The last damn thing our culture needs is some shitty Netflix program glorifying the post-mortem justice myth of suicide.
Sure enough, it happened.
November 2008, to be exact.
via YouTube
Or was it because I had just started taking anti-depressants?
Maybe it was the fact I had just started taking anti-depressants and was still drinking alcohol fairly regularly.
You dont need to be a Harvard researcher to know that aint a good combination.
via YouTube
Hell, maybe it was actually a comorbid thing.
I had a major eating disorder at the time and insomnia.
Id go three days at a time without food AND sleep.
Needless to say, I wasnt in good shape, emotionally, mentally orphysically.
Things couldve panned outmuch, much worsethat evening.
Yep, just me.
Not the teachers at school giving me Cs instead of As.
Not the people at work being mean to me.
Not my girlfriend refusing to return my phone calls.
Not the physician who gave me a prescription for SSRIs.
Not the clerk who sold me the alcohol I wasmixingwith said SSRIs.
Not pop culture for making me think Ineededto be rail thin to be happy with myself.
I was young and impulsive and brash and made a really, really stupid decision.
I wasnt thinking about the long-term.
Its going to sound absurd, butattempting suicidereally did save my life.
I had to contemplatewhyI was sad instead of letting itunreasonablylord over me like some sort of emo slavemaster.
I stopped letting the opinions of others dictate my own sense of self-worth.
I stopped blaming other people for my mistakes.
I admitted that almost all of the problems I had in my life were self-created or self-maintained.
But most importantly, I tookresponsibilityfor my actions.
If I succeeded or failed, the only person I could credit or condemn wasme.
That crippling depression that almost goaded me into suicide gradually disappeared.
Thats an insult to people whove actually survived catastrophic events.
People survive muggings and car wrecks and sexual assaults.
You cant surviveanythingyou voluntarily chose to do yourself.
Nobody put a gun to my head andmademe swallow all those pills.
I was a dumb, dumb kid who made a dumb, dumb decision.
And anybody who tries to rationalize let aloneheroicizeimpulsive, near-fatal decisions is an absolute idiot.
When I see stuff like13 Reasons Why, my heart sinks.
For years, U.S. society especiallyHollywood has been guilty of romanticizing suicidal behavior.
But instead of denouncing youth suicide as the absurdity it is, the cultural zeitgeist seems hell-bent onjustifying it.
Our culture hasconvincedyoung people that killing themselves makes them martyrs in the great cultural crusade againstintolerance.
Now, suicide has become themost radicalway of getting back at ones oppressors.
Youth suicide, for lack of a better term, has becomeweaponizedfor ideological warfare.
They become celebrated as tragic heroes, people pushed to the absolutebrinkby theinsidiousdoings of others.
And its all a bunch of bullshit incredibly,insanely dangerous bullshit.
Im a very, very lucky dude.
I and I alone made a stupid, pointless and emotionally reckless decision and almost died.
Thats nothing to be proud of and everything to be ashamed of.
I dont deserve any sympathy for it and if, anything, I deservefar morescorn for such idiotic behavior.
Its becausetheir suicide attemptsworked.
There is no logical excuse for something so extreme and, bluntly, stupid.
Suicide rightly deserves to be a social stigma, because sometimes, critical cultural standards cansave lives.
The last damn thing our culture needs is some shitty Netflix program glorifying thepost-mortem justicemyth of suicide.
Those who commit suicide should be pitied as confused and shortsighted people, andnevercelebrated as troubled heroes.
