Dying Is The Other Side Of The Story
When I was a little girl, about 7 or 8 years old, I thought of dying, I actually wished for death… Till date, I have not been able to talk to anyone about it . However, I had made no attempts to kill myself, had only wished, so fervently, that I was non-existent, nothing, invisible. Like, wasn’t it possible to vanish???
When the news of the suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade hit the internet in early June of this year, the general consensus was ‘so the rich also cry?’. There seemed to be a some sort of general agreement by most people posting their opinions on social media that their dying must have been in some way connected to depression. Many elaborated by stating that all the time that they were living the life and looking like everything about their lives was perfection, they were, in fact, camouflaging sadness and yes, depression. A few people begged to differ and I am one of them.
Granted, depression accounts for a high rate of suicide but I do not believe it accounts for all. I speak a quite personal perspective. I am not the happiest person but I know that the sum of the good days are far more than the bad ones. The first time I had felt like leaving the world it was because I had been involved in something that hurt almost my entire family. I didn’t know better but the disappointment on my mother’s face had been too much to bear and the shame I had felt almost dragged me down but I had been more scared of dying without knowing what lay on the other side than dying itself. I also didn’t want to gnash my teeth in hell. So I fought with everything I had to leave home to a boarding school… Anonymity and new beginnings made me feel better and it worked for the most part.
In the past few years I have felt so weary of life that I just want to up and leave. I think of the struggle, which never seems to end and the vanity it embodies. I hear horrible stories and mistakenly watch horrible videos that make me feel so terribly assaulted that I would rather just leave this world than live with the fact that such heart-rending things happen on a daily basis and to people like me. I wonder what makes me so different from them except maybe luck, but how long would it be before luck runs out??? Life intermittently doesn’t make sense and ocassionally I just want to go over. Yes, dying sometimes appears the better option to living.
I am usually not depressed or sad, but many times, I am weary. Sometimes, the death of persons, even from natural causes, tips me that way because I ask “What is the point of all these?” “When does the struggle end?” “Why?”
Thinking about Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade and their suicides, they had some similarities and I have a thought or two on the possible causes of their suicides. They both were similar in many ways, amongst others-
Wealthy
Famous
Successful in careers
Professional
Admired
Good-looking
They had almost everything that was supposed to guarantee “Happiness” or some form of “contentment” but none did, presumably. Most people assumed depression hit too high and did it. Maybe it was depression, maybe it was something else. Somehow I think they got tired of chasing yet another goal and succeeding and yet another and succeeding and still striving for yet some new purpose to life.
The unending barrage of those “What next?” thoughts and expectations they had of life and of themselves might have finally pushed them over because when one reaches what might be percieved as the zenith of their life and there is no where else to go but down, some people would rather hurl themselves over the cliff than climb all the way down, back to earth because they probably think -what’s the point of starting all over again? What is the purpose in all that? What is all this for?
So dying becomes a sort of sweet relief for the weary soul who finally, maybe, finds rest and such inexplicably terrible sorrow for the loved ones left behind who are burdened with guilt and must blame themselves for not knowing or not noticing their state of mind and doing something to stop it.
[Dying] Suicide can be such sweet sorrow.
First published on Click042 as Dying Can Be Such Sweet Sorrow
