selfish celebrity suicide [or not.]

I always thought he'd do it. As though I knew him. Of course I didn't.

When I saw the phrase on Twitter: For Robin Williams, we give thanks. RIP. - my fingertips flew to my lips, and I thought, oh, Robin, no. I googled.

He did it. 

He did it.

I'd always wanted to meet him. When I was younger, I imagined he'd be a completely exhausting dinner date, but as I got older, I came to believe that he'd probably be very quiet. Awkward, without an audience, without a framework, without a catalyst. I wanted to meet him even more; I think I got more joy out of his presence on this earth as I came to understand more and more, simply by virtue of age, how dark his privacy must have been.

I think we would've understood each other a little.

Oh, Robin. 

______

Is it selfish for a person to commit suicide?

I don't know if "selfish" is the correct word.

I half-heartedly attempted suicide when I was in my very early 20s - three times, all overdoses. They were tough times: family stuff, personal stuff, in college and didn't know what to do with myself, deeply depressed and afraid. Two attempts ended in puke and a next-day headache; the third, no ill effects. I was, like many people (particularly women), mostly acting out of desperation at my pain and solitude, rather than actually trying to end my life. I still had hope that life would be better eventually, when I grew up, when I got on my own two feet, when I was fully in control of my own choices and direction.

That idea of eventual control and happiness was chronologically far enough in the future that it seemed there was enough time to turn the ship around; it seemed possible for my life to, eventually, be completely different. That I might be completely different in it; that I might learn to shed myself and emerge with different muscle-memory, different bones, different soul. Like Precious, in the movie.

I put it away, but I couldn't shed it.

People don't talk about it. It can be weird. It's taboo; it's horror, and it's confusing. It can be "triggery" for people who have struggled with it, and it's a hard thing to put on some's radar for any reason. Saying the word suicide aloud makes people hedgy. So I don't know how common it is, but I know that, for me: suicide has never left me. It's always there: not as a desire toward an action, not as an intent, but as the presence of that intent.

Aren't you tired of fighting. Wouldn't it be so much easier to. Wouldn't things be so much better if. 

Nobody likes these thoughts, people. Do they sound pleasant? Do they sound like something people feed, in order to keep alive? They are not selfish. They are not jolly, hello. They are not welcome. They are intrusive. They are utterly exhausting. They garner horror from people, if you share them. They make me feel horribly guilty and shameful. They make me hide.

Mostly because people think they're selfish.

______

At some point, I learned that my great-grandmother committed suicide before I was born. I'm not sure how old she was; I believe my grandmother was a young adult when it happened. According to my grandmother, her mother overdosed on medications, sat resolutely in a chair, and waited to die while her daughter, my grandmother, frantically tried to get medical attention for her (tried to get her out of the chair, tried to call the hospital - their remote locale prevented ambulance care).

I can't imagine what it would be like to watch your mother's life flicker out, right in front of you, hard to the end, in the presence of your tears. I can't imagine whether it might have been any less painful or traumatic if my great-grandmother had committed suicide in solitude.

I know that my grandmother has never been whole; I know that she could not build my mother, and resented her inevitable growth. I know that my mother could not build me, and broke me instead, against all intent I can hope for, on her behalf.

And who knows where it started, but so it goes.

______

The only reason I haven't committed suicide in the past two years is because of my nieces.

And don't freak out at me. The only reason I will put that fact on anyone's radar is because I could never do it. Are you suicidal? It's moot.

I know it would hurt people.

I know that I will not be the person to stamp the notion of suicide on my nieces' life experiences.

I won't be that voice. It is the only drive keeping me here.

I know how persistent that voice is, once it grabs you.

Only he could decide for himself whether it was right. Nobody else can know whether it was right. It's not a wrong decision. I can't always agree with these ideas that everyone's truth is their own truth, and every truth is true, because it's true for someone, somewhere. That reasoning seems really simplistic, to me. It seems belittling to every single layer of the human experience, both individual and shared. And if you call me out on that: I don't have the words for it yet. Only the truth of it, and the questions that surround it.

But what degree of illness must a person suffer in order to allow her child to frantically watch her die? to watch her beg and plead and sob, and remain resolute in - what? Your last memory of earth is your baby's heartbreak.

What madness must a person suffer in order to, like Sylvia Plath, commit suicide in her kitchen, having set the table with her childrens' breakfasts, knowing it would be they who found her dead body in that macabre, jolting position, half-in/half-out of an oven? Was that a thoughtless act?

What degree of darkness could a person carry for sixty-three years on this earth, determined to carry it successfully, whatever that means, determined to try to make good in the world as he suffered the presence of that intent for how long? - to what degree does the presence of that intent eventually overwhelm?

To what darkness would a person have to admit, in order to admit that they wonder at their bad choices and ingrown soul and pain and depression how much better off would my nieces be without me in their lives? 

And to what degree does grace abound? Whether you phrase it as it is unselfish and morally neutral for a person to commit suicide or to the degree a person suffers, so is there also an equal measure of grace for their suffering - I think selfish is pretty much the stupidest word to use toward this issue. Right up there with have some faith! and tomorrow is another day! and find the strength within! and maybe you should just spend more time outside in the freaking flaming-hot Florida sunshine, man! 

That is all.