Suicide Ain't No Couple's Dance

[catelin]

The key concept to suicide is that you fucking kill YOURSELF. Why is it, then, that someone decides to take some other poor sap along for the ride? I personally have never understood the idea of wanting to make oneself dead. I've got too much of a survivor instinct. You're in a plane crash in the Andes with me, I will be using my pocket knife to make ass steaks. No doubt. But even assuming that there's a bona fide reason for shortening your stay on the planet, why include someone else in that? As usual, my question relates to a case I'm working on. Aside from being the vivacious bon vivant my friends all know and love, I'm an ATF-trained arson prosecutor. You'd never know by looking, eh? Oh, and I mean the training on how to investigate and prosecute arsons, not how to commit them. Just figured I'd make that clear, in light of that pesky ATF/Waco dealio. So I've got this case comes across my desk where one guy decides he's going to blow himself to bits. Efficient. I have no problem with that, as long as it's away from others. However, he decides to do it in his place of employment. Pulls out the gas stove from the wall, turns the radio on, and sits down for the long sleep. A neighbor boy, about 20, smells gas. He sees the guy and runs in to pull him out of the small building. Well, suicide king gets pissed and ends up igniting the gas...building goes boom. Boy of twenty now has burns over fifty percent of his body and may not live. Suicide king has burns, but of course, not nearly as serious as the poor kid who went in to save his sorry ass. The rub in all this is that 20-year-old good Samaritan's mother got to stand by the sidelines and watch her son's clothes burn onto his body. Right in front of her eyes. Man. No good deed goes unpunished. Sometimes it sure seems that way.

Comments

[chaizzilla.livejournal.com]

people scare the shit out of me. i don't know if this is "welcome to the real world, c***" or just recovering from a reality smackdown. what you described about the mother watching the son is my worst nightmare -- seeing something happen to cheetah. i can't even yell around him without getting sad over whether it gets to him or not. he tries to remind me he's not spun glass but.. i won't be having kids but when you love someone you love someone, it changes everything, makes you vulnerable to the world you can't control. i spose it's a good thing he's an adult and not my kid b/c at least he can tell me to chill when i get all protective. :)

it really sucks, imho, that people go crazy like that too, and there's so little resource out there for people who are loosing it. i know that part from experience. the strength it takes to avail oneself of mental health services when you really needed them is more than someone in a crisis usually has. at best you manage to get your hopes up enough to give it a try and come out of it wishing you just had the guts to end it. people shouldn't have to bottom out. this is one amazingly fucked up world to have a life on for the greater portion of those stuck with it.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

The real world can be a dark and scary fucking place, fer sure. On the other hand, it's full of such precious and beautiful things that I could weep most days just from sheer wonder. You make a good point about mental health services. Even when they are there, sometimes it's hard to get the people who need them to take advantage of them. The legal question that creates, of course, is how much responsibility are we going to place on someone's shoulders when their conduct injures an innocent person? I probably sounded very callous, and it's hard not to when I see how such consummate selfishness (and I know this is sometimes not a choice of the person who suffers from it) spreads itself out like a bloodstain to other lives. I can understand despair. I can understand not wanting to live. I can't understand the brain/spirit mechanics behind including others in that choice against their will.

[chaizzilla.livejournal.com]

well, i just call it bein psycho. i've been there. when i was a kid i did some things that were so horrible i couldn't even talk to my shrink of 4 years about them, mental block, i just didn't seee how the memeories applied or something (in fact it wasn't till i ODed on dpt that it became obvious to me how much the memories had formed my view of myself, all through therapy i'd considered myself some sort of evil incarnate but couldn't understand why).
people get pissed at me when i tell them everyone can be saved, yeah even jeffrey dahlmer could have been. i believe in this b/c i decided to at some point & it stuck. i'm not gonna undermine the faith with picking apart why it might have been what i needed, simple faith can make all the difference if you're lucky enough to have one of those stay kitties adopt you.
however, on a pragmatic level, life is way too short to pussyfoot around someone hurting others, so i don't see it as Wrong to dole out some justice here and there, even if justice is a concept my sloppy head has a hard time understanding.
and it comes down to this; if someone fucked with casey i'd tear them apart. puts a different spin on law-vs-chaos & order. right & wrong can be children playing in a sandbox, personal conviction is a risk one has to take.
love is everything, not all of us do the agape thing, i don't. some people will die & kill for their lovers, friends, kids, a cause, a country, to protect the society they're doin alright in.
it is hard to get the people who need mental health services to avail themselves of them; it's majour fucking agony to try and avail yourself of them. after a few years of tightrope dancing and a glass face i finally, incredibly luckily, hooked up with someone who turned out to be the best shrink in austin (i started w/her while she was in college).
i've slipped, been hurt, am a little confused where i am now, just keeping things simple and focusing on loving cheetah and getting by is leaking at the seams enough to not be doing as well as i want to at either, but i'm afraid to introduce more variables & potential stress to the balance, i used to be pretty strong and got blindsided by stupid stuff, so i'm pretty nervous. i also don't know what it is i need to be doing for myself now, which logically seems like the critical piece in the process. i haven't got the guts to try couseling yet, i tried after rhiannon died and it was pretty discouraging. i wish i could see my one from austin again (coincidentally i wish i could have my job from austin again).
what i know i need to do is "tighten yer shorts, pilgrim" and reach out to friends again but i walked into my own little cave to get away from the noise so far i lost the ability to tell anymore. plus of course i'm pretty sensitive and skittish about it.
it doesn't help that i came to livejournal to check up on a friend who got fired months before i did from the same job, the ties are uncomfortable. the humans there confused the daylights out of me beyond where my compassion could stretch and make sense of it.
um.. i'm really babbling here but i think i was in a lot better shape when i used to babble through my stuff like this more. and i trust you with it :)
as for the pyrosuicide guy, i didn't see you as callous at all, i saw you as a mother who knows what love for one's children feels like.
it's obvious i'm too flimsy for work in the justice system, i'd be tryin to pin the tail on the philosphical parabola till i spun to the floor.
when i got a big thought chunk like this it tends to come out like a the stream on one of those water painstrippers. whew.