Discussion “If you’re worried about your family being hurt, you have a reason to stay”

[nyapoka]

fucking Christ. Like yeah I get the point when people say this but I need a reason for *me*. the misery of living miserable simply for someone else's sake sucks.

 

[nomoredolor]

I either have to choose my suffering or theirs. It's fucking whack

Anna

 

[nyapoka]

I either have to choose my suffering or theirs. It's fucking whack

Anna

and when people guilt you for considering putting family through suffering
Like fuck leave me alone

 

[Bootleg Astolfo]

*laughs in actively wanting them to suffer*

 

[Sutter]

Twinkle.

Agree. Manipulative phrases does not a life save. Never saw a bunch of jack rabbits talk fluffy foot off the cutting edge of nights curtains that way.

Could be totally smokin crack with the field mice but it is my view that a person stays for themselves or goes.

Most don't engage with invisible others. There is a presence in a person, their looks, speech, mannerisms, awesome plumage. There is something experienced that is unique to them. All that is them, inside them. If someone is going to make it, they are going to be the ones to do it.

Can understand the delay tactic by that phrase. Trying to get a moment to pass and the world to turn again but it seems disingenuous and is often viewed that way. May act like a whip smart rubber band and leave a welt on the speakers face.

Resilience is a solo journey at heart. There is no shortcut, it's flat out grueling. Resilience is not just living, it's also dieing.

Could have said the same words to a dog long ago. Didn't as seemed disrespectful for a life spent with each other. He only understood a warm hand in his fur and a soft good boy now. A touch and phrase that meant sense in his world with a man that stayed by his side till last beat of life and three more breaths of my own.

I'd say leave the phrase. Respect and love the twinkle in a soul, offer an easy hand with a soft word. Let them find themselves here or not.

Probably better off asking "How much of the ocean is fish pee and if we dyed the water what color would the ocean be?" Leaking a little tinkle to help with interior twinkle @nyapoka

 

[areyousafe??]

It's been my reason for so long, but it's starting to hold less value. I don't speak to my dad, there's too much anger there. My sister would honestly not give a fuck if I died. I'm still here for 2 people who will undoubtedly be upset if I suicided, not because they "love" me but because there goes the hope of someone looking after them when they get old. Their retirement investment has gone.

 

[danny10]

I always worry about family to be hurt by my CTB. I have a 1 year old daughter, a wife, mother and father whom I love deeply and I know it would hurt for them if I CTB. Hence, I live on for their sake but I am in pain all the time, thinging about CTB. I feel very shameful that I want to CTB, despite that I have a 1 year old daughter. Right now I am living on because of her. But how long can I keep going? How long do I have to put their happinness in front of my suffering? Should I feel shameful for wanting to CTB? I am not sure really. I am not sure what to do...

 

[ScaredOfMachines]

People who say this stuff never look at the other side, either. Sure, it's a bit messed up to take your life when you have people who care about you, but isn't it also messed up to force someone to spend their life in misery because them ending things would hurt your feelings? But they never bring up the other point, it's easier just to blame the suicidal person for making them feel uncomfortable than actually think about things like this, I guess.

 

[Peter Skellern]

I suppose it depends upon (1) in how high esteem you hold your family and (2) how much you perceive it would impact them to some considerable degree.

 

[Forever Sleep]

So basically, emotional blackmail. Maybe true and personally felt by a lot of people here (including me) but pretty unkind really. Nevermind about your pain, live entitey not to inconvenience/ upset them.

I wonder if they'd accept a parallel argument supporting antinatilism. If you don't want your child to (likely) witness death- both yours and others. If you don't want to put them through the (likely) pain and fear of their own death- you have a reason not to birth them into this world to begin with. They 100% will experience those things. They'll very possibly struggle with them as greatly as you might if they (choose to) go first.

Why is it considered unselfish and ok to initiate another person's life which will be full of risk and end in (possibly) painful and frightening death. Yet, it's considered selfish for a person to say- 'I can't cope with this anymore. You're going to have to let me go' and choose to end their own life?

I'd like them to admit that they don't in fact give us life as a gift to be enjoyed. They may hope it turns out like that. Effectively though- it simply can't be a gift for most people. You don't just get bought it at birth and go on to enjoy it. It's a subscription servive that needs constant payments and it's incredibly problematic to unsubscribe. The onnus for that subscription falls on us for maybe 75% or upwards of our lives.

We're not born into freedom to enjoy life. We're born into a whole bunch of restrictive systems that we either comply to or, suffer negative consequences. So- as I see it, it simply isn't fair to bring a person here and expect them to thrive in this world. But, if they don't, continue to struggle on for those who brought them into this situation to begin with.

 

[Defenestration]

Very guilty

 

[platypus77]

Years ago a family member CTB'ed (firearms) while I was planning to do the same, obviously that stopped me from proceeding and the impact was heavy on the family.

But I'd say that most of the grieving was related to the surprise of the event and lack of explanation.

My plan is to leave a nice goodbye letter absolving everyone of any guilt and explain that I lived and experienced enough of life, the good and the bad, that I am in peace with my decision and nobody could do anything about it.

