Suicide. I've thought about suicide a lot over the years.
Professionally, that is. I worked in the field of mental health and
substance abuse for 30 years. My first job in mental health was on an
emergency response team. I saw someone shot himself in the head. It's
one of those things you never forget. Over the years I've wondered about
people who kill themselves. I can think of at least 5-6 other suicides
during my 30 years. The emptiness they must feel in themselves. The loss
of hope that things can get better. The courage they must have. Is it a
courageous act? One of desperation? Selfish? Sane? Insane? I don't
pretend to understand it, but I do accept it. People have that right,
however wrong we might think it to be. In the end, it's you and your
life. For better or worse, it always comes down to you, no matter how
we'd like to change it, or what we think about it.
It is always you. Wrong,
cowardly, thoughtless, sinful, whatever words we put to it, none of
them are deep enough, or sufficient enough, to meet the emptiness that
the person must be feeling. It is a hollow feeling we are left with,
filled with sorrow, regret, lose, and the presence of an unfulfilled
history. We may not have done what we could have, or said what we should
have, but in the end, it was not our life to make or take. Always, in
the end, it is your life to live or end. Some thirty-five years after I
witnessed that suicide, I still cry at the thought and fumble for the
words to describe it. But it was his decision, not mine. I have to live
with that. The game ended. There was no winner. Stalemate.
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