I think it very much depends on how you view life itself. Some people see it as this miracle chance and something that has intrinsic value. To many people here, it probably feels more like a curse they want to get rid of!
I live in a perpetual state of neutrality. I don't feel attachment towards life, but I don't hate it either and don't have the desire to carry out the action of dying. Being emotionally opinionated has been difficult for me. The only thing I know for sure I don't want is pain. I think my perspective is that I don't want to do anything that requires action, and both living and dying require action.
To live without suffering means to take actions to constantly move forward to somewhere, to die means to take actions to plan a suicide that is painless and going against all instinct and face uncertainty--extremely difficult as well. I am not in pain right now, but I am not happy with doing the work to avoid pain that maintaining life requires. I believe my ideal would be that I had never been born in the first place, but now that I'm born I either have to tolerate life or death, and am not taking any action because I don't see any difference between those things.
I think some people who believe that death is nothingness here are no less idealistic than people who believe that death is heaven. They see nothingness as the ideal (as do I), and rationalize that it is undoubtable because they can't think of anything else. But truth is often stranger than fiction, and I don't believe in any certain thing about the afterlife other than an unknown. Maybe I'm unable to even envision it, because coming up with ideas is so very difficult. People can think of a decade about to be able to come up with a conceptual understanding of an abstract concept. Now that I've been born, there's no escape for me.
I think a lot of it is to do with potential. When people see life as having the potential to be good- they're bound to feel more inclined to stick around and more motivated to work towards the things they want. If on the other hand, nothing much appeals- it's much harder to see why we should bother being here.
I don't think it's really something you can force yourself to feel either way. I think all of us have to ask ourselves- do we want out because the future we ideally want feels impossible? (And is it really impossible or just very difficult?) Will we be willing to compromise for a slightly inferior future? Or, is it truly that absolutely nothing in life seems appealing?
It doesn't matter to me. If I had achieved all my life goals and was the happiest person in the world, I would still rather not exist. It doesn't solve the fundamental problem for me that the majority of life is spent avoiding pain and death. That even the richest person in the world needs to eat daily to avoid dying painfully within the next week, that a person is never truly at peace if they are not in nothingness, because they're not able to "do nothing" at any point in life, besides sleep, which we can't even savor and is interrupted quickly.
Really- on whether it's a big deal or not is up to you though. For me- other people's deaths have always felt like a bigger deal to me than my own. I hate going through all that grief. That of course is a whole other matter really and people have their own personal feelings about it. Your life might not mean much to you but- does it mean more to those around you and- should that matter?
I hate going through grief as well, but I am not resentful of people who chose to ctb. It is their personal choice. Other people are honestly not a consideration to me about whether or not I ctb. I don't care what their opinion is, because as far as I'm concerned it's quite literally
my life. I know it would mean a lot to other people if I died, but to me it's irrelevant.
[...] on a personal level it's just about the biggest deal to exist. I mean, it is to become what you are now to nothing at all.
I like this perspective, thank you. I was thinking pretty broadly when I wrote my post. I can see why it would matter to an individual whether or not they exist. Given, "I think, therefore I am" and when someone dies, they presumably can't think and can't exist anymore.
However, in my opinion the physical act of CTBing is definitely something to be serious about. You don't want something to go wrong and be left alive with serious injuries. On the flip side, who knows if you would have backed out if you just waited 5 more minutes. A little bit of planning goes a long way and can prevent these 2 regrettable scenarios.
You're absolutely right, and I'm in no rush. Nobody can stop me from killing myself, because they can't keep me in a ward forever if I show surface level normal behavior. I'm no longer scared of the psych ward. I'm no longer scared of the police or welfare checks, because those would just be temporary hassles. Nobody can keep watch of me forever, and there's an infinite amount of charcoal, gas, chemicals, ropes, and bridges over water out there as far as any average human is concerned. I'm not undermining the difficulty I hope, I know that painless and reliable ctb is hard, but if you ignore some of those things, there's a way.
