Sunday, March 30, 2014

Suicide: The Ultimate Makeover

A lot of the time I hear about kids my age self harming or killing themselves, and this is definitely one of the topics I like to think about. I especially hear a lot about this on Google Plus from most of the kids my age whom I call friends, as most of those internet friends talk about how they cut themselves and have attempted suicide before. I need new internet friends.

Before I officially begin, First allow me to first say that yes, I've been depressed before, and yes, I've felt the urge to kill myself before, so I don't want anyone to say that annoying bullshit phrase, "you don't know what it's like!" As a matter of fact, I do know what the fuck it's like, so I do not want to hear anyone say it, I'm tired of hearing it. I understand this is a taboo subject and, as George Carlin said, it's just one of those things Americans can't handle talking about, so I'll try knot to make too many offensive jokes in this post. Now, where were we?

It's an important and well known fact that shit happens in people's lives, shit which can lift us up or at times depress us. I know depression for sure, as it seems to return near the middle and end of the 6 week school curriculum periods, when all the tests and projects are due. I originally became depressed when, in my freshman year, I felt complete unimportance. I realized exactly how big the universe was and how small I was in comparison to it, and that's a hell of a size comparison when you really think about it (The first episode of Cosmos was really existential for me). If the sun was the size of a white blood cell, the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of the continental U.S., now that's fucking huge. This vision made me realize how significant I really was, which was, not at all. The only reason I'm told that I'm significant is because of the small number of people in this solar system whom I'm significant to.
I'm so significant

The knowledge of the approximate scale of the universe had broken me and made me depressed. I had no purpose in my life anymore, and my being an atheist and thus my lack of a metaphorical crutch (god) didn't exactly help either. I felt the urge to kill myself daily, my sheer willpower the main thing forcing me to get myself through the day. This urge eventually dissipated, and I regained my sanity (not really) and my will to live. I don't remember exactly what happened, only that I broke down and cried in front of someone. Somehow, that made me get up and get my shit together, and I managed to survive my freshman year, barely passing all my classes. 

Depression I face every so often, and I can best describe it as several shitty days in a row, not giving you any chance to refresh yourself and optimize your attitude. The way people get over shitty days is by following them up with several non-shitty days. If you have more than 2 weeks worth of shitty days, you need to fucking change something in your life. I manage my depression by simply saying "hey, this shit won't last forever, just grit your teeth and get your ass through it", and thus I survive, although a good number of my internet friends I mentioned before (you know who you are) deal with this depression in a different, albeit painful way.

I personally never got the appeal of self harm, I tried cutting myself once, just once, to see if that would help my depression. All that happened was that I made an experimental cut on my upper arm, it stung like hell, and I dropped the razor and sought out some hydrogen peroxide and a band-aid. So much for that. After that I pretty much dropped the idea of self harming ever again (words are enough for me, thanks). The way people justify cutting themselves is simply because the pain is a distraction from other pain going on in their lives, or, several shitty days in a row that they haven't gotten the chance to refresh themselves in between (or, a bunch of shit they haven't learned to deal with).

who gives a fuck about meg?

And now we enter our next segment: Suicide, which I regard as an interesting decision. Deciding voluntarily not to exist anymore. Suicide is like telling life, "I quit!" because the person is simply not able to take any of life's shit anymore. As an atheist, I've always more often than not been averse to the idea of suicide due to my disbelief in the concept of an afterlife, which tends to be why atheists have lower suicide rates in the first place. The religious would find suicide easier as they believe that they'll still live on (even though suicide is an unforgivable sin and then they end up living on in the depths of hell) after they die. 

(Another reason why I don't think I, as a writer, could commit suicide is because I'd be working on the suicide note for the whole year. I'd be trying to get it just right, and then finally I'd turn it into a book proposal and have a reason to live. That wouldn't work.)

But speaking of reasons to live, the main reason I don't think I could commit suicide is because I focus on what I should live for, not why I should kill myself. Nearly everyone I know who's been suicidal concentrates on the negative things that are happening to them, not the happy stuff that should be keeping them up when life is shit. I acknowledge the negative things, but I don't solely focus on them. I look at the good stuff just as much as the bad stuff, if not more.

"it's okay Dirk, just 2 more months and you won't need to fucking care about this bullshit. Come on, just 2 more months, you can do it."

What motivational words I utter to myself at times. I concentrate on why I should live rather than why I shouldn't, which leads me to my #1 way of talking someone out of suicide.

Take a sheet of paper, it doesn't matter whether it's college ruled or wide ruled, but it depends on how much you're gonna write. Next, write down everything you want to do before you die, they can be little things, such as learning to fence, or they can be amazing things (that you can still accomplish) like choreographing a lightsaber duel with Jennifer Lawrence, but the point is that you write down everything you can think of that you want to do (I have spent hours on my bucket list and I'm still not finished writing everything). Finally, pledge to yourself that no matter how you feel or what your situation is at that time in your life, you will commit suicide upon the completion of every item on that list.

Now you've just made suicide impossible for yourself, and not because you've written down something that is impossible to do. Let's say that, through some sort of magic, you complete every item on your list. Now you realize, "wait a minute, I also wanna do this!" and add that onto your bucket list. Every time you cross off everything on your list, you'll still think of something you want to do before you die, and now not only can you never commit suicide with this method, but now you can focus on your goals in life and accomplish them.

Suicide never accomplishes anything, and only takes away people who we might enjoy and miss. I've heard of people committing suicide because something was wrong in their lives, but those people only killed themselves and barely made any attempts to fix anything, some not at all. Suicide is fucking pointless, and causes more harm to those who know you than yourself.

So don't kill yourself, instead either fix the shit that's depressing you in your life or learn to fucking deal with it. That's all.


I've encountered a hiatus in my schoolwork this weekend which allowed me to finally finish this blog post. I'll try to write more for you guys, but I've got shit at home I need to do. In the meantime, I'd appreciate if people would follow my blog or at least check it out from time to tim...wait, do I have enough blog posts to ask that last one? Apparently not. I'll try to force myself to write enough so that I can ask it, but do give me a follow, if convenient. If inconvenient, follow me anyway. Peace out, bitches.

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