*SENSITIVE* AIBU to think some people come across as ignorant nobs about suicide? *TRIGGERS*

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FB (sorry!) friend posted a status update complaining about being late home last night because someone threw themselves under their train. She and one of her FB friends (who I don't know) swapped several comments which included the phrases "selfish", "inconsiderate", "I would quite like to get home and enjoy my life thank you very much" etc.

I posted fairly mildly saying that it must have been frustrating but at least it was a minor inconvenience for her in the scheme of things and it was safe to say the other person, not to mention the driver, had had a far worse day. FB friend then claimed it was "light-hearted" and said they could post what they liked on their own news feed. I said that for some people, there is nothing "light-hearted" about suicide and they couldn't guarantee some of those people wouldn't be using social media; if they chose to post about a sensitive subject they could expect to get pulled up on it.

It wasn't long before I was accused (by FB friend's friend IYSWIM) of being "PC" (oh, how original) and of "attacking" my friend. I reiterated that this was an emotive subject and that maybe they should step back, re-read with an open mind and see that they weren't coming across as very empathic. And then I left it as it was starting to get to me.

AIBU to think that a woman in her 30s should have a bit more compassion about someone in the absolute depths of despair? Or am I being a sanctimonious old trout and "dictating" (that word was used too) what people can and can't say on their FB timeline?

I think if she'd said "sorry, I know I came across as a bit me me me - I was just letting off steam" it wouldn't have bothered me, but to use the word "light-hearted" as self-justification (there was nothing inherently humorous, OTT-for-effect or anything else to suggest light-heartedness about her OP - just a straight rant at have her evening plans disrupted) seemed totally inappropriate.

horatia perfect way to describe it. I agree it has selfish consequences but no selfish motive. To me being selfish is being aware that your actions will negatively impact on others. Someone in such despair does not think of anything other than their own feelings, and yes I suppose that could be considered selfish but it will be from depression or something where you literally cannot see a way past your pain and suffering. Chances are the person doing it truly believes the people around them will be better off because of how bad they/things are.

Its easy to make a sweeping statement about suicide being selfish but if you really think about it you will rrealise it's really not.

I was recently walking my dog when I lady I see now and again was charging up to me, she was clearly desperate to tell me something. to cut a long story short her words to me were "ohhhh have I got some gossip for you" She then went on to tell me about a recent suicide. As she told me the story, clearly adding bits that were just not true I had to stop her to let her know it was actually a very good friend of my families, not someone I knew very closely but knew enough for it to have completely shaken us all.

This lady saw this tragic story as nothing more than a bit of gossip. The person involved had young children. Don't want to say much more than I am thankful every day I have never been in the dark place that person clearly was.

Saying suicide is selfish implies that the person committing the act has thought through the consequences and still - despite realising the pain they will cause - go ahead anyway.

I find it really tragic that rather than thinking about how desperately sad and lost someone who takes their own life is, people are implying they should be thinking about others first when, quite simply, they're quite incapable of seeing beyond their own pain stop.

We were once delayed 4 hours coming home from holiday by train because some poor soul had committed suicide. How bloody lucky I was that I was safe, happy, warm, with my family and the only "inconvenience" to my life was being late. Some people are utterly incapable and dare I say unwilling to see past the end of their nose.

mum I'm so sorry for your loss. My exDP did the same as your son. I don't think of him as selfish but there is a lot of anger in my grief still, because he was so convinced no one loved him when we all loved him so much.

But as I say, every circumstance is different. My parents have already told me they will go down the euthanasia route if they become incapacitated, and that will hardly be the same thing.

divisionbyzero

We tell ourselves and James' friends that he was ILL and not capable of living anymore. It had nothing to do with his love for us and ours for him.

He stayed alive for as long as he could, we had 22 wondeful years with him and we tell each other to treasure our memories and thoughts of him.

He isn't/wasn't a 'minor saint' he didn't commit an act worthy of a 'minor saint' he was ILL and felt that he had no choice.

Yes, we coddle his memory, after all, it is all we have left. He didn't leave because he didn't love us enough to stay, he left because he didn't love himself enough to stay.

For someone to jump in front of a train, actually jump off a platform when a speeding train is pulling in to the station, make themselves do the leap that will end their life in an instant..... I cannot even fathom how desperate and lonely they must feel. Selfish is not what they are. I hate it when people complain over this matter, is your life really that important that you cannot spare a moments sympathy for all involved?
So they was late home? Late to watch eastenders?
Also people who post their opinions on fb should be ready to accept others opinions especially on sensitive subjects such as suicide.
That would make me de friend them!

