DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT BELIEVE I HAVE THE TRUTH, ABSOLUTE OR OTHERWISE. I DO NOT INTEND TO IMPLY THAT MY OPINIONS THAT I EXPRESS IN THIS POST ON THE NEGATIVE OR POSITIVE NATURE OF OTHERS' COMMENTS EXTEND TO THE ESSENCE OF THOSE PEOPLE'S PERSONALITIES. I DO ASSUME THAT THERE IS EVEN ONE PERSON HERE WHO CARES VERY MUCH AT ALL WHAT MY OPINION IS.
i guess maybe i don't fit in here but a lot of times you guys seem really mean. i was, coincidentally, overdosing and then slicing up my arms with razors to the sounds of xo on the day elliot smith was stabbing himself.
it is just not as simple a question as that of the presence or nonpresence of "willpower" you imply by saying he chose a coward's way out. addiction to substance is one thing. addiction to several substances and the obviously serious psychological pathology present in elliot smith is something to sympathize with him about, rage at GOD about, and then make your peace with. but you don't betray his family and friends' pain by choosing to accept that you have not the background from which to say his choice was cowardly.
maybe suicide is a coward's way out. i obviously don't know. i don't want to be a coward. but i bet neither do you and yet it seems quite cowardly to me to pretend you're some ubercool, ultra experienced gent on a website to feel better about yourself.
it seems similarly cowardly to me to call it the coward's way out because you still have unresolved feelings about your own suicide attempts. if you've really been there and made the decision not to do it because of family and friends' pain, i can honestly say i've done something similar in my own circumstances and i applaud you. im glad you're alive. who's to say, however, that elliott wasn't on that precipice a billion times before. somehow you've gotten help. maybe he had to make that choice everyday. for whatever reason he was incapable of finding help compatible with his own situation. exhaustion, intoxication, and long-standing depression are debilitating by themselves, let alone in some sort of combination. Saying he was a coward seems at best a statement quite insensitive in its hastiness to assume surrounding circumstances.
as far as suicide in general, taking pills to sleep forever, jumping off a building, perhaps these i would more lengthily consider before saying circumstance determined cowardliness. stabbing yourself to death? pause for a moment. imagine that. that is a moment saturated with existential meaning. that's an action chosen, whether or not your inhibitions are debilitated by drugs or what have you, amidst a type of pain that reaches the kind of unconscious material spoken about by jung, freud, heidegger. What was the significance to the makeup of the human consciousness of the japanese art of killing yourself to AVOID cowardice. how the hell do we know?
i was in the hospital the day after elliott died explaining to my family and friends why i feel like i have no other choice than to bleed myself. it's not, for me, at least, a once in a lifetime choice spurred by some horrific event or moment of despair. it's an ongoing battle i fight with thoughts that i am desperately trying to master. thoughts which are the impulse for often unbearably painful emotions. the analogy to a faucet that i can turn on and off is far to simple for the choice i make when attempting suicide. furthermore, it's a catch 22 dealing with those i love dearly and, perhaps contrary to popular belief, much more than myself in many cases. after the bouts i've had with this situation, i still can't say that i can answer the question of whether my death or survival would least injur my family.
What truly is worse;
the conglomerate of pain and anxiety, self-doubt and desperation, anger and frustration they've felt in seeing me struggle for 23+ years with addiction and depression, all the while knowing me well enough to know i'm not callous, that i do love them, and that it's mostly because my thinking is fucked up and so not being able to fully hate me and write me off, seeing the struggle i fight to turn off feelings and intelligence and yet feeling powerless to translate the resources to control these thoughts and feelings which come so easily to them to me, seeing me vacillate between this totally helpless dependant woman and this hopeful competent woman who wants to help herself and heal the wounds she knows she's created so she can love them better and never knowing at which point the latter is truly in control so that they might breathe and say "she's alright"
OR
watching me make a morbid, horrible, disgusting choice that pains them to the extreme, and then having the freedom to decide for themselves whether it was right or wrong, and resolve themselves to it accordingly.
of course, of course, of course, i certainly wish the question never presented itself. i've certainly tried my hardest to, at best, make it stop, or at least, keep my struggles from those i love. it hasn't worked. i recognize that my efforts, no matter how sincere and persistent make me no less definitively a sinner. nevertheless, sinner is not synonymous with coward.
that i connected in a real way with almost every piece elliot composed does not tell me how alike or different i am from elliott smith. neither does it tell you. But i can say this: no one on a website who has read this, then heard my music, and then heard about my death would be in the position to make a statement so completely saturated with arrogance as "she took the coward's way out and is not the one who deserves sympathy." Everyone effected by Elliot Smith's suicide deserves sympathy, no matter their choices or how you percieve their control over the matter.
it may encourage some of you that i don't think i'll be coming on this 930 site for a while because i know everyone will either have mean things to say which pick apart little bits of this...treatise here i've written until it spirals out of logical control. or worse, nothing at all will be said. regardless of all this, please remember that while the outcomes are rarely as well publicized, talented, kind, often reasonable people who suffer terribly from depression and addiction everywhere you are. this includes internet fora. while opinions on the inconsequential are of course to be bandied about, in fact it's obviously encouraged. but consequentiality is relative. don't forget to connect your heart to your brain for that extra second and be compassionate in your expressions.
thanks if you even took the time to read this.
