It is probably unsurprising for anyone who has followed this blog in the past year, that this weekend I again tried to kill myself. Having been bullied at the work to the extent that my eyesight was damaged, having lost my house, ending up living with my parents at the age of 45 and in a job that is so low paid I am battling even to find a room to rent that I can afford anywhere near the job, you can imagine why I feel down. Living with my parents is hard. I am grateful that I am not homeless, but the things that randomly make them angry is a great difficulty. When I was being savaged for having parked in the dark a few centimetres over from where I was apparently supposed to be and told that keeping the neighbours happy was more important than me getting to work and that anyway I was nothing more than a 'child' and incapable of finding my way through London suburbs, it seemed like I had reached the end. I have been considering suicide since my teenage years and have failed twice before.
As a teenager, there was solace in identifying the right tree to use and where I would source the rope. Unfortunately following the 1987 hurricane, those woods are now blocked and marshy. I was able to find a substitute tree, with two nails already in it to which to lash the rope, which I carry around in my car. I managed to create a reasonable noose and get it over a branch. I imagine that anyone watching would have found it comic. Unfortunately the tree was on a steep river bank and I could not get the bucket I was going to kick away to stay upright. I tried to do it from the ground, but either I got the rope too long so there was no drop or too short so that I could not get my head up to it. I tried swinging away down the bank and while the rope cut into my neck, the drop was not sharp enough and I simply swung back. A passerby simply walked on rather embarrassed. Men attempting suicide is clearly such a common sight these days in the UK that it did not rouse his interest. My mother ridiculed me with 'oh, you've done that before'. This made me angry and I wanted to rush out and try again, simply to prove to her, that I can at least get something right.
It is incredible just how much criticism people feel is necessary to give you on a daily basis. My parents have become so emotionally withered that they simply see me as a failure and a burden and keep finding new ways of telling me how useless I am. They even blame me for their faults. It was they who actively encouraged me to buy a house when I was about to pull out, yet now they tell me that it was the gravest error that I made. They forget that without them I never would have taken that step. I know parents freeze you in time at age 15, and I guess many of us have to cope with that. They edit history to put themselves in the best light, they forget any of their mistakes but harp on about others years later. Five years ago my father gave my girlfriend a lift. She does not travel often in cars and was terrified by how fast he drove. She asked him to slow down and this is still brought up against her again and again. I am reminded about how much effort went in to organising the lift and that she should be grateful that she was driven around so dangerously. Her mistake in expressing her dismay is still held against her and probably will be forever more.
Suicide needs sustained courage. This is why people often get drunk or take drugs before trying to kill themselves. Having spent twenty minutes, trying to get a rope to the correct height, I was exhausted and that courage faded from me. I fell to the ground and simply sobbed for some time. The one thought that worried me was that my father would simply destroy my will which is among my belongings rather than lodged with a solicitor. This would have eliminated one consolation, that at least my things would go to my girlfriend and her son. I had always believed that suicide is easy. However, there are technical issues that I have overlooked. Last time I tried to hang myself, the hook from which I strung the rope snapped, dropping me to the floor. I tried a drugs overdose, but was persuaded out of that by the woman I was living with. It is clear I need to search for the right sort of tree. I guess this is why 'gallows' trees were so important, there are in fact very few that you can find that work perfectly, especially if you are doing it yourself. As I still have a car, it seems the best approach to try next is asphyxiation. The trouble with that is that it is slow and I worry that I will lack the courage to see it through. Whilst I despise guns, it would be far easier if there was access to them in the UK as at least then I could be certain that I would not end up in the ridiculous situation of struggling to kill myself.
As I have noted before, the problem of failing to kill yourself is that the problems still have to be dealt with when you get back. I have been advised that I am a waste of space. People want me out of their way and out of their lives. The trouble is, social constraints stop them helping that to become a reality. I am left humiliated and hopeless.
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suicide. Show all posts
Monday, 17 December 2012
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
On The Hill - Short Story
This story I have never shared with anyone, but it really shows where I was at at the end of the 1980s. My production of short fiction began to dry up in 1989, partly as I was coming up to finals and partly because I was deep in to writing 'The Karskoe Assassin'. In addition, I had been utterly shorn of all those wistful thoughts I had had before coming to university. Oxford remained untouched as the refuge, the fantasy you could visit, but all my hopes for the university experience I had imagined, were now dashed. I only got a 2:1 when I expected a first. I had had a nightmare of a time in West Germany where I had tried to hang myself and basically did not because I had received money from the EEC as it was then to study there and I thought I might as well drink what I had been given. I had drunk a hell of a lot and had made good friends, some I still know today, while over there which had been a consolation. Coming back to the UK I drank for 21 days without stopping, getting through at least 4 pints (2.72 litres - my limit before I start vomiting) each night in the hope it would kill me. Reflecting on that, given the 'Leaving Las Vegas' approach I adopted perhaps I got a good grade. I do think a huge blunder was to follow the advice of a tutor that I should read a quality newspaper every day as being such a slow reader, it took all morning and those hours would have been better spent in revision.
Anyway, I got diabetes and for someone who bobs along just outside being suicidal that seemed great news because it meant I had my own 'get out of jail free' card. All the complex planning I had been doing throughout my teenage and student years was no longer necessary. I knew that I could at least put myself into a coma if not kill myself simply by injecting the drugs I was prescribed. This story, then was both a celebration of this newly gained ability and also an attempt to explaint to those who see suicide as something so horrific, how different it can seem to those contemplating it. I have always seen it as a release, not a burden and I still think even 20 years later this story sums up my viewpoint.
On the Hill
He carefully checked the two envelopes for the last time and sealed them down. He laid them carefully on the back seat, the names written clearly in blue biro, face up. He stared briefly from the car park out over the fields of the valley below and the sandy, pine covered hill opposite where he sat.
He leant over to the glove compartment and pulled out the syringe and phial. He looked around guiltily but the car park was still empty. Though the day was sunny, it was a weekday, and early. He hoped no dog walkers would put in a sudden appearance. Quickly, his fingers twitching he rolled back the sleeve, piling the cloth of the shirt into a tight bundle just up from the elbow. His blood was rushing as he drew up the first of the injections.
He paused, like most of us he loathed syringes. Then again he reminded himself of all the alternatives his mind had conjured up as he lay sleepless and sticky, staring at the dark ceiling. He ran through the gallery of images of his corpse that he had drawn in his mind over many months. The falls from tall, always old buildings, swinging from a rope suspended above a stairwell, his ankles banging against the metal bnnisters, and the fantasy of the discarded pistol. They were all there, from the blends of death and vodka to the grotesque flaming body. He had wanted private deaths and public ones too. He sighed once more. This had presented him the best way, a little in local papers, possibly an air of mystery, not much pain, it had it all.
He pushed the needle in. It was not much to face to achieve all that. He reckoned he needed three of these shots. He pushed down the plunger. he was already on the way. Still the choking, clinging depression hung around his sides, shoulders and back. It was such a tight coat that he had even forgotten to think what life could be without the gloom. It made everything so futile. All the alternative routes for the years ahead came up against walls. His imagination ran down paths like a rat, dodging obstacles trying to come up with something not unbearable. Even when he found something vaguely viable, something reminded him that it would fail always kicked in. The past was regret, the future was fear. Now was only the road between the two.
