Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Suicide

Salon.com Life | My life has blown up in my face!: ” Threatened suicide, and did indeed genuinely wish to be dead. Although I knew pretty firmly throughout that I lacked the courage to actually do myself in, I nonetheless managed to convince my wife and then my therapist to have me committed involuntarily (a nightmare, let me assure you).”

My comments here really have very little to do with this letter from salon.com. (This is an excerpt from a letter someone wrote to salon’s advice columnist, Cary Tennis.)

What I want to comment on is the idea that suicide takes courage.

I suppose in some pretty superficial ways it does take courage to kill yourself. Ultimately, though, suicide is the coward’s way out. What really takes courage is staying alive, working through the despair, and taking the incredibly frightening chance that you may discover you’re not at all the person you thought you were.

Once a person settles on “an identity” (in the psychological sense), they’ll do pretty much anything to protect it. It’s all about a person’s sense of self. They may even kill themselves, but hey– at least they’ll go to their graves with their “self” intact. Those of use who are pretty much psychologically healthy might think that’s silly. Who would rather die than change? It’s more than just change we’re talking about here, though. It’s the likelihood of finding out that everything you thought you knew about yourself is wrong.

Now, that is damn scary.

Understand, I’m not saying all that all a suicidally depressed person needs to do is buck up and be willing to face facts! Not at all. It’s significantly more complicated than that. I’m only addressing the idea that suicide takes courage.

No. What takes courage is continuing to walk through the darkness, knowing that when you come out back into the light you might not be the person you were when you first entered the dark. You’ll leave the cave of despair and cross the river of change and, once you’re on the other side of that river, the new person will look back and be glad that other person is gone. NOW, though, while you’re in the cave you ARE that other person and you’ll do pretty much anything to protect yourself — even if it means killing yourself.

Crazy, huh?

(Please forgive the cave and river allegory. I was on a roll.)