English
PANEL 1:
— Every door in this room …
SFX: rattle rattle
PANEL 2:
… is locked …
PANEL 3:
… except this one.
PANEL 4:
HEADLINE: MAN KILLS SELF
— Did you hear? What a tragedy.
— Tragedy? He took the easy way out.
— Every door in this room …
SFX: rattle rattle
PANEL 2:
… is locked …
PANEL 3:
… except this one.
PANEL 4:
HEADLINE: MAN KILLS SELF
— Did you hear? What a tragedy.
— Tragedy? He took the easy way out.
~*~*This comment contains Triggers and describes different methods of Suicide. Please, read with caution.*~*~
It’s hard for me to understand how someone can say this, especially today. If it’s such an easy way out, then how come most people go out crying and alone? The twisted type of bravery it takes to make the decision to end your life is crazy, and only in the amount that it takes. To take that jump, to kick the chair, to swallow the pills or to slice open a vein that you know can’t be fixed is so insurmountable…so gigantic of a decision with so much pressure, knowing that you’re plunging into the oft theorized about, but unknown abyss….And once you add in religious beliefs, personal beliefs, friends, family, pets, school, work, and all of the things you’ve yet done and possibly will never do…it’s unfair to say this is easy. I know. I’ve been close, several times, but I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t able to because I had to believe there was more I could do in life and I knew I could one day get away from it all by just leaving and I did and it did get better.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to not do it either. It means that until you really can get out and away from the pain, whether it end by simply getting better one day or by the more likely fighting of tooth and nail and clawing your way out, this does mean that you have to turn away from the edge and force yourself to continue to live each day, which can be just as hard and takes another type of bravery. Because just life and moving forward is just as theorized about and just as unknown as the abyss.
Please read with caution.
When I attempted suicide a year and a half ago, one thing I noticed looking back was the amount of people who kept asking me ‘did you even think about how I would feel?’ It was staggering how much I had to hear about the pain and suffering I put on others, yet no one asked how they could help me. I’ve suffered from depression for many years. Tried therapy, drugs, even reaching out, yet the chances to get better dwindle and fade faster and faster. Is suicide the answer? I don’t know. After a while trying just becomes worse than not. With my depression I’ve fought it mostly alone. Even growing up when I screamed out, hurt myself, hurt others, no one did anything to actually help me. Just further lay down the guilt. So when it came time for me to try and end the pain, I was made further into a horrible monster. Suicide is a difficult choice to make. One I think is just the final chance for some peace. I know it will be for me.
No, suicide is not the answer. Things can get better, and sometimes they do, but that won’t happen if you’re not still here. You owe it to your future self to survive.
I was depressed every day from age 19 to 24, but with therapy and medication I was able to overcome it, and I’ve been off meds and free for 20 years now. Depression always lurks in the background, but it no longer dominates my life.
Every day I’m glad that I didn’t kill myself back then. I made the right decision more than 1800 days in a row. I hope that you also make the right decision for as long as you feel the need to make one.
Read with extreme caution. NSFW.
I’m a Marine. I don’t think I have any kind of chemical imbalance that causes my depression. My life has just had a lot of incidents that make me miserable. Things from as young as 3, all the way to now where my current age is 26. However, I’d never tried to kill myself until I was 24, and in Afghanistan during a deployment. I could probably write a novel about everything that I was going through, but I won’t. The extremely short version of my troubles is that I was being mentally abused by a very large handful of my leaders, working 16 hours a day 24/7 AND working so hard and well that all my juniors were left scratching their heads as to why I was being mistreated so often and openly.
I got to a point where I was ready to hurt myself just to get out of that hellish place, and more than anything else the hellish people who I hated so much I’d have felt less for their deaths than our so called enemies. The day I finally snapped I was actually reported by a junior that I was acting weird and that I was a suicide risk (I wasn’t until after they started treating me like a “weakling” by taking all my ammo and saying everything is going to be okay and how they’d get me to see the chaplain etc). I don’t think people with depression are weak. Nor do I think suicidal people are weak. That didn’t stop me from feeling INTENSE shame when they treated me like a suicide risk. In Military Culture, especially Marine Corps culture, you’re supposed to be tough. You’re supposed to never go to medical, you’re supposed to be stoic, you’re supposed to bottle everything up and “not be a bitch” about anything. You WILL be gossiped about if it get’s out that you’re getting help for anything, ESPECIALLY mental health, and if you walk in on people talking about you they’ll simply go from whispering to openly mocking you. Anyways, they took my ammo and told me to report to the tent with the camp commanders and wait to be seen by the chaplain. Instead I was ordered into a room with the companies leaders and screamed at for an earlier incident, told I was going to lose my rank not only for said incident, but for something I hadn’t done that very day. So I come out of that ass chewing feeling all of these conflicting emotions, anger, hatred, self hatred, disbelief that I’d fallen this far and many other feelings.
