Around this time of the year my life always stops and takes a moment to remember. It skips a beat before it resumes it’s usual pace. This year it’s already four years ago.

Four years ago one of my best friends, Orelinde, made a decision. Well, in fact, she’d made the decision quite a while earlier. But she finally acted on it. She did something very brave. In her own special way, she made herself become a little hero in my eyes.

But it would be so much easier for you to understand if I explained what happened in a different way. Without emotion or judgement, just bluntly tell you the facts.

Four years ago Orelinde committed suicide.

It was one of the most intense, fierce, emotional, but also enlightening and inspiring things I’ve ever experienced in my whole life. It got me thinking about ethics, purposes, ambitions and life itself. It probably was one of the pushes I needed to start writing. But surprisingly, when I come to think of it, it never incited me to think about the matter itself. About suicide. About ending your own life.

I fully understand and respect her reasons for why she decided to die. But is every reason a good reason? Are there any reasons at all that can fully legitimate suicide? Or is it really just a sin?

So many questions.

I’m aware of the view of most religious people on suicide. Because God has given you life, you have no right to decide over the length and end of it yourself. The only thing you are allowed to do is take care of its quality. However, when others are meddling with that quality, is it fair that you should be strong no matter how hard, no matter how heavy the weight? Should we really accept such a test by the hands of God? How cruel could he possibly be?

What if there isn’t any quality in life anymore? How unbearable must life be to make it acceptable for one to end it? What is unbearable enough? This is a mental, subjective thing, and therefore impossible to tell. It’s a more or less intuitive sense.

So many questions without an absolute, clear answer.

Suppose we agree on the fact that life needs to at least be unbearable in a certain, undefined way, to make suicide acceptable. Than another problem occurs: what way to perform it is the most acceptable one?

Orelinde let her life be taken by a train crashing into her. To a lot of people this is one of the cruellest ways possible, because it damages the life of the poor railway engineer forever. But I know she gave her options a lot of thought. She knew her choice was fast and absolutely effective. And more importantly, that it wouldn’t be her family or friends that were to find her, merely people she didn’t know and that didn’t know her. This truly mattered to her and was the decisive factor for her choice.

There are so many variables that would make one way of suicide seem more acceptable or appropriate than the other. It’s not just closing your eyes and randomly point your finger at hanging, drowning, cutting, drugging, choking, jumping, or any verb applicable to take your own life.

Even if you deeply reject the act of suicide, try to make your own choice. Try to find your own personal optimal option when you need to consider so many variables. Is pain allowed or should it be painless? Should it be fast or a slow process? Who should be the first to know, anonymous people or the ones you love? Who are you going to scar the most, anonymous people or the ones you love? Should your body be kept well-conserved or can it be wrecked to pieces? What’s the amount of willpower it would take to see it through? Did you consider the chance of failure?

So many questions to be answered. So many decisions to make.

When you realise how many pros and cons someone has to weigh between the moment of deciding to not want to live anymore and the moment of actually ending life, you know it impossibly can be done during a fit of madness.

I know some suicides are carried out in an impulse without any thought. But I don’t believe that’s the usual way things go. I guess this is something I want people who look down on suicide to consider. It’s not just an easy way out. It’s a very tough decision.

Isn’t that where it all comes down to? Isn’t that the answer to when suicide is acceptable or not? Whether it’s an impulsive act or a well considered conscious choice?

Column published by Cecile on Monday, June 4th, 2007.

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