He pumped the other two doses in quickly. Satisfied he packed the phial and syringe back into the glove compartment and locked it. He waited, breathing gently, but he could feel not change yet. He was glad as there were still things to do, even with this fast acting stuff there were a few last minutes. He lay all the keys on the passenger seat and stepped out of the car. He held the door handle up as he slammed the door shut. Everything was locked inside, nothing in there could halt the process now, but he wanted to make sure that in weakness he would not try to drag something from there, beg for respite from the seat covers, for a second chance at the dashboard.
He ran away from the car, activity would speed the process. The drug was pushed on its way by his heart. He slowed and wandered down the slope, past the line of the trees out onto the wide field expanse of the hill. The grass was long and yellowy green as it stretched away from him.
He felt release, now there were no longer worries of being alone, no concerns about money, the terror of the drudge of work slipped from his mind. He stood there feeling the slight breeze through his favourite shirt and baggy trousers. There were few sounds. He felt joy, the shackles had gone. Worry was lifted from him, left behind with his life in the locked car. He smiled. His views were confirmed, he knew there was no god nor devil clutching at him, as his superstitions had falsely warned him there would be. This was the life he had been unable to imagine, contained in moments but enough for ever.
He could feel the faint buzz in his blood, the metallic taste in his mouth, the metallic whine rising in his ears as the drug took hold for the last time. As the patches of colour grew before his eyes he staggered a few more steps with the long grass shoots snatching after his calves. He was drunk on the sensation. He had his fill every moment.
His body fell backwards into the deep grass, his breathing was quickly fading, but he had already gone.
Anyway, I got diabetes and for someone who bobs along just outside being suicidal that seemed great news because it meant I had my own 'get out of jail free' card. All the complex planning I had been doing throughout my teenage and student years was no longer necessary. I knew that I could at least put myself into a coma if not kill myself simply by injecting the drugs I was prescribed. This story, then was both a celebration of this newly gained ability and also an attempt to explaint to those who see suicide as something so horrific, how different it can seem to those contemplating it. I have always seen it as a release, not a burden and I still think even 20 years later this story sums up my viewpoint.
On the Hill
He carefully checked the two envelopes for the last time and sealed them down. He laid them carefully on the back seat, the names written clearly in blue biro, face up. He stared briefly from the car park out over the fields of the valley below and the sandy, pine covered hill opposite where he sat.
He leant over to the glove compartment and pulled out the syringe and phial. He looked around guiltily but the car park was still empty. Though the day was sunny, it was a weekday, and early. He hoped no dog walkers would put in a sudden appearance. Quickly, his fingers twitching he rolled back the sleeve, piling the cloth of the shirt into a tight bundle just up from the elbow. His blood was rushing as he drew up the first of the injections.
He paused, like most of us he loathed syringes. Then again he reminded himself of all the alternatives his mind had conjured up as he lay sleepless and sticky, staring at the dark ceiling. He ran through the gallery of images of his corpse that he had drawn in his mind over many months. The falls from tall, always old buildings, swinging from a rope suspended above a stairwell, his ankles banging against the metal bnnisters, and the fantasy of the discarded pistol. They were all there, from the blends of death and vodka to the grotesque flaming body. He had wanted private deaths and public ones too. He sighed once more. This had presented him the best way, a little in local papers, possibly an air of mystery, not much pain, it had it all.
He pushed the needle in. It was not much to face to achieve all that. He reckoned he needed three of these shots. He pushed down the plunger. he was already on the way. Still the choking, clinging depression hung around his sides, shoulders and back. It was such a tight coat that he had even forgotten to think what life could be without the gloom. It made everything so futile. All the alternative routes for the years ahead came up against walls. His imagination ran down paths like a rat, dodging obstacles trying to come up with something not unbearable. Even when he found something vaguely viable, something reminded him that it would fail always kicked in. The past was regret, the future was fear. Now was only the road between the two.
He pumped the other two doses in quickly. Satisfied he packed the phial and syringe back into the glove compartment and locked it. He waited, breathing gently, but he could feel not change yet. He was glad as there were still things to do, even with this fast acting stuff there were a few last minutes. He lay all the keys on the passenger seat and stepped out of the car. He held the door handle up as he slammed the door shut. Everything was locked inside, nothing in there could halt the process now, but he wanted to make sure that in weakness he would not try to drag something from there, beg for respite from the seat covers, for a second chance at the dashboard.
He ran away from the car, activity would speed the process. The drug was pushed on its way by his heart. He slowed and wandered down the slope, past the line of the trees out onto the wide field expanse of the hill. The grass was long and yellowy green as it stretched away from him.
He felt release, now there were no longer worries of being alone, no concerns about money, the terror of the drudge of work slipped from his mind. He stood there feeling the slight breeze through his favourite shirt and baggy trousers. There were few sounds. He felt joy, the shackles had gone. Worry was lifted from him, left behind with his life in the locked car. He smiled. His views were confirmed, he knew there was no god nor devil clutching at him, as his superstitions had falsely warned him there would be. This was the life he had been unable to imagine, contained in moments but enough for ever.
He could feel the faint buzz in his blood, the metallic taste in his mouth, the metallic whine rising in his ears as the drug took hold for the last time. As the patches of colour grew before his eyes he staggered a few more steps with the long grass shoots snatching after his calves. He was drunk on the sensation. He had his fill every moment.
His body fell backwards into the deep grass, his breathing was quickly fading, but he had already gone.
Thursday, 19 June 2008
What Would I Do Differently If I Lived My Life Again
I remember back in the 1980s in a Sunday magazine there would be a column about 'What I Wish I Knew When I Was Eighteen' and this post is similar though for me it goes back before that age. To some extent it was also influenced by the movie 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) an incredibly bleak movie (though it is now on to its second sequel). In contrast to the Catholic-orientated focus of Hollywood movies since the 1960s which I have commented on before, it has a more Calvinist, predestination approach that harks back to the Film Noir genre of the 1940s. It is a counterpoint to 'Groundhog Day' (1993). 'Groundhog Day' argues that if you work hard and keep persisting you can turn around a grim existence into something better. In 'The Butterfly Effect' in contrast, the main character has the chance to go back and alter parts of his past and tries to improve things for the people around him and in fact makes it worse and worse on each occasion, more get abused and injured and he is increasingly disabled. Ultimately he goes back to being in the womb and strangles himself with his umbilical cord and then it shows removing himself from the equation actually makes loads of people's lives better. Many of us feel that we are actually a discomfort to the world. However, that perception that your whole life from birth is not only a waste but actually damaging is pretty hard to swallow. I tend more to the 'Groundhog Day' approach and feel that with greater insight or even simply taking more time to consider things then I could have led a much better life.