I got to speak to a Sgt who I hero worshiped before they were going to take my rank. The Sgt openly told me that I was being screwed for no reason other than being disliked, and that I should request a court marshal hearing. When I asked if he thought I had a chance of winning in court he laughed in my face and said “Hell no, the Colonel will tell you to fuck off, but hey at least you’d keep your pay for awhile since they’d have to wait until you finish the deployment before your court Marshall.” I lost all hope after that. I didn’t give a shit about the money I’d save or not save. The closer the moment drew to my NJP the more I thought about shooting myself. It wasn’t hard, they may have confiscated my ammo, but they gave me my rifle right back (idiots). Roughly an hour later I was ordered to take a trash bag out (they didn’t waste any time in beginning to treat me like a non NCO). I took the trash to the burn pit and then used the time between returning to the commanders tent to steal a single round from a sleeping Marine.
My initial plan was to shoot myself in the stomach, faking a suicide attempt and get the hell out of there.
When I started thinking about it though. . . the voice came. . .you all know that voice. It said “You worthless piece of shit! You’re REALLY thinking about FAKING a suicide attempt? There’s nothing wrong with you! Think about all the REALLY suicidal people in the world! Think about your comrades outside the wire worried about losing their legs at any given moment if they take a wrong step! You owe it to the REAL Marines to stick that barrel in your fucking mouth and pull the trigger! Do it!”
And I did. I went around the corner of the tent into a corner hidden by hesco walls, sat down, closed my eyes, put the barrel in my mouth and started squeezing the trigger. I could feel the pressure and the hammer moving more accurately than I ever could in my life. Tears poured out of my eyes out of nowhere, and I saw faces flashing in my minds eyes. Faces of all my closest friends, family, and a girl I loved at the time. . . I was also terrified of dying. I couldn’t finish squeezing the trigger.
So I waited until later. I aimed and shot at my stomach after the conclusion of an argument between me and the man who betrayed me in the Marines. I had saved his career and he had slandered my name in the whole unit to the point where people wouldn’t associate with me. I was medevac’d and sent to a mental hospital. After I told them every detail of what happened to me, they determined I had no mental problems whatsoever. EVERY SINGLE SHRINK I spoke to said that any man would have broke under my stress, and that frankly they were all shocked I hadn’t shot up the whole camp in a revenge rampage like FT Hood. Yet, when I asked them if they could help me by putting me in a different unit they all said they had no power to help me, I was sent back into the same viper pit and I had to endure even worse before I was finally let out. . .
Suicide is by no means an easy way out, and only blissfully ignorant people parrot that idiotic phrase.
Your story is utterly incredible and I have the utmost respect for your wisdom and tolerance.
PS: I love your display picture, and I love that I found it on a comic page about locked doors.
TRIGGER ALERT! explanation on the things i felt before and until now..
someone told me that i’m a coward for thinking on doing that. He even told me what about the people around me. They will suffer if i do ended up taking my own life… I don’t hate him from telling me those stuff because I know that is how usually people reacts… It really just saddens me more in my situation. How about me? I want to stop feeling this pain. It was already driving me crazy.. living is hell and I have to to live and suffer more just for others not to suffer? how about me? I already had enough. No one is really helping me…
I did planned taking my life on March 5, 2016.. it was just recently.. I was ready.. but something happened and I suddenly felt empty.. I panic on this emptiness.. I wanted to feel something and so i ended up cutting.. but only a few because my friends kept telling me to stop.. I feel guilty in cutting but I love the pain it gave me.. it made me feel alive… I stop cutting because they had said something that made me stop.. and also the fear of me losing them.. so I have to stop..
after that i feel irritated in small things. I can’t control my anger anymore. One small thing that a stranger do that pisses me off. I ended up shouting in anger… few days pass I ended having a extreme mood swing.. Angry and in a few minutes I suddenly felt sad and wanting to cry.. and a few hours my anxiety attacks.. and later I feel ok and another few minutes past i’m depressed again..
