On suicide
Self-destruction and its discontents
Content warning: Well, I should imagine it’s obvious.
I do think of it – how could you not? Camus said the central problem of philosophy was whether to commit suicide, although we all know it’s actually where we should get dinner tonight. Besides, if suicide is the central problem of philosophy it’s almost impossible to supply your reasoning after committing to an affirmative response.
Doctors say suicidal ideation is a sign of mental illness but at certain times it can seem a relief from it. Not least because that ideation often reveals suicide to in fact offer no actual solution; imagining it simply allows us to picture a response sufficient to the level of distress we are experiencing. In my case this is often related to the reception of my literary productions.
‘These bastards who reject my work,’ my mind goes, ‘They need to know how seriously I take this stuff.’ I’ve honestly thought about responding to some ‘We wish you the best with your work’ rote rejection with ‘Too late, because I’m dead, you rejected my play and now I’m dead and it’s all your fault’, and it’s only imagining this, rehearsing it in my head, which allows me to hear just how ridiculous it sounds.
That’s before we get onto what is surely the decisive argument against self-destruction, the existence of loved ones, in my case primarily a wife. It would be a moment of supreme egotism to permanently assert the fact of my unhappiness over her love for me, or that of my wider family and friends. And the other way round too – imagine that she left me and I killed myself, imagine giving her such a sense of power!
After all, I’ve been through break-ups before, and one of the sadnesses which lurks within them is that you can survive them; once you’ve failed to kill yourself out of one romantic disappointment, it doesn’t seem likely that you’ll be liable to do so for another. The pain lessens each time, and life has shown itself to go on. This means even your professions of romantic love acquire a slight level of performative irony - ‘I would die for you’ becomes ‘This bit at the beginning involves strong feelings.’
Perhaps this is why suicidality is often associated with adolescence; that sense of purity, of a last chance to refuse entry into adulthood’s inevitable compromises. Think of Richie Edwards’ lyrics for the Manic Street Preachers’ album ‘The Holy Bible’, so astringent, so haunted by images of snow and flowers. That sense of purity becomes much harder to maintain as you go on and make your choices, once you’ve acquired what DH Lawrence called your ‘bitter rind’. Once you’re past that green time, you can sometimes have a sense that suicide is a little, well, nostalgic.
Though I suspect older people kill themselves for different reasons than the young. In the ‘best’ case, a sense of completion, perhaps even satisfaction, at their mission on earth having been fulfilled. ‘I’ve done what I came here to do.’ And let’s here separate out those suicides committed in the face of terminal illness or declining quality of life; these kind of deaths, like the recent decision of Jean-Luc Godard to end his life at 91, become almost pragmatic ones and are often motivated by a sense that quality of life is in irreversible decline.
When we talk about the suicide of those in middle age, however, there seems to be another frequent trigger: Exhaustion.
When I think about doing myself in now - and I do emphasize that it’s not my intention - it is not as a response to some dreadful twist of fate but out of sheer bloody tiredness. The Black Tiredness, I call it, that kind of cascading utter shatteredness that leaves you flat on the back feeling completely drained, as if you’ve dredged every single thing up from inside yourself. It feels like a tiredness that can creep up on you, and before you know it’s overwhelmed your defences. It whispers to you that it offers a rest so complete and ongoing that all these difficulties and difficult people will just vanish and you never need deal with them again; it offers suicide as the ultimate nap. It’s easy to think that one day, when things seem acutely overwhelming, you might give in to that voice.
And it would have to do that, sneak in when your guard was down, for as I enter midlife suicide certainly seems to offer no coherent intellectual answer. At my age, squarely forty, you have already survived a good few crises, and that gives you confidence that you can survive more, even if life does seem to rack up the difficulty level of the crises it sends. It is a very dark thought that life involves witnessing the death of a great number of people you’ve ever loved or could love, and the more you cleave to life, the more death you will see, and darker still that that thought is entirely true. No wonder people try to shut themselves off from love.
But the big losses also begin to sort themselves out from the small ones. One thing that does seem to improve as you age is your SRT, Setback Recovery Rate – a rejection which once capsized you for days can now be cleanly absorbed on the way to the gym. The single best advice to me on dealing with setbacks was from an old friend who once told me, ‘That thing you’re worried about now – it’s highly unlikely you’re going to be worried about in ten years’. I’ve found these words tremendously useful as a simple trick in face of disappointment; I just picture myself ten years down the line and ask myself whether I’ll still be upset about this thing then. Almost always the answer is no.
I’m not sure I’m brave enough to kill myself either. It takes some mettle to go ahead with it, and on a practical level one reason I feel less of a candidate for suicide myself if that I’ve yet to find a potential method which doesn’t terrify me. We laugh at that Dorothy Parker poem (‘Guns aren’t lawful/Nooses give/Gas smells awful/You might as well live’) but it’s also one of the most coherent arguments against suicide ever constructed. And with any potential method, other people would have the aftermath to deal with, and all the horror of that. Perhaps the only way I could imagine being brave enough to do it was if I were able to just flip a switch marked ‘non-existence’, and even then I’d always want the option to flip it back.
Finally, I’d further rankle at becoming known as ‘the guy who committed suicide’, at having all my work, even this newsletter, read in that context. I wouldn’t want people getting the impression my life had been entirely full of misery or suffering and I am sure despite their final act many have committed suicide whose lives have been filled with joy. And what about the future - what if they ever built Crossrail 2?
No, I am resolved to battle on until nature has no choice but to eliminate me; whether out of pride, or stupidity, or deluded optimism, or a sense that there’s a lack of dignity to suicide in midlife – or, perhaps most deeply, a sense that for all the many motivations that can lead you to it, there’s no way not to make suicide a sad end. At my present stage of life, it would be hard for suicide not to represent a denial of possibility, an act of knowing better than life. And if you’ve lived for a while, life has almost certainly proved you wrong before.
Interesting topic, James. I suppose the thought has crossed most people's minds at one time or another. I have, thought it quickly passed, probably because of my own narcissism. But exploring why the thought occurred, or the root cause that set off the psychological crisis ... well, that involves some deep reflection and interpretation. Rejection, disappointment, death, long-term despair (depression), etc. Wouldn't mind giving this topic a more than passing thought. If it suits you, I'll jot down some thoughts and pass them along. Your friend, Jim (James).