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November 11, 2005

Suicide and ghouls

Jeff Harrell writes of the months of Suzanne Gonzales and her rather public (via the Internet) march to suicide, encouraged by beings that I cannot help but consider ghouls.

I cannot write about this subject objectively or dispassionately. I lost a close family member to suicide almost 17 years ago and I still react in anger and tears when I think about it. When he, in an impulsive moment, took his life, he affected his family forever. He left a gaping hole in the natural course of life, that is felt at every family gathering. Just like an amputee that still "feels" the missing limb, we feel his absence. Worse, we feel the absence of what could have been his legacy ... wife and children ... the unique individuals that would have been woven into the family tapestry. If there is life after death, I look forward to meeting him, going nose to nose with him and screaming "What the fuck were you thinking?"

Suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness, the ultimate act of screaming "fuck you" to all the people who love the suicide and would lay bleeding in the street if it meant keeping the suicide alive.

I understand that many suicides are in the throes of clinical depression, are mentally ill and their power of reasoning are severly compromised. However, as Jeff so movingly writes

During a dark time in her life, a troubled girl wandered into a room filled with people who were eager to love and support her, to validate and accept her, and to encourage her to kill herself. Would Suzanne Gonzales have ended up dead if not for alt.suicide.holiday? Sure, it’s possible. Eleven young Americans kill themselves every day. But this was a girl who was already in the care of a doctor, who already had access to whatever medications were helpful to her. She easily could have gotten help if she’d been able to open up, to trust her doctor. Instead, her natural reluctance was fueled by the out-and-out paranoia of the other members of alt.suicide.holiday, members who urged her to lie to her physicians in order to keep from being subjected to some imagined persecution. Hell, this was a girl who even looked into buying life insurance as an excuse to postpone her suicide. Suzanne Gonzales didn’t intend to take her own life. She didn’t even want to take her own life. She was backed into that corner by a group of predatory monsters who posed as friends in order to fill her head with fear and loneliness.

Jeff believes it will be karma that catches up to the ghouls.

I wish much darker things.

Posted by Darleen at November 11, 2005 07:54 AM

Comments

Good post. My father committed suicide when I was a 19 year old college student. It does change a family dynamic forever.

Posted by: Karen at November 11, 2005 08:44 AM

I normally ID myself in comments -- please excuse me for this rare exception.

I have stared into that abyss. Nearly ten years ago I rode that edge a bit too closely, and came real close to killing myself. I knew exactly how I was going to do it, including ensuring I would not be stopped, but that I would be found. My life was a void -- there was nothing keeping me here and a whole lot of pain and emptiness pushing me to go.

But...

I come from one of the strongest families I know. I had two young nephews. I had an image in my head of my family being shattered by my action; of siblings who, no matter what explanation I could have possibly written down, would never come close to comprehending what had happened, or why; of my nephews growing up with a vague memory of "Crazy Uncle Fred" who one fine summer evening opened his wrists -- too young to really understand what was happening, but crying and hurting because everybody else was crying and hurting. Of a mother who... I can't even imagine.

I lived to save them. They saved me. And to this day they have no idea. They supported me through the hardest possible time just by being who they are. God Bless them, they don't even know what they did.

Posted by: Anonymous Fred at November 11, 2005 03:02 PM