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Suicide is a tricky issue, to say the least. It would be misleading to say I support it, but I certainly understand the draw. The most troublesome aspect of suicide in the modern day, as far as I can see, lies in the fact that it is fundamentally tied to depression. Now, I'm going to say something a bit contentious and probably kinda hurtful. The reason depression makes the subject of suicide even more twisted is that it is essentially impossible for someone who doesn't suffer from depression to empathize with someone who does. I'm not saying they can't or shouldn't try, that is an entirely different question. I am however saying that without feeling the absolute hopelessness and emptiness that can effect a deeply depressed person you can't have a frame of reference; its completely singular.

To some extent this extends to pretty much every variety of mental disorder, but I'm not here to go there today. I am here to say that calling a suicide cowardly or selfish or demonizing it at all demonstrates how deeply one can fail to understand the problem. Suicide is a solution. We can talk about it being a permanent solution to temporary problems all day. That isn't the point. The point is that it is, in fact, a solution. And when you can't feel hope, or joy, or really anything; the whole world is a problem and any solution at all starts to look promising. That said, for many depressives (myself included) the problem isn't temporary, sometimes it isn't even intermittent. Its just something that sits in your heart and deadens every experience you have. Imagine you have a fat man that hates you tied to your neck, all he does is sit on your chest and tell you how worthless you are and how futile everything is. Now imagine you believe him implicitly, you don't have to like him, or approve of his presence at all, but you can't help but agree. There's no hope, there's no future, there is only this agonizing emptiness. Forever. There is no cowardice in the choice because to those who choose it it's a rational conclusion to a problem. There is no selfishness in it because either you genuinely believe no one will care or you feel like everyone else will be better off without you dragging them down. 

To me, that's always been the worst bit, not just feeling, knowing, in my twisted little head that my depression isn't just hurting me. Knowing that if I just had done with it, the people I care about wouldn't have to suffer through my pain anymore, they'd be free. So when some asshole "news" cunt calls a great man with a tragic history a coward, or a couple of fucking subhuman troglodytes torment a woman going through what is, hopefully, the worst pain she'll ever have to experience, we all lose. They kill the discussion. They hurt the wounded. We are fucking better than this. People protect the weak and wounded, they are part of the community. Monsters hurt people and prey on those who ought to be protected. We need to learn to make the distinction.