A message for those who say “suicide is selfish”

To anyone who says “suicide is selfish” here’s an analogy for you (not the best analogy but an analogy nevertheless).

You’re in your room and a fire starts. You don’t see to it right away because you’re busy focusing on things you think are more important, perhaps looking after a loved one or getting through piles of work and you think to yourself “it’s tiny, it’s not going to become a huge fire, I’ll put it out once I’ve done what I need to do”. You question for a moment whether you should ask someone to help put it out, or to help with your tasks so that you can focus on putting it out, but you don’t want to take up people’s time, people are busy.

Time goes by and you’ve still not put it out, however, the door is still visible so you know there’s a way out if needed. You start to become tired from the smoke, and the fires getting bigger than you’d imagined, but you still have so much to get through and you know there’s a way out so you tell yourself you’ll sort it out tomorrow. But you don’t.

The fires even bigger now and even if you could summon the energy to try to get out, you know you’ll get burnt because it’s blocking the door. You look back to the time it was such a small fire and wish you’d paid more attention to it, made time for it, or called someone up to help you put it out, but there’s no use in wishing anymore. You see one way out, and that’s the window. You stand out of the window ready to jump. You know it will hurt, but to you it’s not as painful as stepping back. People are watching from the street, shouting a combination of words, some of kindness “you’re loved, please don’t do this” and others of anger “don’t be so selfish, go back inside and think about your family and friends” but they can’t see the fire behind you, they can’t see the pain you’ll face if you walk back.

People who take their own life are not selfish, and continuing to express this isn’t going to help or change anything. You’ll never be able to see the fire they had behind them and how much pain they were in, so please do not judge their decision to jump. Judging and criticising is not our job. Our job as human beings is to try our absolute hardest to get to the point where people don’t need to be shouting from the street. To become the people who notice when a fire is starting, and to be the people who others feel they can turn to.

So, to anyone who can see a fire starting in their own room, please reach out to somebody, people aren’t as busy or as disinterested as you’ve made yourself believe. To those who notice a fire starting in other people’s rooms, knock on the door, check in, ask if they need help. And to everyone else, be as approachable, available and open as possible, so that others feel as though they can turn to you if you haven’t noticed the fire ❤️