2:24pm February 3, 2012

➸ We live in a sick fucking world

theskinofourteeth:

canuckjacq:

“Hey, Brittany, I heard your friend Sam shot herself,” one began.

“Did you see her blow her brains out?”

“Did you pull the trigger for her?”

“What did it look like?”

“Was there brain all over the wall?”

“You should do it too. You should go blow your head off.”

Link has triggers for homophobia, suicide, and being a gay kid in rural America. 

Before you tell me not to say I was born this way, you should fucking read this.

Equally important – suicide isn’t just a random response to a random chemical imbalance that happens for no external reason. Do things like that happen?  Probably. But I always hear people saying suicide is nobody’s fault or only the fault of the person taking their own life.  Nobody’s fault, even if the person was bullied, molested, abused at home, taught that they have no future as the kind of person they are, held to impossible standards, oppressed on a daily, hourly basis for their entire life.  Suicide usually happens when a person believes they have no option of a good life.  There are all kinds of possible reasons both internal and external. And it is possible to drive someone to suicide. To deny that just allows the problem to continue and those who cause it to avoid responsibility. 

Also in that vein – the uproar about suicide only happens when certain kinds of people kill themselves. 

Disabled people kill ourselves?  Our lives weren’t worth living anyway. Anyone would want to die in our place. Lots of people want us to die anyway so we won’t be a drain on the economy.  So that doesn’t get covered. Except in the context of there being an entire movement out there that tries to artificially make suicide easier for us. Yay!

People of color kill themselves?  Everyone just turns away, because what do they matter?

It’s only when white otherwise-nondisabled (since being suicidal is itself considered a disability) kids kill themselves in large numbers that the whole country freaks out.  Not that they shouldn’t, but it’s another of those “Yes, please freak out about this, and when you’re done, think about the rest of us too” things. 

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