I find it sad that your FB friend thinks its appropriate to post that online. It's okay for people to think its selfish but like others have said, that person must be so low and really feel that that was the only way out and are certainly not in the right mindset to be thinking about being selfish or inconsiderate!

A young man committed suicide in the city I live in, he was on top of a car park building and police were trying to talk him down. It closed up the car park and there was lots of traffic at a standstill for miles into town. People were actually getting out of their cars and shouting at him telling him to jump and to get it over with so that they could get on their way. Now to me, they're the selfish and inconsiderate people rather than the suicidal person. Sadly, he jumped and died on the pavement and its horrible to think that the police MAY have been able to talk him down had it not been for the rude, impatient people shouting!!!

OP, yanbu!!!

What gerty said. They don't know it was suicide. People do have accidents too. No so long ago I saw someone's toddler almost get pushed onto the tracks. Imagine how you'd feel if something like that'd happened and you were wittering on about it being 'selfish' that someone was dead.

Your friend is a tosser.

My heart goes out to the poor train drivers who encounter suicides. But equally it goes out to anyone desperate enough to go down that route. I've felt those feelings myself, as I know many of us have. Suicide, as a poster (I'm sorry, I can't remember who) very eloquently put it upthread, suicide is death by mental illness. There are no winners, only losers.

I read a blog once where a woman who had considered suicide wrote that she had planned to book into a hotel and kill herself there rather than do it at home where her family would find her.

I thought about my friend and I, 16 year olds with Saturday jobs chambermaiding at a local hotel, and what it would have done to us if we'd found the body of someone who had killed themselves in a room.

Suicide is selfish, but obviously the person is not thinking clearly, and not really thinking about the wider ramifications other than 'the world would be a better place without me'.

when we coddle the memory and the act as if it is the act of a minor saint? We tell them yes, it was ok to do this - it is right that your mummy/husband/whoever could not stay alive out of love for you, etc.

Of course you "coddle the memory" of who they were. It is all you have left of them.

And no you don't say it was ok. You explain that they were not well. You explain that they were so ill they were unable to carry on at that point.

I agree with you OP. I just wanted to say that the Samaritans work on the railways during vulnerable times (just before Christmas) to give potential jumpers someone to talk to. They are trained to spot the signs.
For those who moan about the suicides, perhaps they could donate some money to the Samaritans, who might just prevent one of their trains being delayed.

I have a scar on my wrist. It goes from wrist to elbow. It is 38 years old. When I was 17 I honestly could see no way of escape from the abuse that I was suffering, it seemed the sensible option a chance to get away from the day to day of being told I was fat, useless, ugly, thick. I thought nothing of myself because nobody else did. I was told daily that nobody would want me and I would never be anything. A chance to get away from being beaten on a daily basis. I did get away, a neighbour rescued me and helped me. How was it a selfish option?
The only good thing about these threads is it gives some of us a chance to see who the cunts really are in this place.

Maybe I come across as an 'ignorant nob' then?

I fully believe that suicide is a selfish act. And inconsiderate too.

And I say this as someone who has had to deal with their own father committing suicide.

It IS selfish, as he was thinking about his own issues when he did it, not about anything else. It WAS inconsiderate, as he bore no thought to what would happen to me, considering that he was my sole Carer as a Lone Parent, and I had been removed from my mother by Social Services.

I endured 4 1/2 years of hell being abused after that, living with my mother. Which he must have known would happen, given past events. So yeah, selfish and inconsiderate.

If that makes me an ignorant nob, meh!

I would just hit 'unfriend'. It's one thing to think it but to post it as a status just smacks of attention seeking and 'oh how edgy am I' yawn
Have a friend who is an ex train driver, in the old days you didn't even get the rest of the day off :/
I can see why people feel suicide is selfish for everyone else, but do people really think if that person was thinking logically and wasn't completely consumed with just ending their life that they would be thinking straight enough to do it somewhere quiet and alone? Pills don't always work, someone might find you or hanging etc. also doesn't always work, trains are a sure bet. That's all they're thinking of. And to mock that is very crass indeed.

Couthymow you rarely think about others when planning to take your own life other than to think about how much better off they will be without you.

Sorry for your experience but most people who commit suicide do not have the capacity for rational thought, that's why the MHA exists.

People who commit suicide are not thinking about those that they leave behind.

It can NEVER be anything but a selfish act.

