speak for yourself
People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
11–20 of 443 posts
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#12This is dark, but it’s interesting to me that the people who jump from a burning building and the people who end themselves on their own time are performing the same calculus. Nobody wants to die, but when your life starts to look like a burning building, sometimes the window doesn’t seem so bad.
> sometimes the window doesn’t seem so bad.
No, the window still seems awful but it’s the choice you make.
From David Foster Wallace:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#13Suffering and being alive are synonymous
Keeping in line with the style of that comment:
No, they're not.
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#14Wow, they completely left out one reason/demographic. For some people it's not about the suffering, but about their impact. The people who I know who committed suicide were diagnosed with alzhiemers or other dementia. They specifically wrote that they did not want to be a burden on their family. There's relatively little suffering due to the altered mental state (you don't really see people who want to commit suicide with these diseases once they progress, except in brief moments of clarity).
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#15This is dark, but it’s interesting to me that the people who jump from a burning building and the people who end themselves on their own time are performing the same calculus. Nobody wants to die, but when your life starts to look like a burning building, sometimes the window doesn’t seem so bad.
> sometimes the window doesn’t seem so bad. No, the window still seems awful but it’s the choice you make. From David Foster Wallace: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reac…
Yeah, I mean bad by comparison. The point is that no human wants to jump out a window, ever.
It’s also worth pointing out that depression can warp your sense of reality and make you believe you’re in a burning building when you’re not, so to speak.
I love your quote and it likely inspired my comment subconsciously
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#16Thought this was obvious
I'm sure that holds for most people. However I'm not exactly attached to the idea of being alive. If I'm dead I naturally wouldn't have any thoughts on the matter. Dying however does scare me.
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#17This fits the saying very well:
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#18This is dark, but it’s interesting to me that the people who jump from a burning building and the people who end themselves on their own time are performing the same calculus. Nobody wants to die, but when your life starts to look like a burning building, sometimes the window doesn’t seem so bad.
> sometimes the window doesn’t seem so bad. No, the window still seems awful but it’s the choice you make. From David Foster Wallace: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reac…
"looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!"
Are there people who actually yell this? It seems pretty obvious why they're jumping.
Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#19Re: People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living
#20This is why daily full-body sunlight exposure of 15-20 minutes without sunglasses and sunscreen is important.
To kill yourself by getting skin cancer?