For Suicidal People Who Think Of Themselves As Burdens

A potentially helpful framing

This picture of the night sky has nothing to do with my post and exists purely because people are more likely to click on posts with pictures attached.

I don’t know if this framing is going to help anyone else, but it helped me, so I figured I’d write it up. Like a lot of advice for suicidal people, what helps me is going to be harmful for other people, so please don’t beat yourself up if this framing doesn’t work for you! I expect it to work less well for people who have fewer people invested in their continued survival. I also expect it to work less well for people where becoming more selfish makes them mean rather than thoughtless. Being mean isn’t good for you or other people.

A while ago, I was quite suicidal. I decided to stay alive because of the people I cared about, who seemed to feel very strongly that I should continue to be alive.

If you think about it, that was a rather large favor I was doing to them. I wasn’t staying alive for my own sake. I was indifferent to the question! I was going to spend fifty entire years doing something because it made other people happy.

I didn’t want to do that favor and get nothing in return. There were reciprocity norms here. It seemed to me that, if they felt so strongly about me continuing to be alive, as a matter of pure fairness, then they ought to give me some sort of recompense.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that I can violate the tenets of common-sense morality: I’m not going to go around committing fraud or assaulting people or driving even though I don’t know how to drive. And I’m not suggesting that I should be allowed to be mean or cruel. I’m certainly not suggesting that whenever I want something I can go “you have to give me that or I’ll kill myself!” That’s at best jerk behavior and at worst being abusive.

But, you know, I felt that given the situation I was justified in being, say, ten or twenty percent more selfish?

I spent more nights out with friends and left my husband to take care of the kid. I spent more money on theater tickets and tea at coffeeshops. I made my husband do the chores that I really hated. When someone offered to do me a favor, I said “yes” even if I couldn’t pay them back. I stopped going to movies I didn’t want to go to because it was important to other people. I have a strict “one social event I don’t want to go to per six months per committed partner” policy. I let my rich friends treat me to nice restaurants. I have successfully eluded spending time with any of my in-laws, and this is impressive because I have three times as many in-laws as the average person.

There are any number of other ways that you can be more selfish, depending on your personal situation. Stop spending time with people you don’t like. When your kid’s preschool wants you to volunteer to bring in cookies for the whole class, say “no.” Let your kid watch more TV. Sleep train, or cosleep, or whatever works for you. Stop breastfeeding. Dress the way you like, even if it’s cringey or embarrassing. Only have sex you’re genuinely excited about, even if it means not having sex for a year. Don’t go to relatives’ boring weddings. Put in eight good hours at work and then go home even if your employer really needs something from you. Stop answering work emails outside of work hours. Transition, even if you’re not “really” the gender you identify as or you’re worried about making people uncomfortable or your family doesn’t like it. Stop recycling. Be poly, or be monogamous.

And here’s the key—I gave myself permission to not feel guilty about it. I was doing them a big favor! I was staying alive! In the grand scheme of things, having to take out the trash and find someone else to talk to about the Marvel Cinematic Universe was hardly a great sacrifice.

I also completely stopped caring about whether I was a burden. Everyone I was a burden on had been offered an opportunity to set down the burden in question, and they had universally agreed that they didn’t want to do that. At any time, they could change their minds. I was not the blocker here. I had in fact attempted to persuade them that they could stop being my friend, and then they would eventually not care so much if I killed myself. If for some inexplicable reason they wanted to keep me around I wasn’t going to stop them.

As it happens, it turned out fine. Many of the things I wanted weren’t an especially big deal. I could be flexible about the ones that actually were and be selfish some other way. There was a process of negotiation, and it turned out that a lot of what I wanted was less of a big ask than I thought. (My husband doesn’t mind being left alone with the kid every so often as long as it’s not for longer than a week!)

Much to my great surprise, everyone I care about wants me to be happy. In general, I think they actually prefer me being ten or twenty percent more selfish, because they value my happiness. Also, when I’m happier, I act like less of a crazy person, and people I love find it very stressful when I act like a crazy person.

But I think it was key to the thought process working that I wasn’t assessing whether it was going to work out fine for everyone involved. Ultimately, if my husband is kind of resentful about all the time I spend sleeping over with other people, well, I was resentful about not being allowed to commit suicide. Equality.

In conclusion: if people feel very strongly about you not killing yourself, you don’t have to feel guilty about being a burden to them, because they clearly want that burden. And you can maybe consider being a bit more burdensome, as recompense for the part where you have to say alive even though you’re miserable all the time.