When hope is killed, people kill themselves

Afew days go, a friend of friends of mine committed suicide, someone I’d met casually at a couple of mutual friends’ parties and did not exchange more than a few words with. Suffice to say, I did not know him very well. But that was not the reason why shock or stunned surprise wasn’t my initial reaction. It was of jaded hopelessness, a regretful sadness. As time goes by and one gets older, you see too many people bogged down and in these extreme cases, struck down by life’s vicissitudes, unable to find the means — internally or externally — of coping with their problems and pain.

Meanwhile, my friends who were the boy’s friends, are besides themselves with shock and grief. They rerun every last conversation they had with him in the last year, his messages they did not find time to respond to, all the obvious signs they missed, why they never saw it coming and never thought he would take such a step. Why he did reach out to them, but then didn’t. Well, lets us not even think of the pain, the grief his family is going through.

I didn’t press for details on how he took his life — how is that any more important than the stark fact that a young man with everything to live for, the rest of his life and plenty of youth still ahead of him, felt that snuffing it out was a better option?

He left a message of some sort, the gist of which conveyed dashed dreams and a future that he couldn’t foresee. Again, not clear on the details, but it’s obvious that he gave up hope. What’s life anyway without hope? The two are actually the same, to be used interchangeably. We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, in spite of our careful planning and progress-making endeavours. Life is just a blueprint we draw for ourselves on the basis of what we’re hoping for.

There’s many a narrative in hindsight about people who commit suicide: that they didn’t think it through, they were too hasty, if only they’d waited some more until things got better, or sought counselling.

Depression is a big cause of suicide — with its vice grip on the mind and an inability to see through the fog. Even doing simple things and going about daily life needs a mighty juggernaut of mental strength or outside help

But how do we know anything about their mental turmoil without walking a mile in their shoes? Depression is a big cause of suicide — with its vice grip on the mind and an inability to see through the fog. Even doing simple things and going about daily life needs a mighty juggernaut of mental strength or outside help.

Over the years, I’ve seen people I know, or knew by association, driven to kill themselves for reasons primarily falling into these categories: either something drastic or tragic that happened to them out of the blue or a long, festering slide downwards in life or career that they could not pull themselves out of in spite of fighting long and valiantly. Often a battle only known to themselves, as all our personal battles are.

There was the higher secondary student who decided she wouldn’t get good enough grades for the university of her choice, and took her life before the exam results were even announced. The young wife and mother of an infant who fell into depression and killed herself a week later — while remaining strong outwardly — after her husband died in a road accident. Even the thought of her baby wasn’t enough to keep her going. Then there was this classmate of mine and later, colleague, who couldn’t take it anymore when he was fired from the job. I’d watched him struggle among the better educated, competitive and socially upwardly mobile classmates, but didn’t actually (see) it until in hindsight. Through sheer will, he drove himself to get his dream job — his hope. Then he lost it.

On the other end, I have also met someone who lost his entire fortune in events affected by 9/11 and had to pay off debts, too. He said he contemplated suicide, seriously. But somehow he held on and worked for years to pay it all off. Such is life, or death.