You would never go up to a person with cancer and tell them that having cancer is selfish. So why would you say this to someone who is suicidal? They are not choosing to be suicidal, no more than someone with cancer chose to have cancer. Whenever I see someone call a suicidal person selfish, my blood immediately boils. As someone who was very suicidal for many years of their life, I’ve heard this phrase and seen other people write it. I never understood what the backlash was all about before someone explained it to me like this: telling someone that taking their own life is selfish is like telling someone that they should be more worried about how another person’s feelings are being affected, rather than focusing on making yourself feel better. Quite frankly, calling someone selfish for considering suicide is one of the most selfish things I have ever experienced. You are telling someone that for the sake of everyone around them, not for themselves, that they should just swallow everything that they are currently feeling. It is false. It is telling them to put up a front and act like everything is fine, when in my experience, nothing has been fine up to that point.
Depression and suicidal tendencies are as much an illness as any other disease of the body is. You can try to argue that it’s not as horrid as other physical diseases that you can see, but I would like to raise you this: What about the physical diseases that you can’t see? The sickle cell and diabetes? Are you really going to tell someone that their suffering, though you cannot see it, is invalid just because it’s invisible to you? So why do the same with a person with suicidal tendencies. Illnesses still exist even if you can’t see them. Do you think that people didn’t believe in the plague spreading just because they couldn’t see the actual disease itself floating around in the air and infecting people? No.
Internet, I am going to share something personal with you. I’ve had an extremely hard time since learning of the suicide of Chester Bennington, and not just because I also have suicidal tendencies. I am having a hard time because Linkin Park was my go to as a developing kid. Yes, I was one of those angsty middle schoolers who loved their music and went through an emo phase with them in mind. It never once occurred to me that anyone in the band might be struggling. It strikes me that he never told anyone. It strikes me that I was so enraptured with the band that I put them on a pedestal as godlike and above any of the measly problems of mortals. But they’re not. Celebrities really aren’t that much different from you or I. They struggle, they have passions, they have aspirations. You just don’t know them because you’re too busy viewing them as gods to realize that they can suffer too. Some of us even do that to our family and friends. So I would like to ask you, in the wake of this tragedy, not to call anyone selfish for the thoughts they might be having. Check up on your loved ones. Let them know you love them, and that you’re there for them. Because one day they might not be there, and you won’t get a second chance.