I lived and died by own terms as my wish.

 

[ijustwishtodie]

I am worried about my family being hurt as I am against suffering so I'd be hating at how my death would be leaving a mess. It would be nice if my death wouldn't leave any mess at all but unfortunately such is the fate of being alive. Being alive means that you have to die one day and with death comes a lot of mess. There isn't anything I can do about this, existence itself is too fucked for this to be fixed. Nonetheless, I have to do what I have to do. It wouldn't be pleasant but I have to go through with this as I can't be living for others.

The only exception where I would be living for others is if euthanasia were to be legalised. In that case, I'd continue on living for my brother so that his childhood isn't experienced by dealing with the pain caused by me dying (unless if I were to get a condition that significantly decreases my quality of life). However, in a world where euthanasia is illegal and society is actively making sure that we stay alive for as long as possible, I'm sorry but I have to do this as my opportunity to ctb would reduce more and more the longer I live for. It isn't nice and I won't say that it is but I can't prolong my existence in a world like this

 

[TAW122]

I'm long past the point of "my family being (emotionally) hurt" by my CTB. As someone who is single and have NO dependents of my own and despite the fact that I live with family (as a failed adult in his mid 30's - albeit that isn't solely the reason for my CTB, but a plethora of other reasons and such, some of which are personal to me and me only), I don't feel guilty at all. Especially when I realized that I never consented to be born into this existence, rife with harm (emotional, physical, mental, etc.), requiring constant upkeep and maintenance, and then in some cases, harder times due to personal challenges. I will also NEVER compromise my own CTB plan just for the sake of others, especially if it risks operational failure, because CTB is one of the few decisions where stakes are high and I cannot take unnecssary risks or complications that result in a failed attempt (with worse consequences).

 

[UserFromNowhere]

Honestly, I view this logic on the same grounds as Edwin Shneidman's "the suicidal pictures their funeral, a reality beyond which they have any control, and yet by imagining it seeks to delusionally control it." I do not believe, however, that this logic holds any ground as a general rule. I am not advocating that people should take their lives, but I do think the leap in logic from imagining to delusion is too quick. It mistakes a kind of psychological meaning making for an imagined sense of control.

Patients suffering from terminal illness imagine their funeral and the way the world will continue on after they have left. To me, this does not represent delusional thinking or some imagined sense of control. It represents a natural facet of human life. It is completely in our bounds to care about others. It is completely reasonable to think about the future even far beyond our lifetimes in an arena where we know we will not have control. There is a crucial difference between believing oneself can alter reality and imagining one's place in it with clarity. One can be a desperate attempt to manage an intolerable reality. The other can simply be perspective, a way of confronting what life means when time is finite.

To claim that imagination itself is automatically delusion, or that it necessarily functions as control, is to narrow the frame until almost any reflection on death becomes suspect. It is narrow thinking to believe we cannot conceptualize a future without fooling ourselves into controlling it. It is narrow thinking to believe we cannot care for others unless we are there with them to share the burden. And it is from this narrow thinking, the insistence that thinking about what comes after must be pathology, that empathy and perspective get treated as if they were denial.

In my view, this absolutism reflects naive thinking. It reflects less an understanding of death as a human reality and more an inability to conceptualize how people can face it without nihilism. Unable to conceptualize a world beyond their death, knowing they must die, accepting or potentially rejecting death, some views become pessimistic in a way that cannot easily make room for tenderness, responsibility, and the moral weight of the future. This is an extreme I would say even SaSu members have struggle reaching, as hopeless and pessimistic as our views towards the world may be.

To pull the old quote, "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit." The point is not that we can control what will outlast us. The point is that we can still act as though it matters. Still care. Still plan. Still build. Even when we will not be there to sit in the shade.

Therefore, it is not narrow to care without controlling. It is narrow to insist that we must control in order to care. Maybe this point is contradictory to this post or illogical in-of-itself, after all, it intertwines the inclination towards suicide that many of us seem to harbor with sentiments that may, in another context, be construed as pro-life (e.g. there's still meaning/reason to live in spite of suffering), but I still believe it holds up anyways. Using the logic of a stance you do not agree with to argue against it makes a rather nuanced argument.

 

[caotic_realm]

I've spoken openly with them about my desire to die; obviously, I don't tell them I'm making a plan or specify the day I'm going to do it. However, rather than being indifferent to their suffering, I believe the fault lies with the society we live in. Just today, I was thinking that if there were a way to—CTB—in an assisted manner or medical—it would give many people the chance to actually say goodbye, almost like a formal ceremony; that would truly be ideal. I think family members would still suffer, yes, but the suffering is greater when you depend on someone and they die unexpectedly, or when elderly parents pass away. Accepting the loss is painful, but in a way, an "assisted" or "ceremonial" approach would spare those family members the kind of suffering involved in the conventional scenario.

PS. Perhaps if assisted dying were freely available, I could bear to live until the family members who would truly be deeply pained by my death have passed away—only then could I endure staying alive; otherwise, I won't pass up the opportunity if I can summon the courage to do it.