I’ve been thinking a lot about suicide lately- not actually doing it, you understand, but why people do, and whether I might ever find myself wanting to. I’ve never actually been in a place where dying seemed preferable to living- the nearest I’ve come was finding out that one of my contemporaries at Bristol had tried to hang himself in the run-up to finals- but there have been times when I’ve taken a pin or a blade to my legs (the last time a couple of weeks before I went to Australia, so the scar tissue tanned and I got a free tattoo). I couldn’t do my arms, because they’re actually one of the few parts of my body that I like, and being a guy means that if I don’t want people to see the scars I just wear trousers. But as I’ve said elsewhere, I tend to play percentages where dark thoughts are concerned- if I try to deal with a situation it might get better, whereas if I end the situation and myself, it won’t.

Some of you may remember that earlier this year I went to a Christian conference with a few other men from the church I attended at the time. One of the things we were urged to repent of was any time when we’d either wished we were dead or harboured suicidal thoughts- in many ways, it was the start of realising that I couldn’t be a part of that kind of church any more. If it happened now, I’d leave the room. Assuming that I carry on believing in God, I don’t think I have any responsibility for my emotions in any one situation. How I act, yes, but not how I feel. If God put me in a particular situation, and shaped my response through 32 years of experiences, then I refuse to be condemned for the way I feel in that situation. And if a particular situation makes me crave the peace of the dead, then so be it. I don’t know what situation in particular I was thinking of (which makes my repentance all the more pointless) but it’s one of my natural reactions to stressful or uncertain situations- I’ve never acted on it and don’t believe that I would- it’s just a vague wish to be anywhere but in that situation.

One of the things that holds me back-and conversely one of the things that might lead me to do it eventually- is that I care too much about people’s feelings. Specifically my parents, who have always been there- I know that I always have a bed there if I need it and I don’t think I could ever do anything deliberately to hurt them. There’s also the fact of living alone- if I made away with myself in the bath, say, it might be a few days before anybody found me, and it wouldn’t be nice. But I have to ask myself how I might react in twenty years or so if they aren’t around. If I’m still on my own with no emotional commitments, I’m not under any obligation to anybody and, to put it bluntly, nobody will care. Distant relatives will put my affairs in order and organise a decent funeral which won’t reflect me because there’s nobody who sees me in all my aspects. There’s also the question of when life actually becomes intolerable- I honestly don’t want to live to much older than 70 at the most, because things start breaking down, and an old man on his own is one of the most pitiful sights in the world. But it may well become intolerable before then- faced with a world where ideas, values and beauty continue to become secondary to soundbites, relentless modernising and repackaging and balancing the books, a world in which the power of the individual to make a difference and change things for the better dimishes by the day, at what point does it justify actively refusing to live in such a world?

We have a blind spot in Western society as regards suicide- most societies refuse to accept that somebody could reach a rational decision to end their life, and most countries forbid the terminally ill to be given the option of ending their lives without the need for a pointless and humiliating battle against incurable disease. We value life at any cost above quality of life and the need for that life to be worthwhile. The Romans certainly didn’t think that way- to them, suicide was an acceptable alternative to living in a degenerate society, or to humiliation. Think of the likes of Brutus and Mark Antony, who ended their lives rather than be dragged through the streets of Rome as captives and put to death. But it’s the Christian point of view which has shaped the way social attitudes to suicide have formed over the years- life is a gift from God to be endured, we are told, and to seek to end it prematurely a sin. And from this we move on to believing suicide, or an attempt, as something shameful, as if the situation which drives someone to attempt to kill themselves weren’t bad enough without having shame heaped on them. No doubt the families and friends of suicides go through the rest of their lives wondering what, if anything, they could or should have done, but we still have problems accepting that it might be somebody’s reasoned choice.

So where does this leave me? Well, I’m not going to kill myself tonight- I have things to do tomorrow and then there’s work on Monday, then next week I have people coming over for dinner. And I’m probably not going to kill myself next week, or the week after, or the week after that. But I’m starting to feel that living is as much a choice as dying. Most people go through life from day to day not realising that it is a choice- they wake up in the morning, go to work, come home and live passively. But life is a choice, and so is death. Not today, not tomorrow, not next week- but never say never.