The factor that confuses the issue is that the key way I would have lived my life differently is probably have to have killed myself when I was a teenager. I did not have a happy childhood but it just got worse afterwards. I know it would have upset my parents but given how they went on to humiliate me utterly and cause me to be ill in the subsequent years, I doubt they would have missed me long. Of course with me out of the way my younger brother may have suffered more such damage, but given his more laid-back attitude maybe it would have impacted on him less. I would hope that with my death my parents would have realised that they had been making my life unhappy and would have felt remorse, it is the least they deserve, though I doubt it would have affected them much or for long.
Of course, as has been proven in recent months, I lack the courage for suicide. I think that given the high rate of suicides among teenage boys in the UK, if I was going to be able to do it, I would have done it and so it would have happened for real by now anyway. If I cannot bring myself to do it as an adult with access to so many more means, then I was unlikely to do it when I was 12. So, assuming I bottled out then and stayed alive. What things would I have done differently. One thing is I would hope to have quite a lot more courage. I have noted before how fear has stopped me going to and seeing so many places and certainly stopped me having success with women. Even if I was courageous on say one out of ten occasions that I lacked courage, then I think my life would have been a lot richer and a lot happier. I never seemed to lack courage in standing up to my parents and that simply led to more condemnation from them and greater humiliation at their hands, but standing up for what I believed in at school and elsewhere would probably have helped me, it may though, have led to even more bullying. Given that I got bullying at all levels of my school life right up to when I was 18, I guess it could not have been any worse and appearing tougher may have scared off other bullies.
Though I think I would have benefited from being more courageous, I think I would have saved a lot of time, discomfort and money by realising what I was not able to do. As I have written before I was useless as judo, canoeing, fencing, go, aikido, ten-pin bowling and Chinese all things I took courses in, sometimes repeatedly for absolutely no benefit. I could have put my efforts into things that I have had more success at, generally nothing sports or language related.
I was unfortunate when a teenager to witness men on at least two different occasions being utterly humiliated when they asked women out. This scared me away from doing this and at least on five occasions I walked away from women who were asking me out. Of course, you are not going to succeed on every occasion and even when I gained some courage I offended one woman so much by asking her to go out with me that she demanded an apology. However, if I actually had had more dates and break-ups and new relationships, then I would a) have become more adept at doing it and b) more immune to the embarrassment it can bring. Of course I could not have removed the scars on my body which made me feel so awkward, but I would have sooner realised that women do not really give a damn about such things if the man treats them properly and seems to have had some confidence. I also think that if I had had sex before I was 34, then I would not have run into the problems with women despising a virgin in his 30s. There were certainly women when I was 18-21 who would have slept with me but I walked away from because I felt so inadequate. If I had more courage I would have also contested other men for them, rather than simply giving up on a woman when I saw another man interested in the vicinity. I also wish I had learnt far quicker to forget about the women I fancied in my youth and not agonise over what might have been. Also I wish I had understood that we are not living in a Jane Austen novel and women pay no attention to little notes of affection, these days they want to be asked directly. I wish I had joined a dating agency in 1994 when I first moved to London rather than waited five years. I had more success by far when I did than before and I could have had a great deal more in that mid-1990s period when okay I was not rich, but I was younger (27-32 in 1994-9), of course if I had had sex earlier and more confidence with women, then it would have increased my chances even more, but as it was I could have had a lot more dates (something I thoroughly enjoy), in a city I love, London, with so much to see and do there that is better with someone than alone. In general I wish I had had the courage just to ask women I fancied out rather than agonising over it until they found someone else. Usually the rejections have not been painful.
I certainly wish I had studied different subjects at school. I would have worked far harder at Chemistry and Physics and taken German rather than Latin, though given my difficulty with languages the outcome would have been little different. I certainly should not have taken English 'A' Level (which I failed first time and only scraped through on retake), I should have gone for Law and then applied for a Law degree and got a job in the law. It is an area which fits my personality and I would not have had the many years (up until I was 33) of earning less than £10,000 or periods of unemployment. Once at university I would have worked a lot less than I did. I worked incredibly hard, in the library most days until 9pm when it closed, and yet I still only got a 2:1 degree. I could have got the same and had more socialising and getting on with women rather than day-dreaming about them.
I wish I had never thought I could be a teacher. Taking a TEFL course was an error, partly done to keep my parents off my back, but it was clear I was useless at it and imagining myself in some remote East European city teaching English filled me with fear. Trying to be a school teacher was even worse. Even if I had not failed the course, the job would have stressed me out so much as to probably have led me to retirement from illness by now. Of course, if I had studied Law, then I would not have ended up in this awkward position. The alternative was to get into the civil service sooner than I did. Of course if that letter from the Inland Revenue had not been disposed of by my useless flatmate, I would have been at the exam and be a tax inspector by now, so even opportunities to get back on track failed.
Housing of course has been a bane of my life throughout. It was always something that alarmed me especially when applying to university. On each occasion I seem to have picked a place with a bad landlord/lady, in Coventry, in Oxford, in Norwich, in Milton Keynes, in all of these places I had to move on. Maybe it is simply that such a high percentage of landlords/ladies are bad and that I could not escape having troublesome ones. In recent years it has got worse as outlined on this blog, but in those cases there was little property to choose between. Of course I should have sold my London flat before they started dumping £14,000 charges on me, but that would have been counter to all the advice I had been receiving about renting out property up until then. Certainly in terms of flatmates I would have been far, far more careful, particularly in terms of the complete nightmare in London a man who stole and broke almost everything he came into contact, sub-let the living room and threw litter at our neighbours. I just wished I had waited for the woman who was coming to see me after him. I am very bad at picking people. Every removal company I have ever used has been terrible, even though in Milton Keynes, there is a large selection of decent ones. I always pick the worst from any list and so if I lived my life again I would rely on other people's opinions much more.
If I lived my life again I would buy far fewer non-fiction books and far fewer computer games. I tend to buy both as retail therapy and then they just gather dust. I have a few computer games I replay repeatedly over the years. Not buying these things, not drinking coffee daily from the cafe would have saved me thousands of pounds over the year (I had spent over £2080 on coffee at work since I joined the company in Summer 2005, which I could have made myself in my office). This money would have gone into holidays to places I want to visit and still have not done such as Budapest, Florence, Lyons, St. Petersburg and Japan.
If I lived my life again and had the chance, I would have gone to the weddings in Germany and Malta that I was invited to but bottled out of attending. They would have been fun or at least an experience to talk about. I could have attended the one in Scotland too if I had not done the TEFL course which started the day of the wedding (a Monday, unusually). On one-off incidents, I wish I had not taken the bus back from Coventry to the party in Oxford and stayed the night with the woman who had invited me. I had walked away from her when we had been on a date two years earlier when another man interested in her had shown up and started making advances (the whole relationship had been very hesitant as I never had the courage to tell her how I felt about her, and her friend said that because I was two years older, I was too old for her) and staying that evening would either had re-ignited the relationship or it would have snapped me out of the wistful way I thought about her for a decade later. I knew she was popular, but if she had told me right out, 'no', then I could have moved on. I almost jumped off the bus when it came to a stop and ran back, but it seemed too movie-like at the time. I have always been too romantic in an ineffectual drippy way and not in a robust, actually achieving something way.