few days pass again.. I think that I feel that i’m going to be a psycho killer or something.. the urge of wanting to torture and killing someone.. but again days pass and the urge disappeared.. and now right now I feel all alone and I felt that no one understands me.. Im not really sure whats happening to me anymore.. and i’ve been using food for comfort.. I can’t control my budget anymore because of it.. and yet I keep on buying food just to feel okay.. especially whenever I have a headache, pain in the back of the neck and nausea.. whenever I eat the pain disappears..
why do you think games like Postal 2 and Hatred were released on the PC? so you can kill everyone in them and take a relief without the need to spill real blood over those who never deserved to live to begin with it!
and people call it a bad game because you kill people in it … for me it’s a stress releaser and i consider it a gem among the games
when i told my family i’m thinking about killing myself they said “grow up”
when i told my classmates they replied with “make sure not to make it painful” and laughed
when i told my teachers they said “focus on your studies”
when i told the internet they said “okay die already no one needs you alive anyways and no one will care after you die anyways”
everyone thinks i’m joking or begging for undeserved attention ….. and i do not do jokes i am bad with comedy ….
to hell with this world and those who live in it ….
I choose to sit in the room until I can open another door or it opens itself
But the room is always an echo chamber, so I can always hear the negative thoughts all the time.
I’m hoping to escape the labryinth soon, or at least find a point to take a breath.
More like the only way out
*trigger-suicidal thoughts, self-harm*
People call it the easy way out, I hate it. They don’t know how hard it is to deal with self-hate and intrusive thoughts, that make you think of jumping in front of a bus or train, or thoughts of slitting your wrist and bleeding out in bed while you try to sleep and hope you never wake up. They don’t know what it’s like to have little to no energy to even exist and just drag yourself around and do what you have to because your anxiety of failing or letting people down will haunt you if you don’t. They don’t know what it feels like to not feel as inspired or motivated to consume or engage in things you once loved, or what it’s like being on edge everyday and praying to God that you don’t get a random phone call telling you you’ve lost your family and there is nothing you can do about it. Living with fear and worry that something will go wrong, but at the same time not having the energy to even process that thought. They don’t know what it’s like to feel detached from everyone you love, and to feel emotionally numb, or what it’s like to hate yourself so much that you isolate yourself from them so you don’t burden them with your existence.
But when you finally open your mouth to explain your feelings, they just shut you down or undermine your experiences, saying you’re too sensitive or you’re too weak. At least I recognise the things I experience are definitely not normal and I want help to ease it all down. But I don’t even have the money to try and get a diagnosis talk less of the med to control it. Sometimes I even think I want to get a diagnosis so I can finally tell people that it isn’t me being sensitive or being rude or bad, that there is something causing me to act this way. But at the end of the day I can’t. And I ended up resorting to cutting, though I only do it when things get more overwhelming than it already is. I wouldn’t say it’s the pain that helps, but it’s just having to take care of the aftermath, having that form of control over something. And there are worse times that I just start thinking of suicide, of overdosing or slitting my wrist, but the guilt of hurting people is so overwhelming that it stops those thoughts, and sometimes the sudden desire to accomplish the goals and dreams I’ve had growing up stops it too, but then it turns into a cycle. It’s a battle on it’s own, and something you wouldn’t understand until you have experienced it yourself. I hate people who say suicide is the easy way out, but I wouldn’t wish these experiences on them.
I appreciate this chapter of this comic quite a bit. Over the past 3 years, I’ve gone from the vague “I wish I were dead” to the various stages of ideation. I have explained to various mental health providers that I am doing my best to find help, self advocate and try different treatments that become available to me. I continue, saying… I know myself pretty well, and there is going to come a point where I think I’m just going to need to stop, and try and end my life voluntarily. I’ve been asked why I don’t have a documented record of suicide attempts. I say I have long believed I have a variety of medical issues that can be identified, treated, and managed. I’m not expecting cures at this point- I’m too old for that. However, access to knowledgeable providers is a problem, a shortage of providers, and frankly, prejudice against patients with “chronic conditions” adds to that. When things get especially bad for me, I set dates for “life progression re-evaluation”. I say rather than going out right now, collecting tools for suicide and using them, why rush? Pick a date a few weeks to a season out and check then. If I still feel just as shitty, or worse by the time the date arrives, I can always pick up where I left off and go ahead with the suicide plan. This year, I actually have a concrete date, a plan and a location. I pretty much have used up the “safety plan”- people in my life to call, providers to contact, and facilities to go to. By this I mean I have tried that routine, and I think I have a good understanding of what it has to offer. I hope I will figure something else better than suicide. I can list the many things about life I appreciate and enjoy- I just no longer can mentally access them due to various health related issues. If I have no use for me, why should anyone else?