[Trigger warning: I’m talking about extremely tough mental health themes in this post. Please make sure you have someone to talk to or something that helps distract you back to positives after reading it, before you read it.]
When Rishi Sunak announced “things can only get wetter,” in outrage, I instantly decided put myself forward as an MP candidate.
I wanted to honour the promise I made myself ages ago to stand for Westminster at this general election, motivated by fury at the Conservative party’s attempt to destroy civilised life in UK with brutal austerity and privation; catastrophic Brexit; calculated Covid democide; crippling Trussonomics; and UK not just being complicity in, but fully aiding, abetting, supplying, training and participating in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. I am seething at the gross incompetence of the last fourteen years of Conservative administration.
I knew, however, my mental health had not rebuilt its resilience after downturns earlier this year following yet again contracting Covid last September and in January.
Today, as anticipated, I hit the depressive buffers, but not badly. Nowadays, one way to pull myself out of these temporary glitches is to write posts that I hope might open windows of hope for others: a wish that my ‘feeling like crud warmed up’ might serve a slightly more useful purpose than just getting in the way, currently, of electoral campaigning. This is one such post, which I hope will help others as much as it helps me to write it.
The main issue I am reacting to is the debate about assisted suicide and euthanasia that is turning up in my electoral email inbox, a lot.
I reject both suicide of any kind and euthanasia with a passion. Why?
My father, a medic, killed himself in 2000. The devastation I felt then, which for 20 years I managed fairly well with a tonne of expert psychotherapy, resurfaced with astonishing added potency as a result of contracting Covid in March 2020.
I found that 20, 21 and 24 years after my father had killed himself, I was occasionally reliving the whole naffing experience again, entirely by accident and coincidence, and I have become as angry about suicide again as I was in the aftermath of his death.
Stopping all suicide in UK is something that’s important to me. Every single death by suicide is awful. No suicide is necessary. Every suicide can and should be stopped.
Here are some stats, which I find unconscionable as being acceptable: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7749/#
Any death is sad, but suicide is the silent nuclear bomb of deaths: its destructive effects radiating out and remaining toxic for the rest of the lifetimes of the living around the person that kills themselves in any way.
To me, no suicide is ever “acceptable” or “inevitable.” Instead, I see every suicide as a catastrophic absence of understanding by the person in crisis and the people around that person about how never to act on suicidal ideation.
That’s the top tip about suicide:
If one thinks one should kill oneself, don’t.
Never take action to kill oneself, even if one is persuaded by one’s seemingly rock solid, long-crafted reasoning that it’s a genius idea. It’s not. Fact.
Suicide is a properly stupid idea.
Just say no to the illogical, irrational, toxic, rigidly demanding thinking that sounds oh-so-persuasive in one’s head, but is actually complete shite.
Say yes instead to waiting just a few moments longer, to picking up a phone and having a chat about anything or nothing to Samaritans on 116 123, or text SHOUT to 85285, any time of day, any day of the week.
Be assured you never have to wrestle with your thinking on your own. If you feel a chat to a complete stranger who gets it, and gets you without any explanation, whatever your circumstances, might make a momentary but vital difference to your day and how you’re feeling, please get in contact with any of the organisations on this list –
or go straight to Samaritans – on 116 123 – there for everyone, all day, every day. Samaritans are brilliant.