I wish I had heeded the advice in 'The Guardian' in about 2003 about never going on holiday with your girlfriend. Every holiday doing that has been a huge mistake and usually ended the relationship. Weekends away are safe, but anything long is fatal and led to lots of heartache.
There are very few things in my life that I am proud of that I would repeat if I lived my life again. Of course, putting all these variations in would mean I would not encounter many of the circumstances, though, for example, in the case of housing, I am sure I would have had equally as bad landlords/ladies just with different names and houses. If I still ended up in certain circumstances in my re-lived life again then I would happily do them again. The first is help a woman with a child in her hands pull an elderly man who had fallen off the back of a canal boat in a lock on the Oxford Canal, out of the water. The second is, dissuade a woman who had been living with a man for many years, from trying to seduce me or trying to have sex with me. She went back to him and confessed her attempted infidelity, not something I advised, but a consequence of discouraging her from trying to have a sexual relationship with me. Obviously it would have meant sex a few years earlier than I got it, but I am morally proud of me getting her to do the right thing and remain faithful (ten years later they are still married).
I do not think my existence has harmed people. It has disappointed a lot of people, but in fact in most cases they have probably found better outcomes not being intimate with me than if they had done. For me though if I lived my life again, I would strive for a wider range of experiences at an earlier age, leading to a fuller engagement with adulthood at an earlier period (17-22 rather than 34-8) based on a better career plan and a mixture of greater caution and greater courage (I think the two go hand-in-hand as with the flatmate and removal company, having the courage to say 'no, you are useless, I want someone else'). However, I cannot get over the fact that actually removing me from the system would benefit a lot of people. I would not be taking up the job that someone could better use than me to lead a successful life. I suppose if it comes down to it, I do feel like 'The Butterfly Effect' character, if you feel your life is invalid then the best option will appear never to have started it.
The factor that confuses the issue is that the key way I would have lived my life differently is probably have to have killed myself when I was a teenager. I did not have a happy childhood but it just got worse afterwards. I know it would have upset my parents but given how they went on to humiliate me utterly and cause me to be ill in the subsequent years, I doubt they would have missed me long. Of course with me out of the way my younger brother may have suffered more such damage, but given his more laid-back attitude maybe it would have impacted on him less. I would hope that with my death my parents would have realised that they had been making my life unhappy and would have felt remorse, it is the least they deserve, though I doubt it would have affected them much or for long.
Of course, as has been proven in recent months, I lack the courage for suicide. I think that given the high rate of suicides among teenage boys in the UK, if I was going to be able to do it, I would have done it and so it would have happened for real by now anyway. If I cannot bring myself to do it as an adult with access to so many more means, then I was unlikely to do it when I was 12. So, assuming I bottled out then and stayed alive. What things would I have done differently. One thing is I would hope to have quite a lot more courage. I have noted before how fear has stopped me going to and seeing so many places and certainly stopped me having success with women. Even if I was courageous on say one out of ten occasions that I lacked courage, then I think my life would have been a lot richer and a lot happier. I never seemed to lack courage in standing up to my parents and that simply led to more condemnation from them and greater humiliation at their hands, but standing up for what I believed in at school and elsewhere would probably have helped me, it may though, have led to even more bullying. Given that I got bullying at all levels of my school life right up to when I was 18, I guess it could not have been any worse and appearing tougher may have scared off other bullies.
Though I think I would have benefited from being more courageous, I think I would have saved a lot of time, discomfort and money by realising what I was not able to do. As I have written before I was useless as judo, canoeing, fencing, go, aikido, ten-pin bowling and Chinese all things I took courses in, sometimes repeatedly for absolutely no benefit. I could have put my efforts into things that I have had more success at, generally nothing sports or language related.
I was unfortunate when a teenager to witness men on at least two different occasions being utterly humiliated when they asked women out. This scared me away from doing this and at least on five occasions I walked away from women who were asking me out. Of course, you are not going to succeed on every occasion and even when I gained some courage I offended one woman so much by asking her to go out with me that she demanded an apology. However, if I actually had had more dates and break-ups and new relationships, then I would a) have become more adept at doing it and b) more immune to the embarrassment it can bring. Of course I could not have removed the scars on my body which made me feel so awkward, but I would have sooner realised that women do not really give a damn about such things if the man treats them properly and seems to have had some confidence. I also think that if I had had sex before I was 34, then I would not have run into the problems with women despising a virgin in his 30s. There were certainly women when I was 18-21 who would have slept with me but I walked away from because I felt so inadequate. If I had more courage I would have also contested other men for them, rather than simply giving up on a woman when I saw another man interested in the vicinity. I also wish I had learnt far quicker to forget about the women I fancied in my youth and not agonise over what might have been. Also I wish I had understood that we are not living in a Jane Austen novel and women pay no attention to little notes of affection, these days they want to be asked directly. I wish I had joined a dating agency in 1994 when I first moved to London rather than waited five years. I had more success by far when I did than before and I could have had a great deal more in that mid-1990s period when okay I was not rich, but I was younger (27-32 in 1994-9), of course if I had had sex earlier and more confidence with women, then it would have increased my chances even more, but as it was I could have had a lot more dates (something I thoroughly enjoy), in a city I love, London, with so much to see and do there that is better with someone than alone. In general I wish I had had the courage just to ask women I fancied out rather than agonising over it until they found someone else. Usually the rejections have not been painful.
I certainly wish I had studied different subjects at school. I would have worked far harder at Chemistry and Physics and taken German rather than Latin, though given my difficulty with languages the outcome would have been little different. I certainly should not have taken English 'A' Level (which I failed first time and only scraped through on retake), I should have gone for Law and then applied for a Law degree and got a job in the law. It is an area which fits my personality and I would not have had the many years (up until I was 33) of earning less than £10,000 or periods of unemployment. Once at university I would have worked a lot less than I did. I worked incredibly hard, in the library most days until 9pm when it closed, and yet I still only got a 2:1 degree. I could have got the same and had more socialising and getting on with women rather than day-dreaming about them.
I wish I had never thought I could be a teacher. Taking a TEFL course was an error, partly done to keep my parents off my back, but it was clear I was useless at it and imagining myself in some remote East European city teaching English filled me with fear. Trying to be a school teacher was even worse. Even if I had not failed the course, the job would have stressed me out so much as to probably have led me to retirement from illness by now. Of course, if I had studied Law, then I would not have ended up in this awkward position. The alternative was to get into the civil service sooner than I did. Of course if that letter from the Inland Revenue had not been disposed of by my useless flatmate, I would have been at the exam and be a tax inspector by now, so even opportunities to get back on track failed.
