[Serious] Rational reason for ending my life.

[Rev. Rye]

I think one fairly simple way of keeping yourself alive: always have some book you’re looking forward to reading. Not in maybe a couple years, but fairly soon. I’ve maintained a reading queue of books for over a decade. Partly just so I can find a convenient way to figure out what to read next, but partly so I can at least rationalize to myself “I can’t kill myself now. I’ve got (just to name on example of literally thousands) that biography of Buñuel I’ve been wanting to read that’s coming up soon.” (Note: by this point, it’s far more the “confident way of figuring out what to read next.”)

I haven’t bothered to write up a big list of books to read so you don’t kill yourself, and frankly, I can’t be sure that, if I do, the books I choose will resonate with everybody. I suppose one category of books would be what I’d call “Consolation Literature.” Books that, on some level, let you know that you’re not alone in the way you feel. Catcher in the Rye was that for me as a teenager (and to a lesser extent, still to this day.) Given that you’ve stated you see yourself as a fuckup, I think Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son would be a good choice. Before you ask, no, it’s not religious. The title is a reference to a Velvet Undergound lyric, and the content is more this:



(And, yes, in the book, his name, as far as the reader knows, is really “Fuck-Head.”)

And there are some other books that more address the problem of suicide and how to go on living even when doing so makes zero fucking sense. Kate Bornstein’s Hello Cruel World is a good one, even if it does have a heavy bent towards LGBTQ readers (and sometimes, as a straight guy, I admit that reading or watching something geared towards an LGBTQ audience can be like contemplating a sports bra; I reckon it’s okay for what it is, I just don’t know what the Hell I’m going to do with it) many of the alternatives to suicide she lists are still useful to straight folks, and frankly, you gotta admire the fact that she lists selling your soul to the devil as one alternative. 

Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus is also a good look into the question of suicide and constructing new identities in response to a world where existence is meaningless. I’d also recommend a short story by Dostoevsky called “Dream of a Ridiculous Man.” It’s about a man who’s saved from the brink of suicide by a small girl and a dream about the corruption of Man. 

And maybe if you liked that, you can read his other works. He’s written at least five door stoppers of novels, plus a few novellas and even a few novels of relatively normal length. That should keep you occupied for a while. And maybe that might lead you to different authors, and, sometimes, just a little research into a great artist (their contemporaries, their collaborators, their influences, and those they influenced) can lead to discovering a shitton of other great artists. My music collection spans about a quarter of a terabyte and much of it is probably just a few steps downstream of The Beatles. 

Of course, that’s just what I’ve done. And there’s no doubt other things you can do to help give you a reason to live, and I’m just explaining what’s worked for me.