Discussion How did you view suicide BEFORE you were suicidal? #14

[icanfeelthesoil]

unfortunately i don't remember a time when i wasn't suicidal. Maybe when i was really young (like below age 10), but i didn't even know what suicide was back then.

 

[Catastrofe]

When I was 17 I studied some Shopenhauer at school, he says suicide is the most powerful act of someone's desire to live : because the person who suicide does not reject life in general, instead rejects (in the most powerful way) the life s/he is living because s/he knows could be great and happy but it is not.
I have always conceived it as a very strong act of will.

The first time I thought about suicide was around 8 yo. I was curious about the afterlife, and I solved it simply thinking : "Well, I'll die anyway, so I will find out eventually". With my therapist it turned out it was probably (also) me willing to leave my house and my family because I did not feel it as a safe place - even though it was not heavily abusing.

 

[FormerlyFe(IV)]

I'm a pro-choice, pro-bodily autonomy guy. Since I was a kid I was in favor of assisted euthanasia. Anyone should have the option to end their life, of course!

Oh, to be young and naïve again.

 

[flightlessbutterfly]

When I first learned of the act of killing yourself, I was confused and sad. It was something 7 year old me believed to be a rare thing and that only people who suffered great depths did so.

Years and years later, I now wonder when that belief was squashed in me.

 

[Shaylla1998]

I viewed it as anything else, though I was 5 or 6 years old, and, although a foggy memory, I remember telling my mom to throw me out of the window when the fireworks start to wake me up, I still remember the slap in the face I got after saying this. I knew nothing about physics and biology at that time, I thought if my parents would cut me open they would see the same as the inside of an apple when cut in half (I don't know why I had a thought like this in the first place).

I had occasional suicidal thoughts when I was a child, I didn't know the meaning of it, I thought it was just an experience. I had weird dreams of my death like falling from a wooden bridge hanging between 2 cliffs, my aunt waiting with me at a castle for a machine to come and kill me, being thrown into a trash press, being cooked alive, very weird stuff. I was afraid, not of death, but of how I would die.

Later when I realized what death and suicide are, I still did not feel anything toward it and I even thought that everyone had the choice to live or to go. It wasn't until my early teenage years that I realized that suicide is a big nono in society, which to this day, I still don't understand.

I was pro-assisted suicide before my first serious suicidal thoughts and still am. Everybody is born without their consent and they should be free to do whatever they want with their lives. It's everybody's right to live a free life and so it should be our right to end it whenever we feel like we don't want anymore.

 

[sunsetboat234]

Before I would have never even thought about it. I was against it and wanted to stop it from happening. Things drastically change.

 

[FormerlyFe(IV)]

I'm a pro-choice, pro-bodily autonomy guy. Since I was a kid I was in favor of assisted euthanasia. Anyone should have the option to end their life, of course!

Oh, to be young and naïve again.

I just realized that last sentence sounded anti-choice

What I meant to say was that I was optimistic when I was young. That I expected pro-choice options to popular all around and not be controversial. Seemed straightforward to me. That was where my naivite was misplaced.

 

[PinkyStat]

9 yo me would say: Why? Those people are so dumb, they will literally die and finish their live earlier.
Never thought a lot about it before, it is kinda funny to look back tbh

 

[flyaway]

I've had sporadic thoughts about suicide since I was a child. But before they started occurring I've never really thought about it much.

 

[Petrichor]

I've been suicidal for majority of my life, I think around 8-9 is when it began. Because I was so young I don't exactly know or remember my opinions on suicide before it, I probably didn't even know what suicide was at the time.

 

[mare]

I always wanted to die, even as a child

 

[phantomime]

Being very honest here, I really don't remember much from before being extremly suicidal. The little I remember from my early childhood doesn't include any thoughts on it whatsoever. Probably didn't even know what it was.

 

[HerPromise]

I was pro life. Even when I was suffering from depression at the age of 10 I always thought suicide wasn't the answer. At the age of 13 thought I became suicidal and even then I thought there was something wrong with me and that I shouldn't end my own life despite dealing with suicidal thoughts every minute. Around 14 though was when I started actually engage in reckless behavior and not care about whether I lived or not since I gave up on myself which I really wished I didn't. I was so young back then I had so much time and potential. I just had to stop being so hard on myself and realize I am worth caring about, even if that care came from myself. Now though, I'm fully pro choice and I support others decision to ctb since I'm planning to do it myself soon.

 

[FindingHome]

I never thought much about it. All I can say is that I never thought I would arrive to this point in my life where I actually want to die and am trying to kill myself so I can die.

