I wanted to create a thread where we can have a big discussion about suicide survivors, i.e. the loved ones we leave behind when we CTB. The topics I wanted to ask were:
Are you yourself a suicide survivor? What do you think about the suicide survivor "experience"?
How would you minimize the suffering to your loved ones if you decide to CTB?
Why do you think people are so against CTB if there are kids involved, for example a mother wanting to CTB when she has a young child.
Here is a link to a suicide survivor community, that Threads has allowed me to post. It sort of shows the impact of suicide on family members and there thoughts etc:
https://forum.allianceofhope.org/
In NO way is this thread supposed to be a "pro life" discussion or meant to be guilt tripping. I myself am pro choice and often think about my family once I'm gone so that is why I wanted to start this discussion
Thank you!
Are you yourself a suicide survivor? What do you think about the suicide survivor "experience"?
I am going to use your questions somewhat cathartically, writing sometimes helps me. I also feel like I am leaving some part of my life behind. I warn you it will devolve rapidly into a simmering rant full of rage and sorrow.
Yes, I guess I am a 'survivor' both as a hazard of my former job but I also lost a close friend a few years ago. In my friend's case, he was suffering from multiple sclerosis that progressed enough he retired from the job we shared. He was the guy who helped me cut my teeth and deal with jitters, the pressures, and the horrors and my desire to set heartless bureaucrats on fire...
Even though he retired he was the sort of guy that wanted to help others, establishing a group in the local area he was based in for people affected by similar isolating difficulties. He was always a giver.
Regardless of his pains, he had a wonderful sort of humour, the sort that makes me smirk as I sit here pondering his crude jokes or sharp observations distilled into a witty punchline. He should have been a stand-up comedian he would have been up there with George Carlin. We would watch films together sometimes and drink mead and idly play poker. He was the sort of guy that would point out every flaw or inaccuracy. Commenting on how cars in films must be partly made from nitroglycerin.
My memories of him make me feel sad mostly. Sad at what happened. Sad that they closed down the independent living fund, sad they took away his specially adapted Motability car using spurious reasons. I saw how that was like taking scissors to a canary's wings leaving behind bleeding stumps that soon turned rotten. Sadder still they cut his support workers hours. A guy he had grown increasingly dependent on. I remember him telling me how hard it was all starting to become, that it was hard enough fighting his own body let alone everything else. I saw his mood drop, his nights were harder to deal with as he did not always have Andy there, and sometimes he suffered intense muscle spasm that left him rigid and in need of assistance. Throughout our careers we had always been angry at injustice, it is what drove us in the first place. This injustice against him though I think caused him to wither. He would ring me up in the middle of the night sometimes sobbing.
The Problem with these sorts of conversations is after the person is gone, you revisit everything said in intricate detail. Being chewed on by what you should have said, or should have done. Even after years I sometimes find myself thinking about those conversations. The if only's and should of haves resurfacing.
As far as I am concerned my government threw him under the bus. Robbed him of dignity and left him trapped in a way no one should be trapped. Just as they are throwing me under the bus. All for the crime of getting sick.
It may sound like hyperbole to say my government is indirectly killing the disabled in this country. But I will leave Callum's list here and you can stare long into the abyss and come to your own conclusions as you follow the threads of indifference and atrocity.
http://calumslist.org/
He did not ring me the night he chose to die. But he had sent me a text at 3:33 Am. That number now has a significance to me. Whenever I see any clock at 3:33 I find myself thinking of him. Like that combination of numbers now has greater meaning. If I am exposed to a film we had watched in the past I think of him, pointing out how that woman was dumb for going into the basement, did she expect to find a convenient hatch to China? Or how that sword is entirely impractical and would be more likely to cause injury to the protagonist than fight off monsters. For a time I also fixated on how I had missed the text, sleeping right through it and cursing myself for not being there. I still have that mobile in my desk drawer. His final words were, "Thanks for being such a good friend." I have stupid anxiety sometimes, that the text will degrade and be gone. It is dumb but it is what it is.
Looking back though I feel that was intentional. That he had made his mind up. He was just done. Things beyond that became a blur for a time. It was all very sad. There was a large turnout at his funeral. He was well liked and fondly thought of. Former clients of his also attended upon learning of his passing. Each time the date of his death or birthday rolls around I think of him, toast some mead to his memory. I am reminded just how much I miss him. I want to believe he is at peace now, but the realist in me accepts he is not at anything now. The only mercy is a corpse can't suffer further. The maggots get to feast, pupate and be fed on. Death feeding life. Just another indifferent cycle among many.
Some of my clients have also suffered similar fates, failures in what are meant to be supportive systems. I have bitched about it elsewhere. I was left chronically frustrated at just how poor mental health provision is for those who want it. Chronically angered at the stupidity of it all that people asking for help, willing to engage with that help, are the very ones being denied it! Dismissed by it, or worse having it turned on them like they are to blame when nine sessions of lazily delivered CBT they have been waiting for eight months for does not magically cure them of chronic years of abuse... It is utterly sickening to behave in this way.
I feel those deaths much like my friends but it is different, muted by professional distance or I wouldn't have been effective for the next person. Now I don't have to be professional it just adds to my hatred and misanthropy, especially as I am acutely aware mental health provision is worsening, it is the worst I have ever seen it in my entire career.
How would you minimize the suffering to your loved ones if you decide to CTB?
This is an important question. Be considerate with your corpse if you can. I wrote about why here. It is my intent to only be found by authorities.
https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/corpse-exposure-consideration.7772/#post-136350
Why do you think people are so against CTB if there are kids involved, for example a mother wanting to CTB when she has a young child.
For me it comes down to the parent brought the child into the world. Thereby they are meant to be responsible for it. Psychologically a young child will be severely damaged by the loss of a parent. Suicide though is a choice, a heart attack or car crash is not. So you would be knowingly damaging your child. However, as they get older that risk of harm drops noticeably. I can't be bothered to touch on the stats of outcomes for children growing up in care. It makes for grim reading.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/new...nt_to_suicide_more_likely_to_die_the_same_way
It doesn't really matter what you do in truth as suicide is probably going to do damage to those left behind regardless. How you square that in your own mind though is down to you.
For me, it is as simple as my pain outweighs my love and strength of will to not do them harm.
