"The Teen Suicide Epidemic"

[Faith No More]

In my opinion, some of the treasures in life, such as children, romantic love, etc. are worth every ounce of pain. Is that pain easy to handle? Absolutely fucking not. Depression isn't just sadness, but I think most people in this thread know that. I always imagine that I will miss something epic, like a niece's graduation or wedding and she will be sitting there going, "I wish my Aunty Shelly could have been here." That helps me pound through the chemical tantrums my brain has.

Now that I am a father, seeing my son does seem to be the one thing that was truly worth it all. When it comes to the pain of life I was referring to though, I think it's the things that exasperate the chemical tantrums that really hurt. Depression is bad enough, but when you combine it with the hardships that life can throw at it you, it can become overwhelming. Without going into details, I can tell you that I suffered from PTSD after my friend killed himself. Then just when I was getting over that several years later, another good friend of mine died from drug abuse that stemmed from coping with his depression. It can be very hard to appreciate the good things in life when life sees fit to be so cruel.

I know the above sounds corny, but it doesn't come from a position of "Hey, cheer up!" It comes from a position of knowing. It totally fucking sucks. One of the things I hate is people saying, "Just snap out of it." to people with depression or saying that their actions or thoughts are selfish. People like that have no fucking clue what it is like. It is selfish to treat a person who is in the grip of depression like an asshole. In my experience, it isn't selfish. Most people want to kill themselves because they feel like they have nothing to offer or that they are a waste of space and their pain is to great to endure. It is those emo punks who cry suicide every time they are remotely sad, but never have any intention of doing it that cause that general public opinion of suicide being selfish because those people are selfish.

I hate the 'cheer up' mentality people have, but unfortunately understanding this is a misconception only seems to come with experience in depression. We that do have experience need to do a better job explaining to others that it's not just sadness. I think the worst thing I've ever heard was when someone told me I was weak minded.

Suicide definitely has a selfish connotation to it that it doesn't deserve. First off, the person isn't completely in their right mind. Second, they see it as the only way to escape the pain. I could go on and on about the negative things I've heard people say when discussing suicide, but the most common one is definitely that it is selfish. I think part of this could be what Moros touched on which is that everyone experiences the emotion depression at some point in their life. Consequently, they think that anyone who suffers from depression the illness just isn't as strong as they are and is a selfish coward when they resort to extreme measures.