Housing of course has been a bane of my life throughout. It was always something that alarmed me especially when applying to university. On each occasion I seem to have picked a place with a bad landlord/lady, in Coventry, in Oxford, in Norwich, in Milton Keynes, in all of these places I had to move on. Maybe it is simply that such a high percentage of landlords/ladies are bad and that I could not escape having troublesome ones. In recent years it has got worse as outlined on this blog, but in those cases there was little property to choose between. Of course I should have sold my London flat before they started dumping £14,000 charges on me, but that would have been counter to all the advice I had been receiving about renting out property up until then. Certainly in terms of flatmates I would have been far, far more careful, particularly in terms of the complete nightmare in London a man who stole and broke almost everything he came into contact, sub-let the living room and threw litter at our neighbours. I just wished I had waited for the woman who was coming to see me after him. I am very bad at picking people. Every removal company I have ever used has been terrible, even though in Milton Keynes, there is a large selection of decent ones. I always pick the worst from any list and so if I lived my life again I would rely on other people's opinions much more.
If I lived my life again I would buy far fewer non-fiction books and far fewer computer games. I tend to buy both as retail therapy and then they just gather dust. I have a few computer games I replay repeatedly over the years. Not buying these things, not drinking coffee daily from the cafe would have saved me thousands of pounds over the year (I had spent over £2080 on coffee at work since I joined the company in Summer 2005, which I could have made myself in my office). This money would have gone into holidays to places I want to visit and still have not done such as Budapest, Florence, Lyons, St. Petersburg and Japan.
If I lived my life again and had the chance, I would have gone to the weddings in Germany and Malta that I was invited to but bottled out of attending. They would have been fun or at least an experience to talk about. I could have attended the one in Scotland too if I had not done the TEFL course which started the day of the wedding (a Monday, unusually). On one-off incidents, I wish I had not taken the bus back from Coventry to the party in Oxford and stayed the night with the woman who had invited me. I had walked away from her when we had been on a date two years earlier when another man interested in her had shown up and started making advances (the whole relationship had been very hesitant as I never had the courage to tell her how I felt about her, and her friend said that because I was two years older, I was too old for her) and staying that evening would either had re-ignited the relationship or it would have snapped me out of the wistful way I thought about her for a decade later. I knew she was popular, but if she had told me right out, 'no', then I could have moved on. I almost jumped off the bus when it came to a stop and ran back, but it seemed too movie-like at the time. I have always been too romantic in an ineffectual drippy way and not in a robust, actually achieving something way.
I wish I had heeded the advice in 'The Guardian' in about 2003 about never going on holiday with your girlfriend. Every holiday doing that has been a huge mistake and usually ended the relationship. Weekends away are safe, but anything long is fatal and led to lots of heartache.
There are very few things in my life that I am proud of that I would repeat if I lived my life again. Of course, putting all these variations in would mean I would not encounter many of the circumstances, though, for example, in the case of housing, I am sure I would have had equally as bad landlords/ladies just with different names and houses. If I still ended up in certain circumstances in my re-lived life again then I would happily do them again. The first is help a woman with a child in her hands pull an elderly man who had fallen off the back of a canal boat in a lock on the Oxford Canal, out of the water. The second is, dissuade a woman who had been living with a man for many years, from trying to seduce me or trying to have sex with me. She went back to him and confessed her attempted infidelity, not something I advised, but a consequence of discouraging her from trying to have a sexual relationship with me. Obviously it would have meant sex a few years earlier than I got it, but I am morally proud of me getting her to do the right thing and remain faithful (ten years later they are still married).
I do not think my existence has harmed people. It has disappointed a lot of people, but in fact in most cases they have probably found better outcomes not being intimate with me than if they had done. For me though if I lived my life again, I would strive for a wider range of experiences at an earlier age, leading to a fuller engagement with adulthood at an earlier period (17-22 rather than 34-8) based on a better career plan and a mixture of greater caution and greater courage (I think the two go hand-in-hand as with the flatmate and removal company, having the courage to say 'no, you are useless, I want someone else'). However, I cannot get over the fact that actually removing me from the system would benefit a lot of people. I would not be taking up the job that someone could better use than me to lead a successful life. I suppose if it comes down to it, I do feel like 'The Butterfly Effect' character, if you feel your life is invalid then the best option will appear never to have started it.
Friday, 7 March 2008
The Trouble After Suicide Fails Is That You Still Have To Face Life
One reason why I have not been blogging much recently is because I have been facing pressures: severe ill-health during my first holiday since 2005 and now bad news about my employment prospects. I suppose I should have not expected any more. In this age we should expect to have to have twenty plus jobs in our lives. I have been fortunate that at a time when 2 year contracts or less are the norm, my last job went on for 4.5 years and this one will reach 4 years too if I complete the latest contract in August 2009. For a man in his twenties, two years is probably enough in a post, but as I age it gets harder, exacerbated by having to move across England and then move house twice more during the 2 years 7 months that I have had this current job. Anyway, yesterday it was revealed to us that the company had found out it was doing worse than it thought and was looking at cutting jobs. Of course the high ups will be unaffected they always are and will not even see a pay cut. The most vulnerable are people like me, the contract workers. They do not need to pay redundancy money they just do not re-employ us. This means another move and now of course I have to sell the house (the value of which is falling) which could easily take 5 months or more given it took 7 months to get in here. My industry is not one with jobs everywhere so I will be back on the road again. The longest I have spent in one town was 6 years in London and it looks like the average is about 4 years. Anyway, I just could not face the uncertainty, the need to keep on applying for jobs (I usually get 1 interview for every 25 applications I make and 1 job for every 125 applications, that is hours and hours of filling in forms) all made worse by now being over 40 (my insurance companies keep telling me this fact and why it means my premiums have to rise).
You will not be surprised to find that all of this simply made me tired with life and I began taking an overdose of prescription medicine last night. Of course I bottled it (for non-UK readers, I lost the courage to finish it off), I made the mistake of not getting drunk first and having watched a particularly bleak episode of the science fiction series 'Torchwood' this week about a man brought back to life, I became terrified of what lurked waiting for me beyond life. Initially it had felt really relaxing and I had no desire to write a note or anything, just to get away from all the stuff piling on my head. Today I feel incredibly cowardly that I am still here, extremely weak in terms of my resolve and so rather than yesterday when I felt courageous I now despise myself even more. I do feel rather numb which is quite a good sensation because the big problem of failing to kill yourself is that you still have to face up to all the rubbish you were trying to leave behind and that is where I am now, but the fear of unemployment and the house respossession that would inevitably fail, the need to throw away so many of my possessions so I could fit into a flat I could afford and give up what I have accumulated in my life, is dulled now, though of course it has not gone away and is still to be faced.
They say unemployment has fallen from the 4 million out of work of the 1980s down to somewhere like 1.6 million people these days. However, I think there is a lot of missing unemployment, unreported and also for people like me, underemployment in the sense that my next job is unlikely to pay sufficient to keep the house. How foolish I was to fall for the pressure and the lure of buying the house, and how incredibly quickly (it is just over 3 months since we moved in) that it is all coming apart. This is my moment of being truly middle class, it is likely to expire in 17 months if not sooner. Men are obsolete, the new jobs being created are low paid and unappealing. What a waste of government money all my education was in that it cannot keep me in a decent job and in my house. I should have simply left school at 16 and I would be in no different position now. I would probably have had fewer experiences, but so many of them have been about stress and pressure, I would have given up the bulk of them. I can see why the suicide rate among young men in the UK is so high, there is nothing to live for. If you are lucky you will get a decent life for a few years, but then it will evaporate sooner or later and certainly when you retire if not before. How dare people try to stop young men exiting the so bleak existence that lies before the bulk of them.
