Suicide Is Permanent, Please Stay
Please Stay, Suicide Is Permanent
D. S. Mitchell
Just The Facts
If you are between 15-35, suicide is the second leading cause of death for your age group. For all age groups, suicide is responsible for more deaths than murder and natural disasters, combined. Men take their own lives four times as often as women. Many men sadly would rather be dead than seem ‘weak.’
Those Left Behind
As you can see, suicide is not a rare, or isolated event. It is very real and definitely permanent, and it leaves those who are left behind, in utter despair. For them the suicide event is plagued by stigma, guilt and self-recrimination. The most common question from those left behind is, “what could I have done differently?”
A Societal Contract
Suicide is like the tentacles of an octopus wrapping itself around all of us, casting doubt on hope, and future. It tears at our social fabric and brings into question society’s compact with the individual. Whether spoken or unspoken, we as people, are part of a greater society. As a society, we have agreed to a collective future, a means to provide for our children, to continue our culture, to sustain our existence at all cost. Jennifer Michael Hecht wrote, Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against it. And in her words, “Either the universe is a cold dead place with solitary sentient beings, or we are all alive together, committed to persevere.”
