Bill of Rights and constitutions and the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights etc all stipulate that we have a right to live, then why is the converse not true? Even euthanasia in the case of terminal illnesses is still an ethical debate. Why are we not free to decide when and how we want to die? If we don’t want to live, who or what has the authority to stop us? Honestly, I don’t understand why people make such a big hype about suicide, why it’s something we need to prevent, and why in some countries, an attempt becomes a criminal offense if you don’t actually die? Is it really such a negative thing, or we just define it as such? After all, it’s all part of life – well, it’s part of life until the act terminates life.

People tell me, it would be a pity if I died, there are many great things I could do. Yeah, if I live long enough I could become some worldwide influential figure of some sort and say, make the world peaceful. And then what? And even if I don’t accomplish that, someone else would. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t matter so much.

What’s more, they all say that these people who love me will miss me and be sad if I left – um, hold on right there… so I have to stay alive just to make everyone else happy, and I have to keep breathing so as to keep all these other people from feeling negative emotions? Well, what about me? That seems to go against my own blog of just being myself and not needing to answer to anyone, and putting my own interests and emotions first in order to take care of myself. It’s a bit unfair, that we want to keep someone alive just so that we don’t have to go through the agony of losing them and missing them, even if that someone might actually be “happier” dead, assuming there’s a future life and all that.

It’s quite confusing. I don’t quite have an answer, and didn’t set out on providing one. Just my muse. I don’t think I’m going to try to kill myself again. But I need to work out why I continue to think like this.

Oh wells, today is sunny, my puppy is cute and just stopped going nuts racing around the coffee table, I am sipping tea and busy writing this, so let’s just leave it at that for now.

And really, the point of this, if I must give what I write a point, is to bring this topic out in the open, so it becomes less of a taboo, and people struggling with the same issues as me can find some encouragement.

Thank to Cara for your efforts for giving us a platform and a voice.

Only through more awareness and understanding, can we find closure.

Be me.