The Post about Suicide April 24th

I was feeling pretty blue today, and my mind drifted to the idea of suicide.

Not my own, mind you, or even that of anyone in particular. Just a general, sobering thought that a person has to be experiencing something God awful - a hundred times what I felt - to even contemplate such an act.

That, in turn, brought to mind a conversation I'd had maybe ten years ago. While it might seem a bit out of character, the truth is I thought rehashing it might do someone in trouble a bit of good.

Yes that right: welcome to my first (and probably last) Public Good Deed.

A long time ago, when the world was new and I still thought the future held riches and fame (but should have known better) I had a pretty decent job.

One of my co-workers, an aspiring architectural student, was involved in a motorcycle crash that temporarily put him in a coma with head injuries.

When he woke up, he no longer wanted to be an architect.

He also no longer wanted to be a man.

All this was before my time, but recent enough that fellow co-workers still gossiped about how he left for vacation a man and returned a woman.

I always questioned the decision. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because I wondered how much the crash had affected his reasoning.

Certainly it still played havoc with her life, as she was often sidelined with severe headaches.

I doubted life was very easy for her, and one day she admitted it.

After telling me her life story - but omitting any reference to gender - she told me she contemplated suicide on a daily basis.

She was lying; she thought about it far more often.

Not long before that I'd taken a friend to the hospital following a suicide attempt, and the subject still hit close to home.

So I asked her what stopped her from going through with it.

It was out of line she had every right to tell me to go to hell.

Instead, she told me some very good advice.

"Every day I woke up and wanted to kill myself," she said. "And every day I said no, I can't. And it didn't help, and sooner or later I was going to do it."

"So finally I gave myself permission to go ahead," she said. "I said to myself, just shut up and do it. But first I had to meet one condition."

"I had to go a week - seven whole days - without thinking, not even for a split second, that I wanted to live."

"A lot of times I'd go five, six days before I had to start over. Once I made it six and a half, and I thought 'this is it'."

"But it never happened. I'd see a movie preview and think 'I'd like to see that', or laugh at a dumb joke, and I'd be angry that. I'd have to start over"

I asked her how long this 'contract' had lasted.

"I'm at three and a half days right now," she said.

Without question, someone in a similar situation needs to seek medical help. Yet I think there's a kernel of genius in her approach.

In the course of a week - 168 hours - there has to be something - anything - that proves that life is worth living.

An upcoming episode of a TV show, the onset of spring, a good meal - whatever it takes.

Because life is too precious to waste on one bad decision.

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