I’ve moved around a lot in my life, growing up an Army brat and being a restless adult.  I’ve shuffled my way into new schools, new neighborhoods, new surroundings… and learned to do it with a sort of mechanical efficiency.  One of the first lessons I learned about being the new girl was to survey my surroundings and get an immediate feel for those who inhabit them.  With practice I’ve become a quick study.  Another lesson I learned was not to piss off the locals right away… or I should say that I was taught not to do so but never really was good at the execution thereof.  I kinda have this feeling I’m about to disturb the natives tonight.  

  I have precious little going on to consider myself a woman with a life, therefore I spend countless hours trolling blog sites and the such.  It so happens that I found my way here to Thoughts and figured I’d plant my seed and see if I might take root.  I’ve heard rumours that this place is far more “refined” than other places, and that here I might find an outlet with a community feel.  While I have been awed by the level of creative technique shown by a handful, and impressed with the topics that so many others discuss, I have also been firmly convinced that far too many emo teens with death-wishes and bimbos who’ve been dumped by their most recent flings lurk behind far too many keyboards.  Or something…

  This place, folks, seems to be inundated with cries of “I can’t take this shit and so I’m going to slit my wrists”, which is only slightly more eloquent than “fuck me and fuck you and fuck everything,”.  Now please, don’t think me wholly insensitive.  I’m all about self pity and the embracing of pain.  But how many times can some silly twit threaten to off him/herself before he/she either shits or exits the outhouse?

  Trust me, I get that whole “needing attention” thing.  I really do.  But let’s look at these suicide rants objectively.  I’ll begin with the most commonly threatened methods.  We see a lot of wrist-slicing being bellowed about.  Super.  Ever looked up the stats on successfully arm-carved cadavers?  Quite low.  About the only way this one is going to give you anything more satisfying than one nasty scar is if you dig deep enough to actually expose your veins, grab them, and rip them the hell out.  If you’re not willing to commit like that, perhaps foregoing knife-play is in your best interest.

  Then we move on to the overdose deal.  I’ve seen mention of good old O.D. by Tylenol, cough syrup and, oddly, vitamins.  Seriously people… vitamins?  If you were super serious about keeling over I’d imagine that you’d scrape up enough moolah to purchase a truly lethal dose of heroin instead of screwing around with cheap over-the-counter shit that you scrounged up in your medicine cabinet.  Granted, this could take a few hours, but if you’re determined to go anyway why not make sure you’ve got the right tools for the job?  Nothing like taking pride in your work and completing the task.  Besides, a little known fact is that these silly dimestore drugs more likely to lead to brain damage than to the great unknown. 

  I’ve seen a few mentions of firearms.  Honestly, I can’t fuck with that one much.  My time in med school did teach me one very valuable lesson, though.  If you put the gun in your mouth, fire downward.  You can technically live without pretty much all of the upper brain matter, in which case you will continue to survive in the form of a veggie.  Taking out the stem is the way to go.  Just in case you were curious…

  So now that we’ve determined that most of these uneducated and ill planned threats are generally pitiful cries for notice, let’s move on to the postings that contain the aforementioned pitiful cries.  I take issue with the majority of the damn things for two reasons.  First is lack of prose.  I may be just a little old fashioned in my thoughts on suicide notes, but it’s always struck me that they should be full of wisdom for those being left behind.  They should convey the suffering of their authors in words meant to move the soul and wither the heart.  They should not be self-indulgent single paragraph rants about how much life sucks and why everyone should go to hell.  Who wants their last composition to be a sophomoric diatribe of horse crap littered with misspellings and 2nd grade grammar?  Unless of course you’re a 2nd grader, in which case one couldn’t really expect more. 

  My second issue is the sheer number of suicide notes I’ve found submitted by the same damn people.  There should be a law, or even just a hard and fast rule, that if you write one you either A) should be required to follow through, or B) have your suicide-note-writers membership forever revoked and be barred from ever concocting another.  I mean honestly… you get everyone all worked up and worried about you, telling you how wonderful and worthwhile you are, so you can just come back tomorrow and do it all over again?  Ummm, wait a sec.  Did I just make a point here?   *shrug*

  If you’re hurting and you’re suffering and you’re tired, I respect that.  I understand that.  I even empathize with that.  If you have a problem that seems bigger than your constitution and you just feel like you’ve no other choice but to give up, I applaud you for sharing that.  But if you’re just some Podunk nobody who’s looking for attention via any available avenue and feeding off of the goodwill of others by slinging around threats… I just pity you your miserable existence.