This was another point which angered me. My housemate got angry that I would kill myself in my own house with a 6-year old living here. For a start I reserve the right to kill myself in my own house and no-one is going to stop that. Second, I have ended up as de facto father figure to this child (you cannot avoid it, beware of this two adults plus child, no matter what the relationship, end up being perceived as the parents no matter how badly qualified one or other is for the role. I imagine it even applies with two people of the same sex living in the house but it is even easier if you are a different gender to the real parent) and apparently that means I cannot kill myself. That is ridiculous, the strongest woman I ever knew had had both her father and uncle kill themselves and it made her outward going and intelligent and incredibly well travelled. The reason behind this is because children who come from two-parent families are too weak to live in this modern world. Only children from single parent families stand any chance these days. They are not pandered to and early on they learn to be tough and resourceful. If I had not been brought up by two parents I am sure I could cope far better with the situations I am facing. It is rubbish to say families need fathers; two parent families are unsuitable for western society in the twenty-first century and that 6-year old would be better off without some pretend father.
So where does this leave me now? Well, I guess the numbness will wear off and the fear of the future will return. Also massive regret over so many things I have done wrong. Every decision I seem to have made since 2005 has been a big error. Leaving my old permanent post for a contract job in more expensive region of the UK was a major mistake especially as they reneged on three-quarters of the relocation expenses I had been promised. The second thing was not to downsize immediately and try to keep the space I had previously enjoyed, that is impossible in South-East England. I picked two wrong houses to rent. They initially seemed good but the behaviour of the landlords cut the ground from beneath me and costs thousands of pounds in moving and moving again let alone a lot of stress. Of course the house purchase was handled very poorly, getting so little for my London flat, paying so much for this house and getting a fixed-rate mortgage when interest rates were at their peak. Done differently I could have got £5-10,000 more out of the deal and not eaten up all my savings for a house I will not see two years in and that money could have tided me over the period of unemployment that is coming up. I have been a fool at every turn.
As you can tell given that nothing has changed in the circumstances that led to me trying to take my own life (something I can never get right, I tried to hang myself at the age of 22 and the hook to which the rope was tied broke dropping me to the floor) remains. Next time I am going to get a lot of alcohol to keep the frights away as I do it and I am going to make sure that I have far far more medicines so that there is no chance I will come back simply with a headache. Then the government can simply continue its authoritarian steps (still trying to push for 42 days detention without charge and now rushing through identity cards for all foreign nationals in the UK, a cynical ploy as the libertarian right are strongly against identity cards but they hate immigrants even more) without me.
You will not be surprised to find that all of this simply made me tired with life and I began taking an overdose of prescription medicine last night. Of course I bottled it (for non-UK readers, I lost the courage to finish it off), I made the mistake of not getting drunk first and having watched a particularly bleak episode of the science fiction series 'Torchwood' this week about a man brought back to life, I became terrified of what lurked waiting for me beyond life. Initially it had felt really relaxing and I had no desire to write a note or anything, just to get away from all the stuff piling on my head. Today I feel incredibly cowardly that I am still here, extremely weak in terms of my resolve and so rather than yesterday when I felt courageous I now despise myself even more. I do feel rather numb which is quite a good sensation because the big problem of failing to kill yourself is that you still have to face up to all the rubbish you were trying to leave behind and that is where I am now, but the fear of unemployment and the house respossession that would inevitably fail, the need to throw away so many of my possessions so I could fit into a flat I could afford and give up what I have accumulated in my life, is dulled now, though of course it has not gone away and is still to be faced.
They say unemployment has fallen from the 4 million out of work of the 1980s down to somewhere like 1.6 million people these days. However, I think there is a lot of missing unemployment, unreported and also for people like me, underemployment in the sense that my next job is unlikely to pay sufficient to keep the house. How foolish I was to fall for the pressure and the lure of buying the house, and how incredibly quickly (it is just over 3 months since we moved in) that it is all coming apart. This is my moment of being truly middle class, it is likely to expire in 17 months if not sooner. Men are obsolete, the new jobs being created are low paid and unappealing. What a waste of government money all my education was in that it cannot keep me in a decent job and in my house. I should have simply left school at 16 and I would be in no different position now. I would probably have had fewer experiences, but so many of them have been about stress and pressure, I would have given up the bulk of them. I can see why the suicide rate among young men in the UK is so high, there is nothing to live for. If you are lucky you will get a decent life for a few years, but then it will evaporate sooner or later and certainly when you retire if not before. How dare people try to stop young men exiting the so bleak existence that lies before the bulk of them.
This was another point which angered me. My housemate got angry that I would kill myself in my own house with a 6-year old living here. For a start I reserve the right to kill myself in my own house and no-one is going to stop that. Second, I have ended up as de facto father figure to this child (you cannot avoid it, beware of this two adults plus child, no matter what the relationship, end up being perceived as the parents no matter how badly qualified one or other is for the role. I imagine it even applies with two people of the same sex living in the house but it is even easier if you are a different gender to the real parent) and apparently that means I cannot kill myself. That is ridiculous, the strongest woman I ever knew had had both her father and uncle kill themselves and it made her outward going and intelligent and incredibly well travelled. The reason behind this is because children who come from two-parent families are too weak to live in this modern world. Only children from single parent families stand any chance these days. They are not pandered to and early on they learn to be tough and resourceful. If I had not been brought up by two parents I am sure I could cope far better with the situations I am facing. It is rubbish to say families need fathers; two parent families are unsuitable for western society in the twenty-first century and that 6-year old would be better off without some pretend father.
So where does this leave me now? Well, I guess the numbness will wear off and the fear of the future will return. Also massive regret over so many things I have done wrong. Every decision I seem to have made since 2005 has been a big error. Leaving my old permanent post for a contract job in more expensive region of the UK was a major mistake especially as they reneged on three-quarters of the relocation expenses I had been promised. The second thing was not to downsize immediately and try to keep the space I had previously enjoyed, that is impossible in South-East England. I picked two wrong houses to rent. They initially seemed good but the behaviour of the landlords cut the ground from beneath me and costs thousands of pounds in moving and moving again let alone a lot of stress. Of course the house purchase was handled very poorly, getting so little for my London flat, paying so much for this house and getting a fixed-rate mortgage when interest rates were at their peak. Done differently I could have got £5-10,000 more out of the deal and not eaten up all my savings for a house I will not see two years in and that money could have tided me over the period of unemployment that is coming up. I have been a fool at every turn.
As you can tell given that nothing has changed in the circumstances that led to me trying to take my own life (something I can never get right, I tried to hang myself at the age of 22 and the hook to which the rope was tied broke dropping me to the floor) remains. Next time I am going to get a lot of alcohol to keep the frights away as I do it and I am going to make sure that I have far far more medicines so that there is no chance I will come back simply with a headache. Then the government can simply continue its authoritarian steps (still trying to push for 42 days detention without charge and now rushing through identity cards for all foreign nationals in the UK, a cynical ploy as the libertarian right are strongly against identity cards but they hate immigrants even more) without me.
