Person is Not a Rude Word

• Trigger Warning: this post is about what it says in the title…

1. Suicide is in the British news because celebrity Stephen Fry has gone public about trying to take his own life last year.  He has long been a mentalists‘ champion (at least in BiPd circles) since he presented a TV documentary on BiPolar Disorder.  [Some of us have wondered when he fits in time to be non-function-ally high or low??]
2. (see Glossary Category post)
3. I’ve been a fan of Stephen Fry’s acting & presenting for decades; his portrayal of a GP in Ben Elton’s series ‘Happy Families’ (with Jennifer Saunders) has stuck in my mind: he would ask always of his patient, “Tickety-boo, or not-so-pucker?”  So, I’m sorry to know that SF ‘was not T-B, was N-S-P’ last year.  I’m in favour of S Fry Esq being known, as he is, a National Treasure: if he did succeed in ‘giving his lifeline the chop’ then I would definitely miss his witty, erudite televisual and filmic presence…

• As someone who has more-than-once attempted to self-euthanase, I feel I am in the position to have some take on the subject; as the titles of this post – and of my poem below – suggest, I neither encourage, condone nor deplore suicide.  I certainly root for euthanasia and wish that GB offered the like of the Swiss Dignitas service.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignitas_(assisted_dying_organisation)

• [On the subject of Swiss, I gained a disappointing ‘D’ in my French ‘A’ Level Oral exam due to the fact that my examiner got me talking about my other expectedly-low-achieving exam subject, Sociology.  Inappropriately – as well as unintelligibly, me thinks – I was asked something about (please read with French accent) ‘suicide’… I, however, having only muddle-studied Family & Kinship in East London, thought I was being asked about similar F&K in a Swiss conurbation community…  Life & Death move in surreally mysterious ways…]
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  • Living with BiPd Level II, I learned recently that I am statistically more likely than those  with the more demonstative highs and lows of BiPD Level I to make attempt(s) to take my life; certainly I have lived with suicidal ideation for more than forty years since puberty (a fact that, paradoxically, gives clout to the Gender Clinic consultants of the reality of my A-gendered dysphoria as a Trans* Person…)
  • Quite coincidentally, I found in the city centre library last week a fabulously funny novelette;
  • translated from the French, by author Jean Teulé: The Suicide Shop (‘A gently comic fable’ – Financial Times; ‘A suicide shop that is full of life…’ – Le figaro).
  • I honestly don’t know if I’d have stomached reading it if I was in a low space, but presently it has me laugh-out-loud on the bus!  I highly recommend that you reserve at your local library or bookstore (as oppose to ordering online from some tax-dodge-corporation) this life-affirming read.
  • In Brighton, the Grassroots Suicide Prevention organisation tries to normalise this taboo subject as a means to lowering the high incidence in this urban-by-the-sea population.   So, I too, create(d) this post and poem as a taboo-breaking ‘let’s talk about suicide’ offering (the poem was written in the late ’90s).

http://www.prevent-suicide.org.uk/find_help.html

See also the Campaign Against Living Miserably – the CALM Zone

http://www.thecalmzone.net/stopsuicide/

Not Averse to Suicide

There’s some person all over-the-shop
who wants to give their lifeline the chop;
they think “Rat poison’s got clout,
but setting fire-to-self’s out,
and I don’t fancy the ten storey drop.

I could paint death’s bed a wrist-slash-red;
but trigger a sawn-off up at my head?
You can stuff anorexic!
The bleedin’ oven’s electric…
So, is it hair dryer in the bath instead?”

Goes way back, when this lover they’d greet:
they had let Death in the bridal suite.
“See, I’m married to Life,
but I’m not a true ‘wife’,
and a divorce looks right up my street.”

Yes, for them, life’s a role of the dice;
their mental states in skates on thin ice.
“Some S.A.D. day I could crack,
shoot a death-pull of smack…”
Yet there’s no joy in this gambler’s vice.

And the short overdose is the scare.
“It could leave me hangin’ in mid-air…
So is the noose-on-the-loose –
while I’ve still got some ‘juice?”
We hope/guess/doubt they’ll keep hangin’ on in there…

©  Luc(e) Raesmith