Venting Arguments from friends/family/doctors that you find uncompelling

[ShadowOfASelf]

I've been thinking a lot about arguments I've had lately with friends and doctors (shockingly, my family seems understanding about me wanting out, they just want to do it in an official way of which I don't think I qualify for any, we're looking into Switzerland but a) money and 2) it sounds like it will still take a long time to get approved), and how every argument they make makes me more certain that CTB is the right decision. This is why therapists, even ones that I'm seeing which have expertise in chronic illnesses don't seem to help me, I'm the type of person that the more you talk to me, the more you're gonna get me thinking about the topic and all the problems with your arguments as well as the rationales to do it, and also the more you just remind me how effed my life is and how you don't understand because you don't have this thing dominating your every thought (in this case my health issues, even if people have their own health issues, they don't have my specific one which makes my life so debilitating).

And I just want to get them out here, just because I don't know, I want to. I have no place else to talk about them and maybe others may want to share arguments they've heard that they find uncompelling.

Argument: Maybe a cure will be found, or you'll get better once X improves in your life, and you'll have died without knowing

My response: Then I guess it sucks to be me. You can write that on my epitaph if you want "died just before a cure was found, what a loser."

Argument: Other people suffer even worse than you and they still find reasons to live.

My response: Other people suffer less than me and they also want to die. Everybody is different and it's their lives to live and not ours. What do other people's lives have to do with mine? That's like saying "I don't want to go to this party, it's too much noise" "Well other people go to parties with even more noise and they're fine with it." It's irrelevant. And nobody can know how anybody else feels, so you can't really compare "Suffering" anyway, and everybody has their own threshold on what kind of life they find bearable or acceptable to live in.

Argument: I've already lost so many people to suicide in the past year, it's not fair for me to lose another one.

My response: I empathize, I really do. Like, I get it, it's gonna suck for everybody around me when I pass. But everybody dies, and the fact that a bunch of people checked out slightly ahead of me doesn't mean I'm not allowed to decide my own time too. No mater when I die it will suck for my friends and be unfair to them. But again, it's my life, not theirs, they don't have to wake up every day trapped in this body, I do. I have to deal with this every single day 24/7 they don't. As I say to my doctors, it's easy for you to tell me to wait, you get to leave this appointment and go on to the next one, then you get to go home back to your life and you don't have to think about me or live my life, I have to after this appointment is over, 24/7 until it ends.

Argument: You're stronger than this. I know you can do this.

My response: You can write that on my epitaph too "actually she was weaker than I thought, what a loser" if you want. Ultimately, what people think of me after I'm gone isn't going to matter, I'm gone, I won't be here to worry about it. I get the motivational speech thing, I get trying to make me feel like I can tough it out, but again it's my life, my body, my pain. It's hell. It's my hell, nobody else's and I should be allowed to exit it if I want to.

Argument: If you die, you're just saying disabled people don't deserve to live and that a disabled life isn't worth living. You're opening the door to eugenics.

My response: That's always the paradox of "the personal is the political". We, each of us, are both individuals and part of a society. Nothing we do happens in isolation and yet we still have to live our lives alone, nobody else can feel our pain and emotions and live in our body and minds but us. They can support us, but they can't literally swap their mind and bodies with ours to relieve us. So yes, it's true that for every disabled person who CTB there's an argument to be made they're adding to the discourse that disabled life is not worth living, at the same time, you can't force people to live a life they hate and suffer from because it'll help your politics (this is the argument against other anti-choice movements after all, abortion, sexuality, gender transition, you can't force a person to live their life or keep their body a certain way just because it goes against your politics). Also, there are lots of people who are disabled who DO want to end their lives because they are in tremendous pain or just can't live their lives in a manner they find acceptable, and that should honestly be the end of the argument imo. We have to live our lives, nobody else does, if we find our lives unacceptable we should be able to end it even if other people might find the same situation acceptable.

Argument: You're going to die one day anyway, why rush it?

