Friday 22 August 2014

Is suicide selfish?

Cro has just imparted a tragic story about suicide - although the crime of 'suicide' no longer exists in the eyes of the state - and it reminded me of an incident of about 10 years ago, when I noticed an acquaintance sitting in the corner of the pub looking morosely drunk and introspective.

I normally avoided this bloke, because he was a bore of Olympian standards - he eventually became the only person in the pub's history to be barred for life, simply for being too boring. Think about it. Try to imagine someone who is so boring that they are barred from an English public house for life, and you will begin to get some idea about how stunningly boring this man was.

I went over to his table and asked him what was wrong. He told me he was deeply depressed and was thinking about going home and killing himself.

We all knew him as someone who - at the age of about 35 - was completely supported by his rich parents, and did not seem to want for any material thing in life. He had a new, smart car, and could afford to go to the pub every night, stay as long as he wanted in order to bore as many people as possible - all without doing any of the work the rest of us had to in order to pop into the place at about 5.00 o'clock and stay for a couple of drinks. He would be pissed by the time we arrived, and when we left he would stay, often until closing time.

I couldn't just leave him in this state, so I pulled up a chair and spent the rest of the evening trying to convince him that life was worth living, only leaving myself when I thought that there was a good chance of him not carrying out his threat of self-destruction. I spent all night with him and I was shattered by the time I got home.

The next day I entered the pub, finding him standing at the bar and chatting to a few bored-looking people who could not get away from him. I asked him how he was today, and he replied by saying that he did not know what I was talking about, so I reminded him.

"Oh that," he said with an infuriatingly broad smile over his idiotic features, "I didn't really mean any of that!"

I got my hands around his throat and pinned him up against the wall, telling him that if he ever wasted my time  - or anyone else's - like that again, I would personally make sure he carried out his threat to kill himself, if I didn't do it for him out of impatience.

I wasted an entire evening on this fool.


21 comments:

  1. Maybe you got taken in by a fool. I can assure you that when P was suicidal he was extremely distressed and so was I. At times I wanted to strangle him too but not for wasting my time. I don't believe he was being selfish he had just lost his grip on reality at the time.

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  2. I would have slapped the idiots face too. Although, I am wondering if he was actually suicidal but the next day was embarrassed and said it was a hoax to cover up his display of despair.

    Since the suicide of someone dear to me, I notice that people use the term "I'd kill myself" fairly often, joking of course, but I have become sensitized to it.

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    1. This bloke was far from serious, believe me.

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  3. I once foolishly remarked to a stranger what a nice bike he owned (this was in a pub' garden). I was then treated to descriptions of every aspect of every nut, bolt, and cog (including part numbers) of the entire bloody bike. Could this have been the same person?

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  4. Write this down: there is no such thing as "normal." I've been many years learning that.
    I cannot believe the custom of one with money was barred as boring. Perhaps it was a club, not a public house.

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    1. No need to write this down - you have.

      Read my lips - it was a pub.

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  5. Your title asks if it is selfish Tom - I think it depends how it is approached. But you do have to ask yourself if it is just as selfish to take up the time of all friends and relations by being terribly distressed. A thorny problem.

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    1. I don't mind how much time I spend on someone, just so long as they genuinely are distressed, and not just bored.

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  6. I have a different view. I think that suicide is an end to suffering and misery. If some one is suffering with cancer and they die, we miss them terribly but we are happy that they are at peace and no longer suffering. Mental illness isn't always curable, causes painful suffering and death is sometimes the only way to end the suffering.

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  7. My brother took his own life last October. He was 46 years old and had struggled with depression and addiction since his teens. He was my only sibling.
    Suicide is not a selfish act...it's a desperate, tragic act.

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    1. I agree. When someone is that desperate, they are not really thinking about other people - how could they?

      That is the worst bit - the idea that they thought themselves finally alone and beyond help.

      Obviously the grief must contain some form of anger about something that could be misconstrued as selfishness (how else can you define it?), but anger is only another way of dealing with it, and soon passes.

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    2. I totally agree too. I cannot understand why people say that it's selfish. It is an act of someone who is SO desperate that they feel it is the only way to end their suffering. A person who commits suicide is in such a dark place ….. a place that any reasonably well adjusted person would never go { in fact, they are often at their calmest the day before, as they have usually planned when and how they will do it and know that the end to their suffering is in sight } They are very, very ill and we must understand that they are in a very bad place and that selfishness doesn't come into it. XXXX

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    3. I agree too, but some people pull themselves back from the brink for the sake of others. Funnily enough, this is - or should be - called 'self sacrifice'.

      'Self Sacrifice' is a good way of putting it - to not kill yourself because of the effect your death would have on people who ought to love and miss you, is the highest form of self-sacrifice there could be, aside from offering yourself as a substitute for an execution to save another, isn't it?

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  8. Perhaps he should emigrate to Dull, near Perth in Scotland. It's twinned with Boring, in Oregon.

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  9. Have you looked up the lout since to see if he is still kicking about?
    For those who have experienced the loss of a loved one this way, this dolt's response of "haha just kidding" is repugnant.

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  10. The trouble is the world is full people who cry wolf and every now and again someone is truly so sad with their world that they mean it, it is hard to tell the difference.
    merle............

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  11. Ah but did he kill himself the year afterwards? Or have you kept in touch despite his boringness and know that he hasnt?
    Still, I'd have been infuriated too.

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