Actual thing that a "friend" of mine posted to Facebook today.
In her defense, she was initially lashing back at this essay by Henry Rollins attacking Robin Williams for committing suicide. I agree that said essay is misinformed and misguided at best, and incredibly harmful and damaging at worst.
But this friend decided to just take it and run in the exact opposite direction.
"These people that say suicide is the easy way out, just fucking try it sometime, I bet you would be too big of a coward to go through with it," she wrote.
My blood was boiling. It still is.
You know what? You're right. Suicide does take its own kind of courage, in a way. There's a fear of what comes after that is often only overpowered by the fear and pain of what's happening now. It takes a strong willpower to follow through sometimes. It's a heavy decision and a hard one to make.
So call me a fucking coward. Call me a coward because I "gave up" in order to stay alive. Call me a coward because I found reasons to hold on. Call me a coward because I had the will to live when I didn't think I did.
Call me a coward. I did. For years. The only thing I hated myself for more than wasting my life was not being willing to fucking end it. For years. How dare you?
As angry as I was, I'm pretty impressed with how composed my actual response to her was:
The way you talk about how suicide takes courage and other people would be "too much of coward to go through with it" struck some really unpleasant chords for me. I've been suicidal. I've been "too much a coward" to do it and I hated myself and my cowardice and it wasn't until years later that I realized that the fact that there were those tiny shreds of hope that kept me going wasn't cowardice, it was a will to live that I didn't know I had at the time. It's not "the easy way" to keep going. To keep going takes courage too. To "keep living and suffering" is not giving up; it's a decision to keep going in a fight that's terrifying and difficult and that you feel like you can't win but you're trusting yourself to win anyway. It's HARD. Please don't fucking talk about continuing to battle depression rather than killing myself as the wrong decision or the cowardly one.
Suicide is not selfish or cowardly. Depression is vastly misunderstood and not taken nearly as seriously as it needs to be, and opinions like this are beyond problematic. But suicide is not a superior alternative. Looking back, I'm fucking PROUD that I found things to live for. But I had to fight through years of calling myself a coward and a failure for not killing myself before I got to this point. Reading your comments here was actually really painful for me.
Suicide is not selfish or cowardly. Depression is vastly misunderstood and not taken nearly as seriously as it needs to be, and opinions like this are beyond problematic. But suicide is not a superior alternative. Looking back, I'm fucking PROUD that I found things to live for. But I had to fight through years of calling myself a coward and a failure for not killing myself before I got to this point. Reading your comments here was actually really painful for me.
I know that this "friend" has been through a lot, has attempted suicide, and has been dealing with bipolar disorder and BPD for most of her life. I know that she is incredibly hurt on a deep personal level when comments are made about the cowardice of suicide. I know that she wants to defend herself and show how strong she is. But she could not have worded this in a worse or more painful way.