Suicide and self

(Warning for suicide/self-harm-related content)

In the summer of 2005 I came the closest I had ever come to killing or permanently maiming myself, awakening one morning to one of my chronic untreated stomachaches and promptly marching outside to the railroad bridge near our house with the intent to jump off of it. I paced by the railing for a little while, then stood on the railing and played chicken with myself, leaning backwards and forwards in the hopes of getting myself to fall "by accident." This went on for some time before I became dimly aware that there was some commotion going on under me: A few cars had stopped and once in awhile someone would appear on the sidewalk and look at me. Someone might have shouted something to me but I didn't hear what they were saying. I only snapped out of my implosive trance when a police officer approached from the tracks and yelled at me to get away from the railing. After some back-and-forth with him and another cop, they agreed to not prosecute me for trespassing on the railroad tracks if I would agree to "talk to someone." I didn't want to be in trouble so I agreed.

They took me in a squad car to a see the family therapist at the hospital, who I immediately distrusted because I had been taught to. Still, I casually answered all of her questions, as she asked what my family situation was like, if I self-harmed (yes), if I felt better afterward (not really), what my hobbies were, how my boyfriend treated me, and whether I went to church. She wrote the things I was telling her on a clipboard. Her last question was something like this: "What would you say to a friend who was in your situation? Would you want her to hurt herself?"

"No."

"So why are you any different?"

I didn't answer. She would not understand because she was a liberal self-esteem shill. Put in the Christianese way I had grown up with:






In other words, it would be acceptable to persuade a friend not to kill herself because "others" are of some importance. There was no point in stopping myself from doing it, though, because the self is nothing. I was at the bottom of a God-ordained value pyramid. I had been ignoring "God" due to how upset the prayer closet made me feel, and I sometimes fucked up at treating others well, so the next logical progression was to violently punish myself so it all balanced out and I would be adhering to the pyramid. Right?

It would have been great if I had been given any kind of lifeline by my religious system to permit myself to value myself, but it was pretty one-sidedly skewed towards self-abasement. Work hard to improve your moral character (but why bother since good deeds are worthless rags?). You are created in God's image (but actually are hopelessly corrupt by your very nature). The overwhelming message was that true acceptability in God's eyes was obtained by denying all of your wants, ignoring all of your needs, and replacing your self-worth with God-worth. Really I was only given enough rope to hang myself.