Suicide Beckons Aged 17

No negative comments, right?

i like it, hope you don't mean it.

really it's great,and i realises how important are u so go on :d and my best wishes :wink:

Of course I don't mean it! It's meant to be a parody.

What a delight, a parody of suicide.

A bunch of us have dealt with the real thing. Not always me or others, but some of us. And some of us in parts.

then there's these lines by Dorothy Parker, who attempted it several times:

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

I actually lost my partner to suicide 22 years ago next June 30th. I know what it means. That does not, in my book, mean that I have to become either a melancholic myself, or a sanctimonious preacher.

I like that Dorothy Parker poem. Gets the point across, kind of made me chuckle in a way, and yet ....not quite as angry as contrex's :wink:

I get the point tho. It's all good.

contrex, when you lost your partner, did you feel like you could have stopped his or her own suicide? HAd you only been smarter to detect the signs?

Oh wow a smart ass. She was compulsorily detained in a mental hospital. She was diagnosed with a serious disorder of affect. Previous to this, she had left home and gone to live in a trailer in Wales. While there she tried (and nearly succeeded) to cut off her left hand with a bow saw. It hung by a flap of skin only. She nearly died from blood loss, but eventually the hand was reattached. She was allowed to stay with me for a weekend, and I found her trying to electrocute herself in the bath. She deceived people into thinking she was "better" and used the relaxation of vigilance to try again to kill herself. The hospital proposed releasing her to the care of her parents. They lived far away and didn't know the facts of her illness. I warned the doctors that she would succeed in killing herself if that happened, but they ignored me. She fooled her childhood best friend into taking her out for a day trip and during that, into letting her go alone into a pharmacy, where she bought acetaminophen (paracetamol) and later she surreptitiously took 100 tablets. (She had been a nurse and knew what this would do.) She was dead 4 days later. It was her sixth attempt. So, No, I couldn't have stopped it, and Yes, I saw the signs.

contrex Farmer is ver rarley a smartass. I think you may have missunderstood the intent of his post.

Contrex, Im sorry I was interpreted as a smart ass. The reason I asked was that , just a few years ago, one of my employees and a friend committed suicide and I was feeling really guilty , like I misseed a "key sign" of his gradual descent.
I guess Im still looking for validation from others experiences so I can convince myself that I did everything I could, or I really couldnt see it coming.
I still get some residual guilt every time Im doing a certain kind of job wherein his expertise would have helped out.

Sounds like your "signals" were much more obvious than mine. Sorry again, Ill leave you with good wishes and hope you dont think of me as rude, but many of us have different levels of involvement in others suicides and unexpected deaths that we try to gain insites from others experiences.

farmerman, after I posted I went off to work and during the day i realised i was unjust to you. I apologise. If it is any help, that feeling of responsibility is very common among those close to people who have taken their lives. I felt it myself acutely. I think my sharp response to your post was linked to this. Even after nearly 25 years.

I understand. Ive suffered a few deaths of friends and colleagues under violent conditions that leave a heavy print on your heart . The weight of their losses subsides more quickly than a suicide. I just cant understand suicide as a way to solve a problem and thus, Ive felt more guilty than I originally realized.

When I post into threads, I m always doing it as a "secured moment" during the workday. Instead of a smoke break or coffee, I visit A2k. My responses are always off my cranial cap and , as such, are often interpreted as snotty when its the last thing I meant.

I see that youre still dealing with your loved one and her lifes end.
Everyso often, as I said before, I think of my friend and it all comes back. Like even now, Im thinking that you could tell the symptoms but couldnt get anyone to restrain her. I, on the other hand, beat myself up for not being smart enough to read signals that became so obvious only after we buried him.

Hindsight is a painful kind of wisdom, sometimes.