Suicide.

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This is a very misunderstood topic, I think. Psychologists think it is just bad thinking come to a conclusion, something that can be arrested, and often they do not believe it is a choice a sane person would make. While some of that may be true, and for some people, for others that is not the case. In today’s economy, suicide has happened, and will continue to happen. I think these types of cases may be mitigated, though and again, not all of them.

For me, suicide in the time were it was an option, was not negotiable. I tried three different methods over a period of five years, at least two of them really should have worked. Each attempt was more serious, regardless of psychiatric “help”. As I said on her blog, the greatest help offered by psychiatry was that as I was getting away from the notions and knew my impulses were not controllable, I could find refuge from myself in certain places. Away from the methods of death, I am sure my life has been extended. For my case, my situation is not temporary. Being disabled and the function of that disability both drove the impulse. Going from functional to permanently exhausted and trying to fight against the exhaustion left me completely bare of defense against that. Without religion or strong family ties, along with that last, I was naked and alone in the cold brutal dark. My attempts at suicide were brave, in their way. Though I did not really wish to die, I wished less, much less, to be a burden and a cripple. I knew, or was pretty sure, this “thing” was not recoverable. Pride, poverty, and the loss of a future led to the decision. Once the decision was made, it carried a momentum that at times was greater than my choice of life. Even when I was beginning to accept life again, the momentum toward death carried me past my recently changed but weak acceptance of life.

As for men who have fallen from social and economic grace, I think the thing depends on whether they can do one of two things. The first hope is that they may learn to live more humbly, as I have. The last chance, and most likely impossibility, is that they find a way to regain some level of status. Family, friends, and society in general, can play a part. These last are the straw that can break the camel’s back, or not, though, and no more. It is up to the individual conscientiously up to a very small bit once the impetus is upon them. Psychiatry may try to be of assistance, but it cannot, in the end, help. At it’s best, it can only delay. I guess, here as in medicine, I think the healing is self made. Doctors merely play some odd role in a means of assisting the patient to find a way to healing. A doctor does not and cannot heal. A psychiatrist cannot heal. A man can heal, maybe.

Though I think there are places for psychiatry, as with medicine. A broken arm can be set and repaired more easily, surely, and safely by someone who has been taught and experienced such acts. And, psychiatry has helped me profoundly in dealing with trauma. But really, that was more to do with having someone who could hear terrible things without themselves becoming traumatized (?). Most of the therapy that worked involved just having someone who could hear terrible things, be able to accept quietly, and to ask a question or two now and again. That is what family and friends are for, yet to use them for this on certain things is to burden them beyond their capacity, to poison them. Further, that was only available once I decided to try and live.

Some people, without God, want to think they can do things on their own. Those who say they know God yet fail when they are not in power never knew God. It is similar, in a smaller way, with family. These people think they, or other professionals, can solve anything. Doctors, psychiatrists, lawyers, or others can fix any problem, along with our hero, or so he thinks. The truth is, professions are a façade. The weak know this, some of them (us) were not always weak. Wise women know this, they know they are vulnerable and incapable of being secure in themselves. And, good leaders understand they are most important when they do as little or less than is required (they will and do mess things up if they are active).

How do we save these men of pride then? We do not, we cannot. We can only pray that they see the value of life before they lose all their chance at hope. We honestly cannot do anything. I know, the first time, and second time, even the third time, I was being cared for until I changed my direction, while I was in hospitals, I was merely resting up to brave another go at death… and to figure out how. Heck, I found some really good ideas about how to do it in there. Although, if a wife is married to one of these men, she knows he is otherwise a good man, and she is a good woman, then she will eat her fears and only show him love and a surety that it was not his wealth, power, or glory that she married, but him as a good man. She might keep from being the final straw. Otherwise, let her shrill him to his finality… so long as she has her next keeper in the bag. Keepers, of that sort, are becoming extinct and that loss is not slowing. And, understand, even a good wife might become a widow.

Enough of the darkness… Bring on the dancing women! Bah! I quit all that silliness. Hmm, maybe a beer, a sleep, and a day of work tomorrow will have to do. Good night.