draining's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PLanning My Own Demise, 2003 �where black is the color, where none is the number�� �Bob Dylan PLANNING MY OWN DEMISE: A DRAMATIC INNER MONOLOGUE Why, one might ask, would someone write a manifesto defending suicide? No, but of course it�s not as simple as that. A man, who was at times my brother, my best friend, and my lover; was reported to have killed himself in October of 2001. I was devastated, but I understood. He was in constant misery, and he was destined to live a life of such, and in mental wards, if he did not die. The true tragedy was that, as I found out six months later, he did not kill himself. His medication killed him. He did not want to die when he did. He was murdered. This is how we treat suicides in our culture�if not by killing them off, subliminally by adding to their own self-hatred or outright through negligence�by killing off their souls with strong drugs and electroshock. Nowhere in my therapy have I ever encountered sympathy with my suicidal urges. Even the solace I find in the ferocious Hindu Goddess Kali is discouraged. These urges are a part of who I am, and they stem, ironically, from horror at my own death. Both are natural. Suicide is an unnatural response to their suppression. It is not cheating oneself of life, but of death, and succumbing to horror of both. How is it like cheating oneself of death? It is like diving into a pool that has not been filled with water and expecting a good swim. For the urge in suicide is not to be killed, but to kill, and to control one�s destiny in the process. The suicide is convinced by the culture that her reality�which is that life is bleak, stale, and unprofitable�is messed up, fucked up, a disease that must be treated. Meanwhile, she cannot help but notice (if she reads) the depravity, sorrow, and downright depression of works of classic literature, such as Nabokov�s Lolita, Tolstoy�s Kreutzer Sonata, Shakespeare�s Hamlet, for fuck�s sake, Salinger�s Catcher in the Rye, Plath�s Ariel, Ginsberg�s Howl, and Sartre�s Nausea, or any other work by the great existentialists. And if you want to see through the eyes of a suicide, to SEE this world that is bleak, stale and unprofitable, pick up a copy of Aperture�s Diane Arbus or of Robert Frank�s the Americans. (If any man or woman is suicidal, I encourage you to look at these works, and understand that the great people who filled these pages of depravity and stark madness are considered geniuses. Some of them actually ended up killing themselves, some of them didn�t. That shouldn�t concern you�just feel validated by their visions. It�ll help, I promise.) For here is my point: if we were to consider discourse in our society about suicide, and keep our fears at bay, we would better understand it and why it probably isn�t for us. As a schizoaffective, I hear voices� and I have a personality trait to manifest these voices, when they are properly medicated away, into a form of talking to myself: I write. I am lucky. Many are not. Many only see and hear (note: I did not say read) what the culture doles out to us like communion: images of shiny, happy, sexy, skinny people holding hands on-camera and fucking between-the-lines. This is life, we are told. Who WOULDN�T want to reject that? So, through reading about people more fucked-up than I am, and through writing, I have kept my suicidal urges at bay. That�s what I want to say to people. I�m fucked up! I hear voices! I get suicidal! I have a big ass, a belly, and no tits! I swallow eleven pills a day! My soul mate is dead. But I�m still here. I�d rather live through the misery of my life now than be drugged and electroshocked and unable to smoke in some psyche ward, which is where most attempters land. Death? You know that big void you are feeling right now, the one that started at the pit of your stomach when you were thirteen and now consumes you? That is death. Committing suicide over it is like buying 80 liters of Coke because you don�t like the 12 oz can you�re drinking. But I�m not here to dissuade you from committing suicide. I�m here to start a discourse about it in your brain. To show you that the urge to self-destruct is nothing to be kept in secret shame. It is my hope that this discourse will liberate you from the cycle of shame and self-hatred over the topic that keep you in the �should I or shouldn�t I� mindset to begin with, an inner monologue which, as Susanna Kaysen so astutely pointed out, wears us out and IS what makes us do it in the end. The truth will set you free. Peace, 12:59 p.m. - 2006-01-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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