Why exactly do people often say suicide is a selfish act, as though the people who commit suicide enjoy doing it?
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Why exactly do people often say suicide is a selfish act, as though the people who commit suicide enjoy doing it?
Considering suicide selfish is highly hypocritical and this is not something one should ever say, especially around anybody who might actually be considering it.
Here’s my experience with almost attempting it: I was so messed up that I spent a good ten minutes on the floor that morning, barely able to think, with infrequent blurbs going through my head, along the lines of “why am I not moving” “what am I doing here” “I don’t want to get up” “why can’t I fall asleep”
When I finally got up, I stumbled back to my bedroom, and collapsed into a cushy chair, and into the same state, except that I also spotted an old jackknife that I had by the chair for some reason. I picked it up, and opened it, and started dragging it around on my skin, wondering what it would feel like to try to stab myself with it, and if I could get my heart with it if I tried. I cam very close to doing so. There were also minor auditory hallucinations in the background, voices of people I didn’t know calling my name. Something in the back of my mind, some mechanism I’d set up previous, told me to put it down again, because there’d come a time when I’d be glad I did. So, here I am. After lots of pain and false starts.
Some people will tell you suicide is selfish because they have never been in that mental place before.
They do not understand how badly the world can hurt, and have never been in a place where death is no longer something to fear. They do not know that death can be a friend, a comfort, a viable solution to pain.
The after effects of suicide are really what people are talking about when they call the act selfish. How the person hurt their family, how they hurt their friends, how they ruined the world of so many people they were connected to. I see it as selfish, absolutely. It is selfish for everyone who is in a stable emotional place to vilify someone because they were in too much pain. Was the act of suicide the selfish act, or was not being there for a person when they needed it most, the selfish act? I will leave you to answer that question yourself, I have my view. People say suicide is selfish because they have never been suicidal.