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From: mat@mtx5a.UUCP (m.terribile)
Newsgroups: net.suicide
Subject: Re: Re: Constructive Chemistry
Message-ID: <1147@mtx5a.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Dec-85 01:41:28 EST
Article-I.D.: mtx5a.1147
Posted: Sun Dec 29 01:41:28 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Dec-85 03:38:37 EST
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> Along somewhat different lines... (After all, what is this newsgroup
> for if not digressions.)  I had thoughts of suicide as a teenager.
> I always considered that fairly universal.  In talking to friends at
> college, I found most of them agreed.  However when I worked at a
> factory, welding car seats, I found out in a conversation that all
> of my fellow workers not only had never thought of suicide (or wouldn't
> admit it), but thought that the idea was sick.  They didn't see how
> a fairly normal teenager could even consider it.
> 
> Is there a cultural thing at work here?  (i.e. middle-class intellectuals
> vs. blue-collar workers)  Is suicide and thoughts of it (especially in
> adolescence) connected with later college attendence, and therefore 
> certain professions?  Is it an intellectual growth stage?  (My fellow
> workers were not unintelligent, in fact I respected their basic common
> sense--but they did not share my orientation on many things.  I was odd 
> in lots of ways to them.)
> 

I have come to the conclusion that, given the circumstances, almost anyone
is capable of suicidal feelings.  No, strike the ``almost''.

I have experienced sudden and unexpected urges to drive off bridges, etc.
I have had friends tell me that the same things have happened to them.
And I've been told by a practicing psychologist that such feelings usually
get their energy from long-repressed anger -- anger that cannot be expressed
``legitimately''  -- perhaps against parents, perhaps against God, perhaps
against a loved one who died.  Anger that finally turns against us, for
want of any other target.

Each time I've realized that what was happening in my feelings did not
reflect ``reality'' ... in this sense the feelings are wrong.  I've also
found that I could not believe/accept that what I might do would affect
anyone else.  And I saw the same thing happen with a friend who refused
any gesture of closeness when this happened.  (We both have competent
therapists, thank you ... for us, this was stuff that may have been dredged
up in the process.)

It may be that people who grow up in the ``blue-collar'' mold are not as
quick to bury anger ... or that they are not as effective, letting it surface
in simpler ways like grudges and prejudices.

But the person who insists that no ``normal'' person could have these feelings
has either never had them, or else cannot admit them for fear of seeming like
a ``mental case''.

Beethoven, incidentally, wrote of suicidal feelings at least twice in his
letters.  Each time, he was held back by the feeling that he still had more
to do.  As for me, I just thank God that I've kept my head.
-- 

	from Mole End			Mark Terribile
		(scrape .. dig )	mtx5b!mat
    ,..      .,,       ,,,   ..,***_*.