My response: I'm going to die one day anyway, so who cares when that is? I wouldn't want to rush it if I felt that my enjoyment of life outweighed the pain and suffering I deal with daily, and I used to feel that it did, and I DIDN'T WANT TO DIE. Now my enjoyment of life is basically 0 and the suffering is daily and constant and keeps me from enjoying anything. So I want my life to end now. As you said, I'm going to die anyway one day. Might as well be now to save me more suffering.

Ultimately, every argument to me falls apart on the main points that a) it's my life and not theirs, my body my choice, my pain/suffering to deal with, not theirs and 2) after I'm gone, nothing you say or do will matter to me, so yes i do feel bad at all the hurt and damage that will probably happen after I'm gone, but all the stuff about "what if there's a solution and you miss it" doesn't move me. Like yeah that's too bad, but I won't be around to regret it. This isn't even hypothetical to me, I tried to kill myself when I was much younger due to physical circumstances (that did change) and I think back "what if I killed myself before I found out that actually there was a solution" and I think "then I wouldn't be here to think about it." and that's it. It doesn't make me really glad or anything that I didn't. I mean I wouldn't have experienced the things I did after, but (besides a lot of those things being traumatic), I will eventually die anyway and those experiences will be dust in the wind. So I don't really care about that stuff. I just care about not suffering one more day.

I don't believe in god or the afterlife or anything. The end doesn't scare me. I'm just afraid I'll survive the attempt and it'll make everything even worse. But if I could take a pill and just die 100% for sure, I would. Does the abyss scare me? I mean, I didn't exist before I was born, that doesn't scare me. One day all of us won't wake up one way or the other. And I've experienced a lot of death in my life including friends who have CTB themselves, and I don't feel angry or anything about it. I'm sad I won't see them again, and we won't get to do stuff, but... maybe there's something wrong with me. But that's about it. I know at any point people can and do die, and I would rather my friends go on their own terms and when they feel that life doesn't offer them anything anymore than to force them to keep suffering. I've always felt this way, even before any of this happened to me. So I guess a lot of arguments also don't work on me because I just don't feel the way "normaL" people feel. :\

 

[bluevalentine]

I'm just afraid I'll survive the attempt and it'll make everything even worse. But if I could take a pill and just die 100% for sure, I would.

sorry to hear youre going through so much pain. of course im not in your position but i relate alot to that point. fear is a huge hurdle ill have to understand before making a choice. ive heard some similar arguments in the past before too and i just kind of let them go through me to make them believe ill be better. but i dont think you sound irrational i feel like you are self aware and have deeply considered the different choices when it comes life/death. for me the one thathas been bothering me is something along the lines of "youve gotten past this before so you can do it again" idk how other people feel but hearing that does lit nothing for me cuz it doesnt prove anything..

 

[Mr.Tristesse]

My takes:

1. That depends on the realistic likelihood of a cure and in what timeframe but it's still your prerogative to wait. Vague hopes of something changing in the distant future are hardly good enough to power you through daily pain in the here and now.

2. Who fucking cares? That's completely irrelevant.

3. Life is tragic and there aren't always neat and tidy solutions to problems that leave everyone happy. Human existence at every level has also been about competing interests at every turn. There is a time for self-sacrifice and a time for self-prioritization.

4. Maybe you just don't want to be "strong" especially if it doesn't yield enough reward to compensate for the strain.

5. How does one person's decision speak for an entire community? Why would you take it as such? That's an illogical extrapolation that just makes some individuals suffer unnecessarily.

6. Well, that actually is something to consider but it's not a definitive argument against suicide. In the face of relentless pain principles won't be that sustaining.

Some therapists may have expertise in chronic illness but they're still not the ones experiencing it. Our language is the only tool we have at our disposal to convey our subjective experiences (as any pain we feel necessarily is, no matter its nature) and that (our language) has a ton of limits.

 

[Moniker]

I had a period in my life where I got bogged down by the rationality of suicide. Ultimately, I felt the same way you did. It's my life and I don't enjoy it, so I'd like to end it early. Simple as that.