Thursday, 3 January 2008
If This Is The Start Of The Rest Of My Life Why Should I Bother?
As readers of this blog will know I turned 40 in 2007 and have really been feeling my age. It seems to be getting far worse. I accept that I had had many health problems in my life, but it is the difficulty of getting through an ordinary day. Today was no exception and I am not (I was about to say 'I am lucky not to even be back at work yet' but given how mad I am going sitting at home, maybe 'lucky' is the wrong word), even back at work yet. I found it almost impossible to drag myself out of bed today and walked around the supermarket as if I was a zombie. I have slept the bulk of the afternoon away and feel no better; just incredibly lethargic. I tried playing a computer game with a 6-year old who was keen to have a human partner and was utterly humiliated, I could not get any of my forces even in range of his and many of them died even without me having fired a shot. He did not even have to attack me in order to win and even started shooting his own men in an attempt to try and balance the game for me. It was not that I lost badly or even lost, it was that I could not even engage in the game sufficiently to even give him an easy challenge. I know children assume adults can do anything they can do but better when in fact, especially with anything computer-based they are far better and this proved the case. However, it did seem to emphasise to me how irrelevant I am in the world of the late 2000s. My memory is deteriorating quickly, I now meet people I have no memory of though they reveal I have spoken with them at length just days before; I forget names and faces and even worse tell people things they have actually told me in the first place. If I feel this bad when I have no obvious symptoms - I am not suffering a cold or flu, I have had no accidents or anything else that signals a problem, I am simply lacking in energy and my body is still in various places (my knees in particular ache, but I have heard that becomes common for most men beyond the age of 30). I am not overweight, in fact I lost a lot of weight before Christmas due to the fortnight of moving heavy boxes and furniture up and downstairs. So, I can only think it must be down to old age. If I was a caveman I would be elderly by now; even in 1900 the average life expectancy of a worker was only 45, so maybe we just keep ourselves alive artificially long periods these days. I feel like the Struldbruggs in 'Gulliver's Travels' the people of Luggnagg who are immortal, but their faculties deteriorate over time so the bulk of them are blind and deaf and all are entirely bored, desperate for something new in their lives. I also suffer that and find no interest in books and television, let alone the computer.
What worries me is, if I feel this bad now at 40, what is it going to be like if I live to 60? Do I face two decades of dragging my increasingly debilitated body around; bored out of my mind and unable to interact with the increasingly complex computer-focused world of the 2010s and 2020s, let alone to make a worthwhile contribution to it? What if the young people I meet only use systems that I cannot even press the correct buttons to access? Will I be cut out of forms of communication. Clearly one fear, with my work contract expiring in 2009, is that I will find it difficult to get a job now and that I face another 25 years on unemployment and other benefits, being pressured to retrain myself so that I can get a 'McJob' though of course unless I am behind the scenes all these problems of communication will continue and in any post the lethargy which seems to be taking me will still hamper my work. So it is likely that I face 25 years at lower wages than at present before sliding into poverty when I retire. In the UK many people fall one or two or more social classes on retirement. This is as measured by the census which has 8 social categories with '8' being the 'underclass' of homeless people; on retirement people in categories 3 or 4 will commonly drop from category to 5, 6 or even 7 because of the fall in income and status; something exacerbated by chief executives of companies running off with pension funds. People in categories 1 and 2 are in that bracket where they are sufficiently wealthy that they can ignore the normal rules of society. The end of so many company pension schemes in the UK and the poor performance and mis-selling of so many private schemes means lots of working and middle class UK people will be in poverty in old age.
I had intended to end my life in August 2007 ahead of my 40th birthday in October and was dissuaded by my housemates. However, increasingly it seems to have been a mistake and it is something I need to rethink as I have no desire to face another two decades of feeling as bad as this and being slowly day-by-day being demonstrated that I am of no use to society and in fact lack the abilities to properly engage with what it requires. I am no rich now but falling into even tighter financial straits is not an attractive proposition and is something which is liable to start from 2009 onwards. I did say that I was going to avoid making this blog a journal of my deterioration, but being a 40-year old in the UK today it seems impossible to avoid it. Hopefully there will not be many months left in which I can experience the humiliation and discomfort of being a middle aged British person alive in 2008.
What worries me is, if I feel this bad now at 40, what is it going to be like if I live to 60? Do I face two decades of dragging my increasingly debilitated body around; bored out of my mind and unable to interact with the increasingly complex computer-focused world of the 2010s and 2020s, let alone to make a worthwhile contribution to it? What if the young people I meet only use systems that I cannot even press the correct buttons to access? Will I be cut out of forms of communication. Clearly one fear, with my work contract expiring in 2009, is that I will find it difficult to get a job now and that I face another 25 years on unemployment and other benefits, being pressured to retrain myself so that I can get a 'McJob' though of course unless I am behind the scenes all these problems of communication will continue and in any post the lethargy which seems to be taking me will still hamper my work. So it is likely that I face 25 years at lower wages than at present before sliding into poverty when I retire. In the UK many people fall one or two or more social classes on retirement. This is as measured by the census which has 8 social categories with '8' being the 'underclass' of homeless people; on retirement people in categories 3 or 4 will commonly drop from category to 5, 6 or even 7 because of the fall in income and status; something exacerbated by chief executives of companies running off with pension funds. People in categories 1 and 2 are in that bracket where they are sufficiently wealthy that they can ignore the normal rules of society. The end of so many company pension schemes in the UK and the poor performance and mis-selling of so many private schemes means lots of working and middle class UK people will be in poverty in old age.
I had intended to end my life in August 2007 ahead of my 40th birthday in October and was dissuaded by my housemates. However, increasingly it seems to have been a mistake and it is something I need to rethink as I have no desire to face another two decades of feeling as bad as this and being slowly day-by-day being demonstrated that I am of no use to society and in fact lack the abilities to properly engage with what it requires. I am no rich now but falling into even tighter financial straits is not an attractive proposition and is something which is liable to start from 2009 onwards. I did say that I was going to avoid making this blog a journal of my deterioration, but being a 40-year old in the UK today it seems impossible to avoid it. Hopefully there will not be many months left in which I can experience the humiliation and discomfort of being a middle aged British person alive in 2008.
Friday, 4 May 2007
Live and Let Die
I originally was going to title this blog 'Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes and I can take or leave it if I please', lyrics from the 1970s/early 1980s movie and television series MASH, but then I realised that my point of anger on this issue is not directed at people who want to take their lives or even the philosophic issues behind such an act, but against the people who seek to stop suicide.