I've been fucking depressed before, to the point of having the pills laid out in front of me. Didn't do it though - because I thought about my DD being left behind and having to deal with what I had had to deal with, the thoughts of not being enough for a parent to want to stay living for, thoughts that I must be such a worthless piece of shit for my own dad to want to do ANYTHING that would mean I had to move back in with my mother, knowing what would happen to me - so knowingly resigning me to that fate...

Before DD, I HAD tried to kill myself. Took an overdose, had my stomach pumped. After DD was born, she was enough to stop me.

I sought help from the local Mental Health team. I recovered and dealt with the shit from my past.

It was still a selfish act of his to do that to a fucking ten year old though. He actually did it just 24 hours after my tenth birthday, my birthday has never been the same since. It took him a week to die, a week in which I wasn't allowed to see him.

CouthyMow
I have a very close friend whose mum committed suicide, it was literally just as everything went right for my friend, had just got a good job after uni, had a bf etc. It's like she went 'ok, you can cope with it now so I'll do it.' It just made her feel like her Mum had been biding her time and had felt like that for her whole childhood. Made worse by the fact she did it at a very well known spot.

I think people struggled to understand that she both missed her Mum and was very angry at her, when to me it was obvious!

I think it all depends on the circumstances, I don't think anyone would call you an ignorant nob, because you've actually experienced it, and were directly affected by the suicide of a loved one. But to make flippant comments about someone's suicide inconveniencing you by half an hour is worlds away from what you must've felt.

CouthyMow
It's strange because saying "Oh he wasn't thinking about how you would feel he was consumed by his own suicidal feelings" I imagine is not comforting. The whole point is you felt he didn't think of you.

You can never know what someone was thinking, and I myself have stopped from committing suicide because I knew how much it would upset my sister, but I've always thought that was actually an excuse I told myself because I didn't really want to die. I suspect your father's thinking was more that you'd be better off without him, than not thinking about you at all.

Yes, Madame - they don't think about how their actions affect those around them. It coloured and basically fucked up the next 13 years of my life. Isn't that the definition of selfishness?

So while I have attempted to commit suicide before I had my DC's, when there wasn't anybody who would have given two shits if I was alive or dead, once I DID have DC's, no matter how hopeless life seemed, no matter how much I thought it was the only way, no matter how much I had MH problems that desperately needed addressing, I COULDN'T FUCKING DO IT, BECAUSE I COULDN'T HURT MY DC'S LIKE THAT.

If you HAVE personal experience of suicide like that, then you KNOW the effects on those lefty behind, because you've LIVED IT. To still go through with it then would be the height of selfishness.

I couldn't.

Maybe he thought you'd be fostered or adopted to another family, not realising you could go back to your Mothers?

I'm afraid my father knew full well that I would not be better off without him, as the only alternative was to be moved in with my alcoholic mother, who I had been removed from by Social Services because she neglected me, and emotionally and physically abused me whilst letting her pervert boyfriend rape me from the age of 2yo until I was removed when I was 4yo.

I doubt anybody even NOT in their right mind would think that that could be a better environment, or that I could be better off without them, if it meant me being sent back to that environment...

Selfish.

Couthy, did you read my post?
We are all different, but in most cases it really isn't a selfish act. It is awful that this happened to you, I strongly suspect though,that your ten year old self is still dealing with the consequences of this, rather than the rational adult you are now.

He knew that I wouldn't be fostered as there was a relative available - you are talking about 1991 here, I'd been living with him since I was 4, with continuous SS involvement. Even SS's hands were tied, as my mother took them to court with her father's (my Grandfather's) expensive solicitors.

Which she had told him she would do if he ever died. She WANTED a punchbag...

And he knew. Believe me, I've had to make my peace, of a sort, with the fact that the caring father I knew was selfish enough to act like this rather than get treatment and medication for his obvious even to a 9yo MH issues. Despite me BEGGING him for a year beforehand, this was the days when nobody could be forced by sectioning to have MH help.

He CHOSE to let his MH issues get that bad by refusing treatment.

He made that choice too, another selfish choice.

I love my dad, and I see the caring side he showed for 6 years as well as the inherently selfish side of him. Which WAS there.

CouthyMow

I can't say how sorry I am for what happened to you.

I am of the general opinion that someone who commits suicide feels so worthless that they do think everyone would be better off without them.

Could it be that your Father didn't actually think you would get sent back to your Mum given that you had been removed from her care?

I have experienced suicide within my own family but vastly different circumstances from your own. Cannot even begin to imagine how tough it must have been for you.