This article, while sad, pisses me off.

Amendment: I forgot that the original reason this article pissed me off is because the parents are blaming some fucking newsgroup on the Internet for the death of their daughter. What about blaming, uh, the daughter??? Fuck you, Mommy and Daddy. It’s called PFR — Personal Fucking Responsibility, and you can’t admit it. You can’t admit that your daughter was fucked in the head and depressed and systematically killed herself. The fact that she sought out resources on the Internet to do that had nothing to do with the responsibility of the situation. If she had gone to the library and checked out books on suicide, would you blame the library for causing her death? “You bastard librarian, you killed our daughter by letting her check out suicide books!” The sooner people understand that the actions they take, despite outside influences that might coax you from one side to the other, are STILL their own, personal responsibility, the better off we are. We’ve become a country of lazy fuckers that sits around blaming anyone but ourselves for every little problem we have. So Mom and Dad, while I sympathize with the loss of your daughter, you’re just as fucked in the head if you think it was anyone’s fault but her own.

Suicide should not be illegal; I don’t know why it is. Either people have the right to do whatever they want with their own bodies or they don’t — making suicide illegal is clearly crossing into the “restricting what you can do with your own body”. If someone commits suicide, are they hurting anyone else? No, they are only hurting themselves. Don’t launch yourself from your pulpit about emotionally hurting others, either, that doesn’t enter in here yet. I’m talking about physically hurting someone else.

Unless you kill yourself by driving your car along with your wife and kids into a semi, you aren’t hurting anyone else by your suicide. Since 99.99% of laws are out there to protect people from each other but NOT to prevent people from hurting themselves, this seems contrary. If I choose to drink, I hurt only myself. There’s no law against that. If I drink and drive, then I’m taking a chance of hurting someone else and that’s why we have laws against it.

So, while I don’t think suicide is necessarily wrong, I do feel that it is never necessary and is often either a sheepish move, a cop-out, or both. When I say, “sheepish”, I mean sheep, as in dumb animals that follow everyone else without thinking. Then again, I know of other animals equally stupid, but they don’t get the glamour of being used as metaphors for the human condition. I mean, really — have you ever felt lemmingish? Of course not, but they are pretty damned idiotic fauna.

So, if I think that lemmings are morons, do I think people who commit suicide are, too? Yes, insomuch as they use their ignorance of life as an indicator that their existence will never get any better and killing themselves is the best way out of their current situation.

Look, folks, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about life is that it constantly changes; I am way different today than I was 15 years ago, and I’ll be way different 15 years from now. My life situation will, likewise, be that much different. Just because I’m sitting here today in this job, with this debt, with this pay, with this house, etc., doesn’t mean it will last and it WON’T last.

I realize what people who are in the depths of depression are going through, I’ve been there before. I’ve considered suicide, too, back in college when I was super-depressed. When you’re at the bottom of a mile-deep hole it is damned near impossible to see the light and every time you try to crawl out you just fall down again. Eventually, you can only take so much disappointment, stress, and depression before you start to lose it. Everyone has their limits and I think suicides happen when those limits get breached and people go, “Snap!” and that’s the end.

But that all being said, I just don’t think that it ever solves anything. When life changes all the time, how can you say it’ll never get better? You are NOT psychic and you cannot tell the future. I know it doesn’t LOOK like that, but trust me, it changes. Read a history book. Things change, your life will change. And look at it this way — when you’re down that far, going up is a lot easier, isn’t it?

Suicide — a door you can take if you choose. But if you hang out on this blue ball a little longer, I swear a different door will come along. Really, I do. Come over, I’ll hug you until it does.