📜 Sidebar: Christ, Suicide, and Step Two
(The Dangerous Thought I May Have Said Out Loud)
When I was deep in collapse—post-suicide attempt, post-ego shattering—
I wasn’t just questioning God.
I was questioning how we speak about despair.
And I remembered something in Bill’s Story:
that line where he calls suicide the “final gesture of humility and sacrifice.”
Because… that’s not just addiction memoir.
That’s theological language.
That’s martyrdom language.
⚖️ The Problem With That Line
If Bill is working within a Judeo-Christian framework (and he is),
then calling suicide the ultimate sacrifice creates a tension:
Because in that theology, there’s only one ultimate sacrifice.
And it was made on a cross.
So what was Bill trying to say?
Did he mean suicide could be redemptive? Noble? Even holy?
🕯️ The Dangerous, Honest Question I Would’ve Asked:
Can suicide ever be Christ-like?
Not in sin. Not in despair.
What if someone—completely wrong, but sincerely—
believes their absence will hurt less than their presence?
What if they think removing themselves is the only mercy left?
But a distorted form of love?
That’s the Christ parallel no one wants to name.
Because wasn’t Christ’s death, in some way, a knowing surrender to destruction?
Didn’t He walk toward it, eyes open, believing the world needed it?
Is that a form of divine suicide?
And if so—what does that mean for those of us who’ve stood at that ledge?
✝️ But Here’s Where I’d Land (and maybe did, in that room):
Christ’s death wasn’t hopeless.
It was devastating, yes. But it wasn’t nihilistic.
It was an offering into life.
Suicide, when it happens on earth, is almost never that.
It’s usually isolation, misperception, pain too loud to hold.
But what if we stopped calling it purely selfish?
What if we understood that some who try to die aren’t trying to destroy—
They’re trying to stop harming.
And in that distorted way,
they think they’re being noble.
They think they’re Christ-like.
That doesn’t make it right.
But it does make it human.
💡 Step Two and the Resurrection Nobody Talks About
“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
that restoration comes right after we tried to end it.
After the failed attempt.
After the pills, or the belt, or the freeway.
That’s when some of us met God—not in a chapel—
but on the bathroom floor, blinking at fluorescent light.
Sanity isn’t just “getting back to normal.”
Sanity is learning that staying alive is not a selfish act.
That your presence isn’t a curse—it’s a chance to love better.
🕊️ So Maybe I Did Say Christ’s Death Was a Kind of Suicide.
“But unlike ours, His was always moving toward resurrection.”
But because I survived long enough to see the story re-edit itself.
