Stop Romanticizing Suicide

After last week and pissing everyone off by suggesting that you cut the users and abusers of your kindness out of your life because many of them are attention-seeking assholes who will bleed you dry and put you into a tailspin (financially, emotionally, spiritually, relationally), we decided we wanted to write something else we think everyone should hear, even if you don't fucking like it. So here it is. We encourage you to stop romanticizing suicide by utilizing dark poetry to describe the act. Stop giving suicide this sort of dark noir romanticized aura.Phrases like the following:

"He/she fought his demons till they overcame him.""He/she lost his battle with PTSD.""He/she fought hard, but in the end, his demons were too much for him.""He/she succumbed to their wounds."

Things like this soften the blow when a brother or sister commits suicide. It also paints their struggle as heroic and brave, fighting against demons that are insurmountable, fighting a force that he/she is hopelessly destined to lose no matter what. This dark poetry romanticizes suicide as if it's an acceptable alternative to getting help, that somehow the guy or gal was brave in committing that act. Brave like a warrior destined to hold the line by themselves against an unstoppable and invincible onslaught.But that's not how it really is, is it? Rather, we beg and we plead for those that need help to reach out, to get proper mental health. And when they don't, the aftermath is destructive. There are, in essence to play along with our metaphor, reinforcements available. Reinforcements that are able to defeat the demons and yet, suicide still seems to be the go-to "solution" (we put solution in quotes because it's not a fucking solution, despite people treating it like one). We try to deal with the aftermath of suicide and say things to soften the blow. As we wrote in a reply last week on Facebook when people accused us of being unsympathetic and we'll paraphrase this time because we don't want to go back through ALL the social media to find it.After 10+ years of hikes, challenges, and IGY6 tattoos, nothing has seemingly changed.Maybe nothing has changed because we aren't looking at suicide as this horrible thing, but rather as this sort of hopeless romantic struggle, we are ill-fated warriors doomed to take our own lives because that's just how the story of our lives had been written in the stars. Dark poetic romanticism.But the truth of suicide is much different from that dark poetic romanticized facade we give it.Families are destroyed, kids grow up without parents, friends wonder why the victim didn't call them...countless repercussions follow in the aftermath, really all suicide does is pass the pain along to someone else. It's kicking the can down the road in the most permanent way possible.Don't get it twisted, and think that we're victim shaming (the way a ton of you on social media like to) and think that we're being assholes. After all these years and nothing changing, we need to rethink how we're approaching it. Maybe we don't have the right answer, but we can tell you this though, the romanticization of suicide is fucking bullshit and if you do it, then fuck you, buddy, because we're tired of losing friends because they see suicide as the only honorable way out of their situation.It should be the goal of every single suicide prevention non-profit and every mental health professional to work themselves out of a job in regards to suicide.Crucify us if you must, but deep down, you know we're right.Disclaimer: The author of this piece is 4 years from his suicide attempt as of last week.