Selfishness

There’s been a rash of suicides by teens who were victims of homophobic bullying.

As I do pretty much whenever talk of suicide comes up, I want to link this post by the fantastic Naamah. In it, she destroys the whole “suicide is selfish” trope far more eloquently than I ever could. It’s an important essay. People who accuse suicides of being selfish piss me off, and not just because the school counselor I talked to about my first bout of suicidal impulses told me I was being selfish (had I not already mostly come out of it, that remark would likely have pushed me over the edge. I’ve always hated that woman).

A quote from the essay that pretty much sums it up perfectly:

That is why depression, or the other mental illnesses commonly associated with suicide, are so crippling. They destroy the ability to do the most necessary thing – cope.