 

[f1lth]

i witnessed my fathers multiple breakdowns and spontaneous suicide attempts from ages 1-6. I always wanted better for him, for him to always be that happy dad he so often was. Then my mother died when i was six, even being so young i knew it was over for him too. He was a shell of a person, but he no longer broke down and spontaneously tried to CTB, which in a weird way cemented what i already knew would happen. A year later a few days after the anniversary of my mothers death he hung himself. Im honestly surprised he was able to stick around that long. When she died, i wished that somehow he would get a peaceful death surrounded by loved ones unlike my mom. But he died alone. Its awful. They both deserved better, my moms death was unavoidable and unpredictable, his wasnt.

 

[brokeandbroken]

I viewed it as a tragedy. Which I think it is still. Just slightly different. I viewed it as a tragedy people were dead. Now I view it as a tragedy people are suffering so much they want to be dead.

I mean it's hard to know where my view of the world would be extraneous from the events that have occurred in my life. I knew their was good and bad. Now I am sure good exists but I haven't found it. I think it's a moral failing on the part of humanity people are suffering this much. When's the last time you heard of human suffering being seen as something to tackle? Something like 1.7 million Americans tried to end their lives last year. It won't be addressed as many have been pushed to the margins of society and considerable expendable. People society has universally rejected and deemed defective unworthy of help. It's sad. Society is losing a lot of good people.

 

[Wants-To-End]

From my childhood, I never thought it was wrong, I always have a opinion that "suicide is something extremely essential during most of the scenarios", But at that time, i never thought, i would ended up doing it in my 20's, lol

 

[Minsu]

I looked down to suicide because I was brainwashed by some religious stuff.
I'm not completely free from kinda religious views on suicide tbh, but they've faded fortunately

 

[hdahsa]

Good question. Until two years ago I never imagined that one day I will be ready to ctb due to no other option remaining. But even then whenever I read about or heard about people committing suicide, I sympathized with them and always wondered what it could be that drove them to take this step.

Now that I am in a similar situation, I understand it more clearly.

 

[ManicNarcissus]

i've never had a natural repulsion to the concept, its never been heinous or outlandish to me in any capacity.

 

[ablationaaa457]

I think I've always been suicidal as soon as I was cognizant of what death was (which was about 7 or 8 for me). At least, I don't really remember a time where I wasn't hoping to die in some way or form. As a result, I don't think I ever really viewed suicide in a negative sense. I did have a somewhat religious upbringing, but I always felt like I deserved to go to hell anyways, and so I may as well just accelerate the process. Now I'm no longer religious, but I still view it as a rather neutral action in itself.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

It's been well over a decade.... I can't remember a "before"...

 

[Anon7b8]

I've always think it was a way out. A quick exit. Not a cowards way but an option presented to you when you had have enough.

 

[Sapphire]

I always thought it was tragic that someone could reach a point where they would be willing to kill themselves. I always felt sympathy for them. I never thought that it would be something that I would do myself.

 

[benzol]

Never been a pro-lifer. But when suicides happened at one of my friends, I could not really understand why, and felt sad.
Today about myself I can completely understand why and still feel sad.

 

[venin]

It was somethig comparable to fucking a male camel and marrying it. That's how much I thought of it.

 

[Kerrtu]

Why are so many people voting other ?

I voted other as I had no idea of the concept of taking my own life, ending my life, until it dawned on me in grade 5. It was an epiphany of sorts - I started to put the pieces together and realized if I were dead, nobody could hurt me anymore. I didn't have a plan, but I had the beginnings of what I felt was this secret escape which gave me hope.

Up until that point, before that realization, I had already been abused and was being abused on a regular basis. I felt like I was dying on the inside, like I couldn't hold on anymore. Looking back, I didn't know what to do with those feelings…I think I just assumed I'd be killed by my brother eventually.

 

[アホペンギン]

I still thought about suicide from time to time during my childhood because I'd see it sometimes on the news. Although I was exposed to those sorts of things I never tried to understand why those people on the news committed suicide so I was unsure as to if it should be a right for everyone. I didn't really care, I just assumed anyone could do it if they felt the need to. I don't know if this was understandable, I didn't know how I should've went about writing it.

 

[bluebus]

I never really thought about it much, but anytime I heard of someone killing themeselves (in my own personal life or in the media) is always felt really sad (I still do but I have a different perspective now). I always viewed, and still view, life as a beautiful precious gift that should be cherished. But whenever I'd see stories of people that got into horrible accidents, or had terrible medical conditions, or just had really horrible lives, I always wondered why didn't they just kill themselves, I sure would if I was in their position. And now, funny enough, I am in that position. I got a bad diagnosis and I realized that my life would never worth living (to me), and now I'm ready to ctb. Life is funny that way, I never in my wildest dreams expected it to got this way.

 

[suchaprettygard3n]

idk if this is weird but i was kind of intrigued by it ig??? i felt kind of drawn to it in a way. i thought about it kind of often. even as a child really. but back then it was just kind of a morbid curiosity. now looking back on it, maybe i always knew this was how i was gonna go