IT IS NOT THAT I WANT TO DIE, I JUST DO NOT WANT TO LIVE.

• Author: Simpson, Steve
• Position: PSYCHOLOGY

"IF THIS doesn't go through, I swear I'll kill myself!" You probably have heard something like this before. Perhaps you even said it to yourself. You may have laughed right afterwards. For many, though, it is not a laughing matter because they are quite serious with their intention to kill themselves. The figures of suicide rates, let alone teenage suicide rates, are staggering.

It is bad enough when someone dies from an incurable disease. However, when a person dies from suicide, all one can think is that it was a tremendous waste--a total unnecessary loss of a life. At the funeral of a suicide victim, the anger, shock, and frustration are many times that of a nonsuicide mortality. The guilt usually fills the air like a choking pollutant--why?! That is the word which echoes throughout like a record with a skip in it.

Why? The immediate response to the most-posed question is "why not?" Nobody commits suicide because he or she had nothing better to do that day. As for the old adage, "they just want attention," that perhaps is true in some cases. However, the people I have known to attempt suicide were not seeking attention; they were seeking death. Why? Again comes the "why not?" You see, the "why not?" is filled with so much pain, disappointment, anger, low self-esteem, depression, and downright hopelessness that the person truly cannot see any reason to go on.

To sum up suicide in a more personal perspective: it is not that I want to die; it is just that I do not want to live. That is not a contradiction. I do not really know what it is like to be dead, but I do know what it is like being alive. For me, at that time, there always was something going wrong. There always was a new problem that would come up that I would have to deal with, along with the difficulties that already were troubling me. When things finally seemed like they were going right, they just would fall apart again. I had gotten so used to that that I simply always expected things to go wrong, no matter how positive they seemed at first. My father's alcoholism and abuse had taken their toll--and worse than his physical abuse was the verbal and emotional abuse that destroyed my self-esteem and -worth.

Hopelessness developed inside of me. I felt abandoned and unwanted. I could not stand my school. I hated where I lived. I was so embarrassed by my family. I felt like I was the only one who was going through this. As much as I thought I was stupid, I was not and, if I honestly...