A serious but necessary post about suicide

It has been more than twelve hours at this point since I had to unfriend someone for making a post stating that Robin Williams did a selfish thing. He said that staying alive would have been the "more noble route". That he purposely left his children without a father. He even went so far as to suggest that he should have hosted a benefit event instead, and that it would have cured him. Clearly, he thinks that suicide is the result of a weakness in character. I am so not okay with that.

I don't feel upset about the mere fact that I now have to remove this individual from my life because he was kind of annoying anyway and I only had one class with him in grade nine. It takes a lot for me to unfriend someone, though, and I rarely ever do it. I'm much more selective about my real life connections than Facebook. Needless to say, what he said was not something that can just be brushed off.

Come to think of it, it wasn't a real class, it was homeroom.

Let me start by saying that while the causes of clinical depression are largely unknown, weakness in character is definitely not one of them. Weakness in character does not result in suicide. You know what it does result in? Hate crimes. Ponzi schemes. Elder abuse. Animal cruelty. Get it? These are all acts whereby someone selfishly takes out their personal problems on the vulnerable citizens of our planet whom we have a duty to protect from harm. Those are the kinds things that someone with a weakness in character does. Suicide has nothing to do with that.

This is not to take away the legitimacy of the feelings that the surviving friends and family of suicide victims experience. They are 100% right to be upset, shocked, angry and everything else about it and to continue through life afterwards in the way that they feel they have to. It is a terrible thing when someone dies from suicide. Depression is not a rational process (no illness ever is), but to say that people who are suicidal are unaware of the effect that suicide will have on those who love them is to suggest that they are intellectually and morally deficient. This attitude could not be more wrong or offensive.

There is a memorial group on Facebook for a young woman from my high school who died from suicide. I only remember her by name, really, but I know, even if only in a small way, what she struggled with. Her mother often posts a poem she wrote. The line that always stands out is "If love could have saved you, [name omitted], you never would have died." When I try to think about the state of mind you are in when you are about to take your own life, that is how I picture it. You are so overwhelmed from fighting the internal monster that love won't save you. It doesn't mean you don't know, at least at a deeply hidden level, that people love you and will miss you.

So here are the things I would like to clarify:

The only reason we know for sure why a person commits suicide is that they lost their struggle with a terminal illness.

Guilt trips are not in any way a cure for depression. All you can hope to do through guilt trips is to make a depressed person feel guilty and stupid. It is discouraging, not motivating.

Suicide is a very bad thing and I want people to find a way to live happily instead, but it is not a selfish act.

Mental illness is not a weakness in character. Mental illness is a legitimate illness. Whether or not it can physically be measured is neither here nor there.

That is all I needed to say. Have a great day.

My brain won't let me sleep yet, so here's a sub-par update on things.

Wait a minute, shouldn't sub-par be a good thing? You're supposed to get a low score, right? Anyway.

The bhut jolokia peppers were a success. I dried them out. It was easy enough to do; they're so spicy that mould won't even eat them.

My cousin had a baby girl on New Year's Day. She is a cutie and has such a happy face. I can't wait to go to Vancouver and see her. I've already knitted her a blanket, a hat with a flower on it, and a pair of bunny-shaped booties, and my mom picked out an adorable outfit for her. She is going to keep my knitting needles busy for years.

I have had two colds since my surgery and the difference between before and after is insane. Before, it was absolutely miserable. Now, it's just a nuisance. I also find that I only need to take my allergy spray twice a week, which is great because I don't have drug benefits.

My nose is big news, folks.

If anyone is ever unsure about going through with an adenoidectomy, I suggest that if your doctor says you're a good candidate for it, just do it. Even if you think you're okay to leave them there, you're not. They're inhibiting your ability to breathe through your nose (you are used to it being harder and you will feel the difference right away), they're trapping allergens and germs and other air pollutants between them, they're making it more difficult to deal with upper respiratory tract infections, they might contribute to a deviated septum, they are making your voice sound nasal, and they could potentially cause you to have sleep apnea down the road if they haven't already. Perhaps they are having other effects on you that they didn't on me. It's worth all the misery, eating nothing but goo, and morphine-induced constipation in the end. It's only a week of your 80-ish-year life and it leads to the latter years being a whole lot better.

The main ingredient in U-No-Poo is morphine.

I am applying to a few graduate certificate programs at Centennial College. I decided it would be better to accumulate a bit more student debt and be able to pay it off faster with a better paying job than to make tiny payments with a low-paying job, accumulate an unreasonable amount of interest and not be able to save anything for law school anyway. My first choice is Paralegal, followed by Project Management and Financial Planning. Paralegal would be great, because in Ontario, that's just a few steps short of a lawyer, and would be an awesome thing to have on my law school application. It will be amazing to be finished with fast food for good. Seriously. I've had all I can take of it.

I ordered some leggings from Modcloth. I got plain black ones, sparkly black ones with zippers, and a pair with a space print on them. I am liking ordering clothes online a lot better than I thought I would. In comparison, going to the mall is a pain in the ass. There is no guarantee that I will find something in the entire mall that I will like, and it is much more important for me to wear clothes that I like than to keep up with fashion trends no matter how much I hate them. Online, I don't have to go anywhere and spend an hour walking around. If I don't find something I like on one site, I can go to one of hundreds of others in seconds. Mind, I have yet to have that problem with Modcloth.

In conclusion, this is the end of my post. Goodnight.