 

[no mas]

You're rebuttals sound solid. There's no need for anyones approval. Most of us have experienced various degrees of love, honor, dignity and respect in our lifetimes, enough to fulfill or leaving a little to be desired. Yet our gratitude to those we truly love and respect have meaning that transcends time. To Ctb earlier than later is relative when tge constant pain, stress and suffering intensely persistes for so long it undeniably undermines any and all peace, joy, and happiness. The self determination to ctb In the absence of a near term breakthrough is a logical choice unless one is a masochist.
Just wondering what your thought is In the absence of a belief in God, can there still be Miracles?

 

[Forever Sleep]

My parents don't know how I really feel but, I'll occassionally hear that old chesnut of: 'Things will get better.' Even- 'Things will get better. I promise. Have I ever been wrong in the past?'

Which sounds insane on multiple levels. For one- it isn't something you can promise! I promise you won't get ill. I promise you'll be happy, successful and wealthy. I promise people will always treat you with respect.

Plus- of course they've been wrong about things in the past! And, even if they had constantly been right, that still doesn't gift them clairvoyance capabilities!

 

[ShadowOfASelf]

My parents don't know how I really feel but, I'll occassionally hear that old chesnut of: 'Things will get better.' Even- 'Things will get better. I promise. Have I ever been wrong in the past?'

Which sounds insane on multiple levels. For one- it isn't something you can promise! I promise you won't get ill. I promise you'll be happy, successful and wealthy. I promise people will always treat you with respect.

Plus- of course they've been wrong about things in the past! And, even if they had constantly been right, that still doesn't gift them clairvoyance capabilities!

Yeah my last conversation with a friend when they told me that they think I'm just mentally ill for wanting to exit this daily suffering and they "really believe" that my physical symptoms will get better at some point in the future just made me angry. You can really believe anything, that doesn't mean anything. It's an argument fallacy like when people say that they really truly believe something as if that means that something is more likely to be true. I get it's an argument from emotion, but it just makes me feel less likely to believe it than more. I would like some actual reasons why rather than "I just know it'll happen"

 

[SoulCage]

Thank you for sharing.
It inspired me to work on my own responses again (responses to many different platitudes and advice that I received in the past for my situation). I started it a while ago, but then left it because it is really difficult to craft responses that don't leave any room for "buts". Also.. it makes me really emotional (anger, sadness, etc.) and as a result I am quickly exhausted.

 

[treestumpisland]

Thank you for sharing.
It inspired me to work on my own responses again (responses to many different platitudes and advice that I received in the past for my situation). I started it a while ago, but then left it because it is really difficult to craft responses that don't leave any room for "buts". Also.. it makes me really emotional (anger, sadness, etc.) and as a result I am quickly exhausted.

Those people will always have a but, no matter how much your response doesn't leave any room for it, they have no interest in anything you have to say other than you just agreeing with them, they don't want a dialogue from you, other than "you're right". Platitudes, fallacies, very poor logic, nothing substantial to really say, it is exhausting. I wish they'd shut it unless they have an actually thoughtful argument/point. They may as well just say "live, laugh, love" as a reason why ctb is wrong.

 

[dragonofenvy]

Argument: Other people suffer even worse than you and they still find reasons to live.

I've always hated this argument. Yes, I know people out there have it worse than me. That doesn't mean the feelings I feel aren't real. The only thing they're trying to do is make me feel guilty, and they succeed, and that ends up making me feel worse. Why should I care that other people have it worse when I feel so shitty?

Argument: If you die, you're just saying disabled people don't deserve to live and that a disabled life isn't worth living. You're opening the door to eugenics.

I've had people say this since one of my primary reasons to ctb is due to how autism has affected my life. My response? So be it. I don't care. They already kill off unborn babies with down syndrome but nobody seems to be crying about that. Is this an extreme take? Yes. Do I care that it's extreme? No.

I've had a lot of people say that these feelings will pass, often citing the famous quote "This too, shall pass."
I've been dealing with this for 18 years, probably longer. I am 25. Each day that passes is another day where I find it harder and harder to believe that this is a temporary problem.