It
is better to kill oneself intentionally than to live unintentionally.
Life
and death exist on a continuum. In each moment we are living but also dying.
There can be a consciousness in every moment of our lives. There can also be a
lack of consciousness. Being alive only because I have not yet died is not the
most intentional way to be alive. Extending life through medical life-saving
measures chosen as if there were no other choice or from an internal motivation
of being afraid to die is not being intentional either.
We
are all going to die. Let me repeat that: We are all going to die.
Yet
we live in a culture in the United States that is very afraid of death. There
is a huge stigma associated with the act of suicide or even someone considering
suicide.
By
advocating for individuals to have the right to choose their own death, I am not
saying it is okay for our society to remain the way it is. Society alienates
people and operates on scarcity, and often people have barely enough to survive.
Sometimes
a person expresses the wish to die because they lack hope for their life and
their future, given their circumstances. Just a few examples are being bullied
in school, dealing with the numerous prejudices that exist in a callous society,
being burdened with debt or difficulty in managing the complex capitalistic money
systems and coping with severe depression. I believe there should be universal access
to counseling, medication, and treatment for chemical dependency and other
problems people face. Even more importantly, I support any movement to make this
world more hospitable, more caring and more compassionate for individuals who are
seeking help and not wanting to end their lives.
People
worry that someone may have regrets or would change their mind about dying or
suicide if they only were to live longer. But some people would choose
consciously and intentionally to end their life and would not regret it or
change their minds if they lived longer. They know within themselves that their
time for being alive on this earth is over. This may be because they have a
terminal illness, but it may be for other reasons. With all the stigma around
suicide, it can be very challenging to claim this truth.
If
we want to make it easier for people to not have regrets, we must empower
people from youth on to know themselves fully and to question everything
outside themselves, including the patronizing attempts to control whether they
can end their lives. We should all be doing the very hard work of creating real
social, racial, environmental and economic justice in the world, so that
individuals can make choices in their lives from an abundance of options. But
even if we had that abundance, we will all still die at some point, and having
the autonomy to make decisions about our lives and bodies is part of that
justice we should all be working toward.
People
sometimes have regrets when choosing life-extending medical interventions. The complications
and difficulties of the treatments can far outweigh the chance for a better quality
of life. Life-saving measures can lead to life-damaging results, like serious infections,
bed sores, chronic diarrhea or worse.
When
I consider these possible outcomes and how they would affect someone’s quality
of life, I know that choosing to die is not the worst option. I don’t believe
that living at all costs is a better choice than suicide.
We
have this one precious life, and really the only person who knows what we need
to be doing in any moment is us.
If
we can’t choose to die, we can’t fully choose to live.
To
think that we should not have this choice to die is to suggest that we don’t
get to have an internal truth about what we should really do in other moments
as well. Our internal knowledge about so many things gets minimized and often erased
in a culture that stamps out our intuition and our feelings and our autonomy. People
question whether or not a woman can choose abortion without regrets. People question
whether a transgender youth can choose hormones without regret. People question
whether a sex worker can intentionally and consciously choose sex work and feel
empowered. The fact that some do and some don’t, and we could not possibly know
what is right for someone else to do, is a complexity we don’t seem to be able
to live with.
Many
actions, thoughts and words make up our lives, and some of them may contribute
to our dying. What we eat, risks we take and even what seem like normal
behaviors in a contemporary society like driving a car or consuming alcohol or going
to a stressful office job may all contribute to our dying. Everything we do matters,
and whether I die from a single act to end my life or daily acts that end my
life, what matters to me the most is the level of consciousness and intentionality
that goes into those acts.
We
can enhance our lives, live fully, breathe deeply, take in nourishments, experience
joy and play in many ways. I would argue that when we are not living fully, we
are killing ourselves, killing our spirits, killing our emotions and the joy
that we could have had. That is the tragic death in my mind. To be alive and
not be living fully is far more tragic than any suicide.
Is
it unrealistic to want to live in a world where people are fully alive? Why is
it so hard to allow personal autonomy and personal empowerment? There is
complexity in every single issue I have ever written or talked about, whether
sex, money or death and dying. Why do we need to control so much of what people
do with their bodies and with their lives when they are not harming anyone
else?
Society
tries to control what people do by creating laws and stigma around certain
activities, but ultimately we cannot control people, nor should we want to,
unless someone is really doing harm to someone else. There will always be the
few brave individuals who blaze their own path even if they are stepping
outside of the law or into public criticism. For those who choose to follow the
status quo only because they are afraid to question it, there is a price to be
paid that is even greater than being judged for being different or for stepping
outside the norms. Choosing to do something that not everyone would choose is
not harmful. It is simply different from the norm. It is time we embrace the
diversity in all aspects of our living and, dare I say, our dying.
The
assumption that someone is harming us by being selfish if they were to die by suicide
presupposes that we are not harming each other in our living. Relationships
hurt sometimes, and ultimately we can’t and shouldn’t try to control others in life
or death. Being selfless is a wonderful thing when it can be done authentically.
