Suicide ISN'T selfish

I was having this intensely furious debate with a friend of mine who took the stand that suicide is selfish, and I was pulling out what little hair I have, trying to explain that it’s not.

Committing suicide is not selfish – and nowhere near selfish. Why do people use words so randomly? Selfish is a word that connotes a deeply venal person who is mean, nasty and hateful.

Suiciders are gentle, loving, broken people who’ve reached the end of their inner hurt.

Let’s take a walk down the Pain Road:

‘Mafia style’

They’ve sent a collector to you because you haven’t paid your … loan/debt/whatever. If you’re a guy, imagine getting hit in the balls. No, not hit, kicked. Hard. With one of those steel capped boots. Really effing hard, then, when you’re down, the collector bends down and grabs them in his huge meaty hand and squeezes your nuts while he’s grinning at you with his bad silver plated teeth.

I don’t know what your pain levels are, but I’m going to bet that that’s a bad pain, severe enough to make you run like Flash Gordon in the opposite direction if you ever set eyes on that collector again. In fact, if he wasn’t a ‘collector’, you’d bloody look for him and kill him.

I recently heard that in Kinoo Area in Nairobi, robbers and thieves smack watchmen repeatedly on the wrists, knees and shins, with thin pieces of wood. They don’t draw blood. They don’t mutilate. But apparently the pain is so bad that watchmen are found hobbled in the morning, curled up like infants, knee to chin in pain, unable to uncurl themselves let alone walk.

We hear of torture chambers and the evil things that happen in there that are all to do with PAIN. Breaking MEN with PAIN. Breaking men’s souls and spirits with physical PAIN. Wretched physical pain. The ‘good’ thing is that most of those who ended up in those cells, well, a while ago, not in the modern day – were spies - and dudes who had been trained for years on how to resist pain. And if all else failed and they felt the pain was unbearable and that they might give away ‘government’ or agency secrets -  they had a way out -  the cyanide filled ‘tooth’.

If things got too painful, they crunched down hard on the hollow below the fake tooth and burst the cyanide filled capsule and – well – committed suicide. Note: a Cyanide death is a painful death – it’s really painful. And yet the irony is that a cyanide death is less painful than the torture being meted out.

Now, I know pain.

Unfortunately, I was introduced to severe pain at a very young age and it’s dodged me most of my adult life, but nevertheless, I know what I’m talking about regarding physical pain. Something twists in the mind and goes ‘Pop!’ when physical pain is unbearable, hence in hospitals they hand out liberal doses of weed – sorry – morphine - to block the agony because the mind cannot bear certain pain levels and it shuts itself down.

People HAVE died of pain. The best thing about physical pain of any kind, the most FANTASTIC thing about PHYSICAL pain is that people give you sympathy. If you have crawled home with broken nuts after the collector beat you up on the street, your wife or girlfriend will sooth you, make crooning noises, get you hot water to bathe, heat your dinner, etc, and she’ll probably be relieved and sing ‘Halleluyah!’ to Jesus, because for a couple of nights you won’t badger her for sex.

But what if your pain was an EMOTIONAL pain?

In the article I dubbed the ‘Art of Kintsugi, I mentioned that the body cannot differentiate between emotional and physical pain. That’s a major truth. The other mind-blowing reality show is other people’s attitudes when friends have emotional pain.

Those other people disappear. . .

Or.. Those close to you become so like the collector up there, you can hardly tell the difference - they gloat in your face while you’re on the floor writhing with pain. It generally sucks like pure unadulterated stinky crap when you have emotional pain and 98% of your friends do not understand and write you off. Literary. ‘Deal with it’, ‘what’s your problem?’ , ‘do you think you’re the only one with a problem?’

No. I don’t. But right now, I’m hurting. Be kind.

Who can feel me? ADULTS are nasty. Sometimes I found hanging out with kids was so beautiful because they sit next to you and say absolutely nothing. Just sit and stare with you and feel with you and give you strange objects like stones or flowers that are half crushed and say simple words like , ‘you feel sad’, but they don't run away.

Adults can be mean.

Let’s take a 1 minute silence to think of that.

In the short description up there at the beginning about the Mafia hood, the collector is avoided. If you  see him walking towards you, fear rises up your throat like bile, and heck, your feet develop wings like Achilles and you zap round corners and out of sight! If you see a man walking down the road towards you with an aim to kill and mutilate and rob and rape you, what do you do? You run if you're wise - ask war torn refugees in any refugee camp.

Depression isn’t so easy to avoid.

Those prone to depression try. They really do. They try so hard, especially when they see depression sauntering towards them with an evil look of glee on it’s face. Punching meaty fist into it’s other equally meaty hand. Some of us can’t avoid depression. We try and run, we dodge, we hide, but we’re not good at holding at bay that capital D - you may, but those prone to depression sometimes don’t have the necessary tools, gadgets, apps or weapons to avoid depression. So, we try everything - we pay our debts, we do good in society, we clean and cook, we work hard in the office and leave at 9pm, we become overly religious, we’re fixers, jokers, the really ‘nice’ people who care, the ‘looser’ that goes the extra mile, we get a hobby, and if those don’t work, we turn to drugs, or alcohol, or substance abuse, or capsules, or cutting ourselves with razors, or . . . . anything. . .

We try anything and everything to flee from Depression.

But it keeps coming back.

Odd hours. Odd days.

Odd moments.

Sucker punches out of the blue.

And one day, when the pain is too unbearable, when the pain is too great and the heart breaks and there is NO HOPE of bouncing back, when one cannot take it anymore . . .

Suicide is not selfish.

When someone you know wants to talk, and all she or he needs is an ear -  Just give it.

Why you? I don’t know, but if they have reached out to you be honoured and take the time to listen.

Sit with them, don’t give advice, simply sit and give an ear.  

A kind word,

a hug,

 … empathy and your time may just keep one more person away from suicide.

Nyakio J. Munyinyi for the XpenSieve Report© 2014

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