Posted by Zo on July 4, 2002, at 6:12:31
In reply to Re: As someone who once lurked, suicidal. . . » Zo, posted by wendy b. on June 26, 2002, at 10:19:34
Thanks, Wendy, for your kind words. It is difficult to know one's place in things, so I appreciate hearing about it.
>
>why is this more difficult for a potential suicide to deal with than somebody posting on PSB, for ex, that they're ready to off themselves?It's awfully simple thinking, in that state--posters are just talking about it. . but look, Sar did it, she succeeded. Sounds awful, but at that point, the success of someone's wish, into reality, well that says I can succeed at it too.
Hard to put into words. P'raps someone else can explain the tremendous pull. . .it feels almost like seduction, yes, that's it. .. Suicide has the most tremendously seductive pull. .
> But personal feelings are all over this board. They don't detract from the implicit obligation of the Board to educate. Sometimes the person succeeds, yes. But we can still go on, we can still talk about it. Bob didn't remove the threads that focused solely on Sar's death when it happened. If he thought it would detract form the board's mission, he would have taken them off, I think...
I don't disagree with a thing you've said. I just wondered if this isn't a time when we ought to lean towards the public responsiblity.> Well, you've said it right there - it IS a fiction. It doesn't always come out the way we think it should.
Of course not. But neither would you go about putting up knotting charts for someone ready to hanging herself.
Which isn't an exact analogy. . .but I don't know how to address the risk that we might be helping someone do the act. And that possibility, given the way suicidal people look for signs, is very real.
> >I mean, why *document* that some don't.
>
> Because it's real? I don't know.That's an advanced state of thinking, well beyond what is going on in one's head. . .there's no reasoning with it, and no cautionaries that matter, really, because it's already beyond that place, you know? You think you are beyond everything, it's a very heady drug in a way. .
> It could have been, but how could we know for sure?
Well, that's what I'm saying, so why not err on the side of caution. Suicide is very contagious, as I'm sure you know.
It's odd, because I am usually where you are. Truth, openness, reality.
>But then again, maybe we'd settle for a simple page that honors the person in a quiet, simple way...The way you put that. . I don't see anything at all "seductive." Perhaps thats the key. Staying real in a way that is not about suicide at all, but about Sar, and our feelings for her. Making no special point about how she went.
Give me, as a prospective suicide, nothing to latch onto. . and then I can't make it part of of my dark Magical Thinking, if you see. For it's very much about fantasy. .
>. I do appreciate and honor your feelings on the matter,
Mind you, I am not speaking of any vulnerability of my own; it's remarkable how thoroughly the state has vanished. Once the med package works. Am just bringing how one thinks, at those times, to the discussion.
>and hope we can come to some resolution that makes everyone happy. But maybe that's a fiction too?
I don't think so. If by happy you mean satisfactory. But then, I tend to believe that which is settled upon through careful dialogue ends up having a certain rightness to it.
Bob probably has a clearer sense of all this, at least legally, and the legalaties may suggest how to address the issue of the moral necessity to reduce risk.
Zo
poster:Zo
thread:5764
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20020627/msgs/5972.html