I was reading a news report about a young woman, with many emotional, and physical, problems, who has will be euthanized to handle her problems. I'm appalled, and wondering how officials, and psychiatrists have become so subverted to condone the action. I'll explain below how I arrived at this opinion.
Decades ago, my step-mother's sister hung herself. It was a response to severe depression and her feeling of hopelessness. It left her parents, two sisters, her husband, and three children to deal with their emotional response. They were saddened, angered, feeling guilty, appalled, grasping for answers, and had to live their lives with their emotions. To make things worse, her son put a shotgun in his mouth, and destroyed his family decades later, when his depression led to the same conclusion. His actions reawakened the emotional responses and added his wife and child to the same.
Years ago, after an argument, and I slept on the couch so she could have space to deal with it, my ex-wife woke me the next morning with a confession. She had allowed her depression to overrule, took a handful of Vicodin, and tried to end it all. Instead of doing the deed, it made her violently ill, and she threw them up before they were absorbed.
How do you describe how that makes you feel? I was surprised, sad, angered, lost, feeling guilty, hopeless and devastated. If she had succeeded, I don't think the feeling could have been worse. She, through her actions, showed how selfish and cruel she could be. I knew she had emotional problems, I was trying to deal with them, and regardless of my efforts, my efforts were in vain.
Years later, and after more years of dealing with her problems, I had to admit defeat, divorce her, and allow her to live her life the way she wanted. She died last year of health problems other than depression, which made me wonder if she had taken the path of not taking care of herself to accelerate the path to death.
So, I don't really care what people think. Suicide is not relief. Suicide is a horrendous emotional burden placed on the people that are left behind. I'll never condone it, or consider it a good response to any problem with life.
As long as humans have emotions Depression will be an issue for some humans. And some humans will choose to shuffle themselves off to the next reality as a means of coping. That's simple reality. Not a pleasant one but many things about life aren't pleasant. Some people can be helped by intervention. Others cannot. And for those close by accepting that it's not their fault can be difficult.
ReplyDeleteIt's subversion of values, and worship of death.
ReplyDeleteSuch a complex issue. Different reasons/excuses for each situation. Family suffers with shock, anger, guilt, grief for a long time. At some point they must accept it was not their fault but entirely the choice of the victim. My husband died by suicide in 1997 as did my aunt many years before that. Different people, different lives, different reasons.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, the problems of my ex-wife can only be described as astounding. Depression, OCD, substance abuse, and a general lack of accepting her behavior needed addressing, were things that were destroying our marriage. She rejected counseling, when she didn't agree with the psychologist. When her hoarding became out of control, and I found she was unfaithful, it was as someone turned off a light switch. I realized I would be destroyed before she even contemplated trying to change, and the love I had was gone.
ReplyDelete