Suicide isn't painless

There have been times in my life when I have thought, ‘Is it worth it?’

I have always managed to convince myself that, on balance, it is worth it.

I have had fleeting thoughts, no more than that, of ending it all but more often visions of just walking off into the sunset to do something, nothing, else.

The latter, being the more sensible choice, is no kind of choice at all because I soon realise the practical consequences of not having anywhere to live or anything to eat or wear.

That confirms to me that I am not desperate or sick enough to walk away from life in general and my life in particular.

Others are not so lucky.

Sadly, I have known a good few people who have ended their own lives.  Having given it some thought, there is a frighteningly large number of people I have known, or have come across, who have felt there was no alternative but to end it all.

People I went to school with, the children of the people I went to school with (in one instance, the same family), people I worked with and a few others too.  And in all bar one instance they seemed to be those with the most to live for and the last people you’d expect to kill themselves.

These things have stuck with me.

Life has a lot wrong with it and there have been long and frequent periods of mine where I have wondered what it was all about.  But something always told me that there was something worth hanging on for but I’ll accept there were times when it got close.  Despair was not total, though.

I am not an expert on suicide but my guess is that there are numerous reasons why someone would take their lives.

Mental illness is surely one.  The grey dog of depression, along with all manner of other debilitating conditions, takes away rationality.  As the illness is not taken seriously by society, little is done for those with low to middling mental health issues and only slightly more for those with crippling conditions.

And the society in which we live is another.  We still live in the stone age when it comes to sexuality and bigotry remains institutionalised.  It is still seen as something important when someone ‘comes out’, which I find incredible.  (I remember a friend’s son announced he was gay and a well-meaning person said, ‘I’ll bet you were disappointed to find that out!’)

And there are those which we will never know.

A friend of mine, many years ago, threw himself in the River Thames and drowned.  A brilliantly talented musician, very good looking and not a care in the world.  Two out of three, anyway.

We don’t need platitudes and statements of regret from the people who run our country, we need solutions and answers.

No one should feel that their life was worthless and meaningless enough to end it all.  Often I feel mine is both but there is enough hanging on for, isn’t there?

Investment in mental health services, general accessible 24 hour counselling available for nothing paid for by the taxpayer are both essentials if we think life is about more than just money.

Sadly, our society still remains rooted in the quagmire of Thatcherism where greed is good and sod everyone else as long as you are okay and the current Conservative government, enabled and assisted by the principle-free Liberal Democrats, makes things worse by the day.

One person who takes their own life is too many but sadly the powers-that-be talk sympathetically, but rely on society forgetting about it shortly afterwards.