But no amount of giving to another individual at our own expense will feel good
if we are not first and foremost being true to ourselves.
Whether
giving to a child or an elderly person dependent on us, giving to a friend in
need or a stranger on the street, whether sacrificing our life for another’s
such as saving someone from a burning building, from drowning or from being run
over by a car, none of this is inherently good unless it is coming out of our
own internal strength and self-esteem, what we are truly able to give. So too
with the decision to live or die, whether it is by declining medical attention
or requesting medication from a physician or dying from our personal choices about
how to live on this earth. Whichever way we choose, my hope is that it comes
out of a truly authentic desire to make the choice to be alive or not be alive.
I
am not enhancing anyone’s life, including my own, if I choose to stay alive because
of society’s taboos or other people’s desires for me, when I would rather not continue
living. That choice does not enhance my relationship with others or my quality
of life. This is true whether it is an active suicide, physician-assisted
suicide or declining medical intervention that is routinely accepted in a technologically
advanced society.
Over
thirty years ago I almost killed myself from active alcoholism and depression.
I do not regret that I have been alive for the past thirty years. I also would
not regret it had I died thirty years ago.
Yes,
there would be some things I have experienced these past thirty years that I
would have missed out on: the children I got to love and the friends I have met
over the years and the wonderful experiences I have had traveling and the writing
I have published.
The
truth is I will die at some point anyway, and there will always be something
else I could have experienced had I had one more day. Often, what is or what was
is good enough. In a culture obsessed with wanting more, that is a difficult concept
to embrace—the idea that we don’t always have to do more or be more or even
live one more day if we believe that is not the right thing to do. I will
always pay close attention to my internal wisdom on what choice I should make
today about living and dying, just as I have every day for the past thirty plus
years.
We
are all going to die. Let me repeat that: We are all going to die.
Many
self-destructive acts seem as if they are not suicidal, but in truth they may
be, like drug and alcohol use, fast driving or risky activities of all kinds. I
emphasize they may be self-destructive
or suicidal. We really don’t know what goes through the mind of anyone,
including that of a person who has died by suicide. We should not judge if we
have not walked the exact same path that person has walked.
I
could choose to die from just not treating a simple infection. Is that suicide?
I could die from having an asthma attack and not calling 911. Is that suicide? I
could die from losing my recovery from alcoholism and getting into a car
accident while drunk. Is that suicide? I could die from eating poor nutrition
or smoking cigarettes every day. Is that suicide?
I
would rather make an intentional decision to die than to live half alive and
only be alive because I didn’t have the courage to choose to die. Doing nothing
is also a decision and not necessarily a better decision than doing something,
even if the decision does not make sense to anyone else. And just because
society would be more comfortable with an accidental suicide as opposed to an
intentional suicide does not mean that I have to respect that distinction.
It
is such a high priority to me to not be in pain and to have a good quality of
life in every moment in which I live. As I age, should I encounter illness or
pain that leads me to decide it’s not worth extending my life, I want to have the
option to end my life with medicine that could ease that transition.
What
I know from all of my sexuality education work over the past two decades is
that if I wait for the world to get where I want to be, I will never be where I
want to be. So I choose to proclaim my vision of how I want the world to be, even
when that vision is yet to come to fruition in the world.
To
honor how I want the world to be, I have embraced and advocated for
self-pleasuring and the importance of the relationship with self. I have said
that obligation is not love and friendship is just as important as any other
relationship we could ever have. I have said that it does not matter what we do
or say, as much as how we do or say it, and that includes how we die.
I
don’t wait for society to catch up before I say we should legalize drugs and
provide treatment for addictions. I don’t wait for society to agree before I say
we should decriminalize prostitution and provide livable, decent jobs for all
people in every country and address poverty so no one is taking any job (whether
sex work or anything else) because they don’t have another option.
I
recognize that my choices may seem unusual, but I question what appears to be
an automatic reflex of choosing extreme medical intervention, and I wonder
about a society where we allow it to happen just because we are afraid to let
go and die. How I live in each moment and the experiences I have in each moment
are such a high priority to me that I cannot even contemplate the need to live
a really long life over having a good quality of life. I cannot contemplate
making decisions out of a fear of dying rather than living fully and
intentionally right now.
If
my life were to end tomorrow, I can honestly say that the moments I have had so
far have been meaningful. Yes, there are things I would miss if my life were to
end soon. But as painful as life can be, it is much more painful when I do not
let go. I live my life as best I can, so that when the day comes, I will be
ready to let my life end. I do not wait to say or do what is most important to
say and do in all of my meaningful relationships.
If
it happens that I live a long life without illness, pain or hardship, I am open
to it. But I say no to extravagant intervention along the way or life-saving
measures and surgeries and expensive technology. I have to ask, Is that
suicide? I also have to ask, How different is a denial of medical intervention
from actively taking one’s life when there’s no terminal illness at all?
Copyright 2015 by
Susan Miranda. All
rights reserved. No part of this writing may be reproduced or
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