A majority of the population of the world at any one time is in pain, desperation or boredom, so is it not surprising that they want to exit this world, that has been termed the 'vale of tears' (as opposed to 'veil') or a 'world of pain'? Throughout history up until the 19th and 20th centuries most people in Europe worked on the land, as tenants if they were 'lucky', as serfs or slaves if not. They had a good chance of starving to death or dying of disease, but if they decided they had had enough and wish to kill themselves, they had to be certain that they did it right or they would be imprisoned for the attempt. The Christian churches and their allies in the ruling classes were aware that if there were no sanctions on suicide peasants would be at it all the time, making it hard for them to work their lord's or the church's land and to serve in their armies. So, Christian teachings said that suicide was murder and so you would go to hell. You had to suffer and wait out your turn until God decided you had suffered enough and took you. In German the word for suicide is 'selbstmord' literally 'self murder' and it was viewed as seriously, so attempted suicide was like attempted murder. Attempted suicide was illegal in the UK until 1961 and you could be imprisoned for it. No-one tries to kill themselves without having thought about it at great length; it takes great courage to do it. In this terrible world it is those with bravery who leave it and us cowards who stick around.
Nowadays you will not be arrested if you try to kill yourself, but a lot of people will intervene to try to prevent you and they are lauded by society. Recently veteran entertainer Lionel Blair (no relation) prevented someone jumping off the end of a pier where he was performing at the time and he was praised for intervening. I have nothing against Lionel Blair, but I do think such behaviour is wrong. The worst case was an interview with a woman who had worked as a secretary for SOE (Special Operations Executive - a British sabotage agency run during and soon after the Second World War). All SOE agents were issued with cyanide capsules in case they were captured as it was certain they would be tortured by the Nazis. However, before they set off this secretary tried to persuade them to leave the capsules behind. Speaking 50 years later both on television and in public, she was proud of what she had done and that some had left their capsules. It was fine for her, sitting comfortably in London, but I have nightmares over what it meant for those numerous SOE agents who were captured without their capsules, I just hope they had a bullet left.
Why are people so resistant to suicide? It is not as if we need lots of people to produce food, the world is overpopulated as it is, and yet we still behave as if it was the Middle Ages. There are a number of spurious reasons given. People say it is terrible for those who have to clean up after a suicide, but is it any worse than what they have to do when someone has been killed or mutilated by a drunk or speeding driver or a stabbing or shooting which are becoming so common in the UK now?
They say it upsets other people who witness it, well I spoke to a Birmingham train driver who had been given leave after a man jumped in front of his train. He said he did not need the leave because there was nothing he could have done to stop the train in time and if the man had decided he wanted to die it was up to him. In fact in our atomised society few care for the fate of others, which is why people drive so dangerously, so it is hypocritical to say people worry about suicides, they watch gorier things on DVD most weekends or on the news.
People say suicide distresses the relatives, but look at this way: if you, your family and friends were in a prison camp and someone close to you said they were going to try to get out of the prison would you try to stop them? If they failed to escape would you not try to help them again? If you love a person you respect their wishes. It is in fact cruel to keep bullying, cajoling or blackmailing them to stay where they are so unhappy, it is simply selfish on your part to try to keep inflicting this bleak life on them.
Some lucky people have a good life, but the bulk of us are going to have one which at best is dreary and full of worry, at worst is painful and distressing. Too many of us are locked in the view that life is precious. Yet so many seem to give far less concern for all the people, keen to continue yet killed in all the wars and terrorist incidents that are going on each week than for the life of one person they know who does not want to live.
My call is to respect the wishes of those who wish to end their lives. Do not peddle the line that living is better, for many it is not and to pretend otherwise is a lie. If you want to live, then live, but let those who want to die, die.
A majority of the population of the world at any one time is in pain, desperation or boredom, so is it not surprising that they want to exit this world, that has been termed the 'vale of tears' (as opposed to 'veil') or a 'world of pain'? Throughout history up until the 19th and 20th centuries most people in Europe worked on the land, as tenants if they were 'lucky', as serfs or slaves if not. They had a good chance of starving to death or dying of disease, but if they decided they had had enough and wish to kill themselves, they had to be certain that they did it right or they would be imprisoned for the attempt. The Christian churches and their allies in the ruling classes were aware that if there were no sanctions on suicide peasants would be at it all the time, making it hard for them to work their lord's or the church's land and to serve in their armies. So, Christian teachings said that suicide was murder and so you would go to hell. You had to suffer and wait out your turn until God decided you had suffered enough and took you. In German the word for suicide is 'selbstmord' literally 'self murder' and it was viewed as seriously, so attempted suicide was like attempted murder. Attempted suicide was illegal in the UK until 1961 and you could be imprisoned for it. No-one tries to kill themselves without having thought about it at great length; it takes great courage to do it. In this terrible world it is those with bravery who leave it and us cowards who stick around.
Nowadays you will not be arrested if you try to kill yourself, but a lot of people will intervene to try to prevent you and they are lauded by society. Recently veteran entertainer Lionel Blair (no relation) prevented someone jumping off the end of a pier where he was performing at the time and he was praised for intervening. I have nothing against Lionel Blair, but I do think such behaviour is wrong. The worst case was an interview with a woman who had worked as a secretary for SOE (Special Operations Executive - a British sabotage agency run during and soon after the Second World War). All SOE agents were issued with cyanide capsules in case they were captured as it was certain they would be tortured by the Nazis. However, before they set off this secretary tried to persuade them to leave the capsules behind. Speaking 50 years later both on television and in public, she was proud of what she had done and that some had left their capsules. It was fine for her, sitting comfortably in London, but I have nightmares over what it meant for those numerous SOE agents who were captured without their capsules, I just hope they had a bullet left.
Why are people so resistant to suicide? It is not as if we need lots of people to produce food, the world is overpopulated as it is, and yet we still behave as if it was the Middle Ages. There are a number of spurious reasons given. People say it is terrible for those who have to clean up after a suicide, but is it any worse than what they have to do when someone has been killed or mutilated by a drunk or speeding driver or a stabbing or shooting which are becoming so common in the UK now?
They say it upsets other people who witness it, well I spoke to a Birmingham train driver who had been given leave after a man jumped in front of his train. He said he did not need the leave because there was nothing he could have done to stop the train in time and if the man had decided he wanted to die it was up to him. In fact in our atomised society few care for the fate of others, which is why people drive so dangerously, so it is hypocritical to say people worry about suicides, they watch gorier things on DVD most weekends or on the news.
People say suicide distresses the relatives, but look at this way: if you, your family and friends were in a prison camp and someone close to you said they were going to try to get out of the prison would you try to stop them? If they failed to escape would you not try to help them again? If you love a person you respect their wishes. It is in fact cruel to keep bullying, cajoling or blackmailing them to stay where they are so unhappy, it is simply selfish on your part to try to keep inflicting this bleak life on them.
Some lucky people have a good life, but the bulk of us are going to have one which at best is dreary and full of worry, at worst is painful and distressing. Too many of us are locked in the view that life is precious. Yet so many seem to give far less concern for all the people, keen to continue yet killed in all the wars and terrorist incidents that are going on each week than for the life of one person they know who does not want to live.
My call is to respect the wishes of those who wish to end their lives. Do not peddle the line that living is better, for many it is not and to pretend otherwise is a lie. If you want to live, then live, but let those who want to die, die.
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