I once found a private forum where people talked about how they were going to commit suicide. It was filled with people discussing the pros and cons of each option, and wishing each other luck in their attempts. I never posted, but honestly? That forum made me feel less suicidal. I finally felt seen. Here was a place where I wasn’t told how selfish I was, how all my problems (including my chronic pain) were temporary, etc. It was an amazing experience.
Yes, Baril talks about something similar in his essay/book and that seems to be a common experience that the thing that helped people become less suicidal was not being told that suicide was never an option but rather having someone to just listen and allowing them the space to be actively suicidal without judgment.
In a compelling short documentary entitled 24 & Ready to Die, Emily, a 24 year old physically healthy Belgian woman suffering from psychological distress, recounts that it was through the support of her friends and family and the preparation of her own assisted suicide that she found the desire to continue to live, at least for a while. She says: "Without the option of euthanasia, years of suffering would have been compounded by a gruesome, lonely death. I would have killed myself" (The Economist, 2015). She is not alone in testifying that being able to name her need to die and being listened to and respected in that wish ultimately helped her to go on living. This is also the case, to some extent, with the artist Vivek Shraya who, in a short film entitled I Want to Kill Myself, recounts how, by breaking the silence, she managed to survive her desire to die. She says: "Saying I want to kill myself kept me alive" (Shraya, 2017).
We also feel the same way. What has helped us the most has been having space in non-carceral mental health supports to just be actively suicidal. being able to tell someone our plan and know that they wouldn't do anything we didn't ask of them, that we were entirely safe to voice our suicidality without anyone imposing their own desires or expectations or control onto us.
Now, we have also heard that forums like that specifically can become quite toxic environments as well, where the people involved did not feel safe or supported in that way, so we aren't quite sure how to feel about them and you should probably be quite careful interacting with them, however a space like that does in many ways seem close to what we need sometimes. We are glad it helped you.
tangentwithtanner
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
titsay
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
