I’m writing this (on paper) as I’m sitting on the train to visit my family – they live a few hours away from me (or technically I guess I’m living a few hours away from them). I barely have any Internet as I’m writing this, so I’ll just copv this onto the computer and to the blog when I have the opportunity… (This is being typed about a day and a half later.)
As I said, I’m sitting on the train. Just killing time by hand-sewing on something, and with plans to switch over to reading later on. It’s about two hours left of the train ride. Plenty of time to just relax and not care about other stuff (though I remembered that I forgot to buy a present for my newphew’s birthday tomorrow, so I’ll have to do that tomorrow). Two hours left, give or take a few minutes. The train comes to a sudden stop. I don’t react at first. When I notice that we’re standing still, I’m thinking that we’re probably awaiting an oncoming train. Nope! I couldn’t be more wrong.
The train staff gives a sombre message through the speakers. It’s been an accident. A person has jumped in front of the train (or we’re in front of the train, can’t for sure say they jump, they might have been standing/sitting/lying on the track already for all I know). We can’t travel on for a while. We need to await the emergency services and the staff are awaiting more instructions on what to do. They warn that we’ll be standing here for quite some time. They warn that nobody can leave the train, since that’s very dangerous. On both sides of the train are steep hills. I don’t know if the train staff can even get out to look closer at the situation from the outside (if this is something they would do, if they could). I don’t know if the person that jumped in front of the train is even alive – though I doubt it, the odds probably isn’t in one’s favor here. But they could be alive, I guess.
Some of the emergency services has arrived (after about 30 minutes) and is taking a closer look, assessing the situation and state of the person. I don’t know if you should hope they are alive or not in this situation. If they are alive, they should be in great pain. I they’re dead, they’re free from pain. And should you take the person’s own feeling into account when hoping? If you should, then I probably should hope they died, right? For a person to jump in fron of a train, they probably really want to die. Maybe they have a hellish life and just can’t take it anymore. Maybe they just don’t want to live. Then they should get to make the decision to die, and for everyone to respect it – though I, personally, wouldn’t go out by train.
(Before the train could move on, a few hours later, I learned the last thing to do was that the firetruck needed to hose off the train – from this I can only speculate that the person got hit really badly and therefore didn’t survive. I’m guessing they weren’t even in one piece.)
People might complain that it’s weak and/or selfish of a person to take their own life – that they’re taking the easy way out, and by doing it they’re only hurting the people they leave behind. But isn’t it also selfish to demand of someone to continue to live, when they really don’t want to? To force them into an existence they want to get rid of?
Maybe they have tried everything else, maybe they don’t want to live for someone else. I don’t think it makes a person weak if they commit suicide. Quite the opposite. It’s not easy to do something like that, to leave everything behind. They’re strong for being able to do it for themselves. But the people that don’t succeed in taking their lives, they’re strong too – they often continue to live on and find other ways to make their life work. They might not have wanted to really end their life, they might just have wanted a way out of a situation. A failed suicide attempt can lead to that way – just as a successful suicide in the end leads to the way out the person might have wanted.
I’m not advocating suicide. Far from it. Try to live. Try every means necessary to make you life worth living. But live for yourself, not for someone else. As you should only die for yourself, not for someone else. And if you want to die, try to find I way where you don’t make someone else an “accomplish”, someone who then has to live with the guilt of having contributed to someone else’s death.
Some people that take their lives might have been better off alive, might have been able to turn the bad around. Just as some people alive, might be better off dead.
But nobody besides the persons themselves can decide this or know. It’s not up to me or anybody else to decide if a person should live or die.
Live for you.
Die for you.
(originally posted at my old, and misbehaving, blog and was posted on April 29, 2015)
Tears Do Not Equal Weakness 