That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that I could also shoot someone I loved, completely by accident. I would never do it on purpose, but I do know that I am careless enough with serious matters that I could squeeze the trigger. My brain has a confusion loop, switching more than I care to admit the truth with the untruth; I am afraid of being caught with a gun in my hand thinking, "I shouldn't pull, I should aim elsewhere."
On my many nights of suicidal thinking, self-destructive and vicious thanatopsis, that was the only thought that made me cry out in anguish as I lay in my crumpled bedsheets in a fetal ball.
The luxurious spread of ways to kill myself were the following, seriously-considered options:
1. Jumping out of a window. The five-story building nearby was a safer bet for death than my room on the third floor. Before I had been seriously considering death, I once amused myself by sitting on the bay ledge of one of those screenless, wide-opening windows which allowed one to look down upon concrete, relatively clean, spreading into carefully arranged paths lacing through the grassy raised beds of dirt concreted a foot or two skyward of the ground. I was afraid of heights, but the sky, which I examined with paranoid care, was so blue that day.
2. Taking sleeping pills and alcohol. This would be difficult to accomplish, since I didn't have easy access to pills. There was also the constant threat of being discovered before I died, and the shame of recovering from an attempt and being talked about badly by the people I regarded as my friends. "What a dumbass," they would say, shaking their heads and dully ruminating on the topic over coffee. I couldn't kill myself at home, either, because my family has had enough trauma in that house, and such immediate trauma throughout its life. Distance might mitigate the injury. A far-off suicide would still be bad and selfish, but perhaps if I also did something very bad before I died, the anger could lessen whatever injury or sorrow resulted from my death. Also, I wasn't sure how well I was accepting alcohol at the time--there comes a point, after a bad drinking night or two, when you say "no more" for a long, long time, even when you're thinking about death.
3. Stabbing myself in the neck with a pocketknife. I could have ripped out my jugular, but first of all I hate pain, and wasn't sure I would be able to go through with it if I didn't do it right. I needed something easier, so that I wouldn't overthink the misery of existence and allow it to transform into the misery of doubt. Plus, it was considerably messy too.
4. Throwing myself in front of a moving car. This option was especially viable, given the quality of speeding, reckless drivers in the area. However, consider that they stopped before they hit me. If I was hit and survived, it would be expensive to recover. If it was proved a suicide/suicide attempt, there could be legal trouble for my family. (It is funny how I wanted to spare them from annoyances surrounding my death, but not from the death itself.)
5. Shooting myself in the head--the final and possibly most complete way, probably quickest. I wondered how exactly it would feel or if I would even feel anything after I shot myself (in the mouth of course), how long each bodily system would take to shut down, but never whether I could go through with it. I cna be daring and spur of the moment--well, more so this: I can easily seize an opportunity. If the gun were in my hand, I'd be able to pull the trigger; not with a cold certainty, but with a tenuous curiosity made of half blind scientific inquiry, half animal automation.
If I only wounded myself, I wouldn't want to die. I'm sure the pain of the wound and my injured pride at my failure would scare me into living. In fact, I find the thought of the possibility of suicide really terrifying right now. I am not at that stage of feeling anymore, and it's a relief.
How exactly did I get to the point of serious suicide contemplation? Depression, brought on by a feeling of abandonment, a reevaluation of what makes life important, a month finding out the stupefying reality of responsibility, witnessing helplessly the destruction of the innocence of a sleeper in the dreamworld of pre-maturity which barely lingers anymore in the grown-ups, and aggrevated by true alcoholic tendancies, is a good place to lay blame. Also, the masturbatory selfishness of knowing the power one has over the peace in the community in which one lives one's public life of conformity... this encouraged me to think on it seriously, but it wasn't as strong as the force of despair. When I first profoundly encountered the realization of the emptiness of my life, I was too scared of dying to be happily alive for every minute of several writhing weeks. When the emptiness filled with the cotton candy of novelty, new learning, new amigos, and a new locale, I was meted a measure of peace. Upon examining the abyss again under the whip of classes and hours of lecture on the meaning of life according to other people, I was too angry and bored with living to find enjoyment in it anymore.
I stopped talking. I stopped laughing with the same people; I stopped loving, and hoped something would tear me from my mood swings. Jealousy, anger, ennui, self-centeredness, nausea, insomnia (aggrevated by coffee consumned in the search for meaning), broken by sharp intrusions of very temporary amusement, tore apart my insides until I felt propped up by a house of cards or a series of toothpicks. Finally, a bored peace fell upon me, and I searched rationally for the best suicide method.
A suicide is good depending on a series of standards. Jumping creates a public spectacle, good for splashy (no pun intended) self-killers who evidently want to send a message to the world about their deaths. Knives could give way to urban legends. Sleeping pills and alcohol might cause a minimum of pain and be seductively quiet. Death by automobile provides the off chance of the death being thought of as an accident, which is less hurtful for friends and family, and the same end is accomplished. The bullets are irrevocable and undisputable evidence of finality of decision, even if that's just a sham of false decision too.
But the bother of actually going through with it, and thought of how selfish and silly my thoughts were, kept me from doing anything. Cheer the voices of inertia. I kept busy and filled the hole with silence, which compounded and became so heavy as to permanantly sandbag my jaw and empty my head of all useful thought and conversation.
I told only two people of my vaguely suicidal crisis, when I felt I could shoot myself or someone else. They seemed mildly alarmed at my self-extinction, although I was mainly concerned with the part about accidentally shooting someone else. I realized my selfishness once again in the telling of these thoughts at all, but it did give me what I realize I needed--affirmation of existence--and maybe it's good that I burdened them with my intent. I'm not sure I would have gone through with the suicide if I hadn't told them, but I didn't suffer as long as I would have otherwise, and right now that's more important.
I can write about this from the safety of post-suicidal reflection, where I know I am out of danger for a while. I know the future I wish for myself. I choose to do something non-selfish at the next major turning point of my life, devoting part of my life to helping others not born into the luxury of choosing life or death. My altruism is false; it's not being unselfish in that, while I'm helping others, I'm helping myself stay alive--but it's something. It's aiding others in order to make myself see that life is worth living, if only to support those lucky people who have either the purpose or the active will if not the means. I have the means; maybe helping them, I can find the reasons as well.
Instead of accidentally pulling a trigger on them and defining the action after the animal fact as horrid, I am doing the opposite: accidentally giving of myself, defining the action after the animal fact this time as one of goodness, however artificial and false to everything except practice.
Hypocricy is a great coping tool; ask anyone from Aristotle to Bill Clinton. Coping is the best I can hope for from life as it stands; I don't guess anything is really going to make sense in the end. We'll just see what happens.