But suicide.

Suicide repulses me.

It combines my greatest fear and my greatest wish into some nightmare combination that I don't understand. That I don't think I can understand. I know that mental illness or unbearable despair drive people to things that others can't imagine, and I know that at some point everybody has thought, "if I could just sleep forever..." But to willfully end the possibility of hope; to destroy the one thing that can't be re-created; to rush, past all else, to the end: No. No.

{} {} I'm fighting not to come to the conclusion that suicide is wrong, but I can't. It is. It's wrong. Fundamentally. I feel it in my bones. That's a moral decision, and it's solely mine, but whoever this person was, and whatever his circumstances were, I will never stop thinking that he made a mistake.

What might he have done with his life? What might he have created? Who might he have loved? What could have been accomplished with sixty more years? What greatness? What beauty? What joy?

Nobody will ever know.

He was 23. He died at 8:43am, November 1st, 1996, in the west-bound lanes of the Santa Monica freeway. The note said:

    Charley
    
         We will always
    
    love you.
    
         You are the
    
    angel in my heart.
    
            Mom
            xxoo


{back}


Have you ever considered suicide?



{hope}