Frankly, your replies come across like a defense of suicide as an understandable solution to some peoples misery. Of course I feel empathy for people who are in dire emotional pain! But I feel that considering suicide should be DISCOURAGED by all means, including the use of strong words to condemn it. Call it 'tough love'. After all, it's too late to do anything to help AFTER the act. People who are at the end of their rope need encouragement to keep struggling, not told it's understandable if they choose to kill themselves. I respect your viewpoint, it is quite common. I just don't think it is of help.
I had to read this twice before I realized that we agree more than we disagree. I think the main area where we disagree is where to place the focus on the suicide: on the person suffering, or on the mess left behind afterwards. Both views are selfish as they disregard the intense feelings of the other. I do tend to side with the sufferer. Waking up for days, weeks, whatever on end, finding zero joy, pushing with all one's might to just be -- the pain, in my opinion, is indescribable.
I can understand the pain of those left behind too. It may be as much as the person who was suffering. I don't know. I do know that if the person's loved ones could understand the level of the pain, maybe they'd be happy he is no longer suffering. My brother died in 1998. He had epilepsy for about six years and had a gran maul seizure in an enclosed space and choked to death. Pretty horrible way to die huh? Now it wasn't suicide and my brother wasn't suffering all of the time like those who have severe depression, but after seeing how the seizures affected him and how they limited him, while I'm in no way happy that he is no longer someone I can see and touch and hear, I am happy that he isn't suffering. Call it a coping skill. Call me heartless.
What I object to is calling suicide a loser's way out. Doing so will not deter someone who is actually in danger of trying it but it is going to perpetuate the false idea that a person who does end their life is a coward. The family of someone who commits suicide should be left with the memory of their son or daughter, brother, or sister, mom or dad, not as a selfish coward who abandoned the family, but as someone whose suffering exceeded their coping skills. Why do they have to have this negative view of their loved one when their loved one did try to hold out and did try to put up with what they were going through, but finally ran out of the means to cope?
It's disrespectful to all this person accomplished before their depression and it's disprespectful to the family by robbing them of a sense of closure.
