Suicide

Part I

I have often imagined ways to kill myself with minimum pain. The aim was to get away from the world without suffering over it. I questioned jumping off a tall building not just because there is a small chance one may not die, but also because the uncertainty of the ultimate posture in death seemed undesirable. I may land head-first, in which case the rest of my body may bounce off like a large, lifeless doll. Or I may land on my hip, shoulder parallel, as if asleep in those last moments. It just didn’t suit me. The other relatively painless way seemed shooting oneself through the head. To blow one’s brains out, as they say. The chief objection to this cinematic ending was I didn’t know how much pain there would be, even though for a fraction of a second. I have never shot myself before, and have no idea what it feels like. I guess it isn’t very pleasant. Poison was never an option. It is too slow and it may not work. Except the cyanide I remember from Alistair Mclean’s novels. That was instantaneous. Yet, the interaction of poison and my body was just not a welcome thought. I know it means nothing when you are dead, but I am not sure whether all dead are the same. They aren’t to the living. And they probably aren’t to the dead.

After many years of gloom, I finally came across a painless way, which if executed well would be effective. An over-dose of sleeping pills and no one around to pump them out. One has to take care that no one who cares is around. But it is a beautiful death, in sleep, maybe accompanied by a little dream. I have slept through most of my life and see no reason why I shouldn’t meet death asleep. I am the bravest when asleep. I am calm, composed, and have no ideological baggage. I am simply, asleep. Jagged fragments of this life visit me as dreams, pretending to have meaning. Close to death, I may brush them away, at once magnificent in my insouciance.

It hurts me when I see people take a fundamentalist stance against suicide. I feel like an indefinable right is being snatched away from me. And my humanity is in some way being denigrated. Not to the level of other animals, but to depths humanity alone can reach. Living and breathing is taken too seriously.

In his film, Abbas Kiarostami speaks of the simple, beautiful things life provides. Like the taste of cherries. I do not deny or undermine these wonders. They are why so many of us are alive and kicking indecently on. But death too can be beautiful, as an unknown door, not to something else, but away from these very simple, beautiful things which one may be too full off. Death could be nothing. But nothing isn’t bad. Nothing has its own sedate calm, its own inert beauty. I cannot say what it is like to be within this nothing, for I haven’t been there yet. But the shapes which stretch like fibroblasts hold infinite mystery. And when you look back, at the humdrum of life, at the energy of humanity, you may feel a little tired. Beauty can be quite ugly.

 I have heard the argument that suicide is a selfish act. It is a selfish argument.

The idea of fighting adversity has no meaning here. Some do a lot. They wish to. Some may not want to fight adversity at all. It is like a series of walls and you have to break them. When you have broken a tacitly accepted number others will consider your journey worthwhile. But I don’t like breaking walls. I don’t mind sitting around, softly banging my head against them, singing to myself. And when I am bored of this beautiful exercise, I would like to leave and never return. I don’t know what people talk about.

Last night I was drunk. I walked out on a wide road with busses whizzing by under the night lights, the wind silently caressing humanity’s self-inflicted sorrows. I walked for a long time and then I went home. I need another drink. But it is too early. Death may not be this pleasurable. It may be even more.

You can never really love life unless you accept that some won’t. Unless you also learn to hate it. And hating it will make you want to get away from its contradictions and ambivalences. At times, you may not want to have an opinion; you may not want to feel anything. A pretend absence of sensations may seem desirable. The inert beauty of death, though contemplated from this vantage point of life, can, like the layers of sound emanating from the ocean, color up the conception of the cosmos. I once stood by the sea at night, listening intently to the deeper rumble of the sea beneath the superficial crashing of the waves. The darkness didn’t just make it easier to hear the sound; it was a part of it. That deeper rumble, that giant’s gargle, seemed a manifestation of death.

There is something wrong even with an overdose of sleeping pills. I can’t say what. My search continues.