As someone under the age of 25, I think you can be too young for suicide. Now I'm not saying the brain needs to be developed, because let's face it, if we used this argument for suicide, we need to use it for marriage, babies and plenty of other things. Since we will not be doing that, it doesn't work for this argument. I do think some issues can get better with time and others simply don't but it's hard to differentiate between the permanent issues and the temporary issues at certain ages for certain people, so it is safer this way. It doesn't take away from their/our pain or their/our situation or their/our emotions/feelings.
I'd say that by 16 you are old enough to know the trajectory your life is likely going to head in. Your nearly done with school and about to head into the workforce and it doesn't really get much better from that point onwards.
I wish I would have CTB back then, could have avoided a lot of trauma to say the least. Sure, I'd lack many experiences I have now but I honestly don't think that's a bad thing because most of them ended badly.
If I could have succeeded in CTB back then I could have left while I was still somewhat intact before the world completely annihilated me.
Would have been nice, now I'm here over twice as old as back then and I can honestly say I'm at the lowest point of my life. I failed at basically everything I ever set out to do and even when I was successful for a time that just made things worse once the inevitable collapse occurred.
The human brain isn't capable of sustained happiness, even if you do everything "right" for years you'll eventually let your guard down and say/do something wrong and then your glass castle comes shattering down far quicker than you could have ever imagined and your left picking up the pieces... again... and again... and again... as you rebuild and it is destroyed ad infinitum until one day you realize something.
"Why do I keep doing this to myself, why do I hold on to false hope, why do I allow myself to suffer by definition of insanity?" and then your at the point in which you can take a left or a right turn because the way ahead is blocked and you can take the path that leads to years or possibly decades of recovery that may or may not pan out or you can take the path that leads to the end of your story and avoid the potential payoff for a few years/decades until you end up in the same place anyways.
I can honestly say that I haven't enjoyed life in years and yeah... I have a couple slivers of hope (we almost always do) because of potential possibilities but what are the odds of them paying off?
I'll have to deal with other people to bring them to fruition. I know that I can manage on my half if need be because I'm a great talker, reasonably attractive, and fairly intelligent but what about the other party/parties involved?
I already know that I'm never going to even have a chance at happiness being alone and having potential one night stands which means I'll need to find a woman (I am a straight male) who is loving, kind, honest, and patient and what exactly are the odds of that? I've dated over a dozen women in my life and all of them have lacked one or more traits needed for a happy and healthy marriage. My ex-wife was uncouth, which I could deal with and accepted and I knew that would be an issue but she hid the fact that she was unfaithful for a long time, which I couldn't deal with as I hadn't known she was a prostitute prior and blatantly lied to me saying she only had been with a handful of guys which I accepted as nobody is perfect. Had I known she slept with well over 100 different men prior to our marriage and would continue doing so during it I would have never accepted her hand in such.
I also acknowledge that I'm not perfect by any means and have a plethora of flaws ranging from being too honest, vanity, not being down to Earth, being a thinker instead of a doer, and i tend to turn every small thing into rocket science unnecessarily.
But on a positive note I can connect the dots and notice correlations rather quickly which may lead to me being "paranoid" but more often than not that "paranoia" isn't paranoia whatsoever.
All of us humans are vastly flawed and we'll never be happy for longer than the blink of an eye and we'll always be chasing the next high regardless of what it is. Contentedness is a foreign concept to us as human, the moment we manage to claim what we desire we want more and more until there is nothing left to take or we make a single misstep which leads to an inevitable collapse.
How many times must we do things over? Many say we must do whatever it takes and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, I disagree personally.
Nothing in relation to the human condition changes much from your teens all the way through your advanced years other than you'll become more used to successes and failures at the cost of nostalgia clouding your judgement and developing a generalized "numbness" as you mark more and more off of your figurative bucket list.
Oh, and you'll be in more and more physical pain and discomfort as the years progress while your outer AND inner beauty fade and your left with fading memories and stories related to them that you can tell others who most likely do not honestly care and are just listening to placate you, pass the time, or out of familial obligation/friendship upkeep.
. So I can honestly and without a shadow of doubt digress that at 16 I was more than valid in regards to my reasoning leading to my failed decision(s) to CTB no less than I was now at 35.
If anything my decision was more valid back then because I could have avoided many years of suffering but I chose to listen to elder people who claimed "things will get better".
Well, I paid infinitely more taxes so I guess that things id get better some entities so there is that.