I keep seeing many posts around the social media that seems to me to be so narrow minded. Of course Robin Williams is still big in the news. I wish people would look at both sides.

I see people say that suicide is selfish. This is people who don’t understand. Imagine being hungry for a week, a month, or as with depression, years. Being so hungry that you would eat absolutely anything. The someone gave you a sandwich and put it in front of you, you could smell it, touch it, and you don’t even have to close your eyes to imagine how delicious it will taste and how much it’s going to take away the hunger pains. Your brain in the moment does not consider anything else but that sandwich. What if someone else wanted that sandwich? Are you going to tell the starving person that if they eat it, they are selfish for ending their pain?

I know that people say suicide is selfish and that the person committing it is not thinking of their loved ones, but isn’t it also selfish for those loved ones to want the suicidal person to stay? They want them to stay because of the hole that they would leave, so that they don’t feel grief, loss – a form of pain that is on the same unbearable level as the one wishing to leave this world? Isn’t that also selfish?

I am not condoning suicide here. Not at all, but don’t hate someone because they did it or attempted it. Don’t tell someone who is suicidal that it’s selfish, because it isn’t. Most suicidal people don’t actually want to die, what they want is the pain to stop. Not to end life. Not to cause more harm. Not to make others suffer, but to put an end to what feels so unbearable inside their minds.

I saw another post today also by someone with terminal cancer. Of course they ranted about how someone with everything, money, fame, family etc could wish away their lives and in Robin Williams case, take it. How could they do that when people like this cancer sufferer fought every day to live?

It’s a valid point. However, depression and any other mental health issue is a killer. Robin Williams didn’t kill himself, as nor did anyone else, their illness did. And if you don’t believe me, think back to the sandwich.

While I can never understand the fight and the fear and everything else that happens with some who is terminally ill, I do understand what it is like to want it to stop. I know what it is like to feel a pain so much in my mind that I have begged God or whoever to please not let me wake up again.

There was another status I saw after that too. Someone had posted that they would understand why he took his life he had been suffering a deadly debilitating illness and they were pleased that actually he might have been because he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, so they understood that. Why do they not understand that depression and everything like it is a deadly and debilitating illness?

Imagine the one thing in the world that drives you so insane that you can’t think. Fingernails down a chalk board. The sound of a knife and fork being brought back and forth over a ceramic plate. A loud shrilling siren. Sitting on a nine hour flight with a screaming baby.

Imagine that sound and then imagine listening to it every minute of every day.

How would you switch off the pain in your ears?