Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Suicide is painless

*update 20/12/10* - you may have landed on this page searching for painless suicide, or painless suicide methods.

Things get easier. It gets better.

I'm not trying to patronise you or tell you something you don't already know. I don't think I'm better than you, because I'm not. I know you might not want any advice, or help, or anything. I know you might feel that there isn't anyone out there, anyone who can help; that things have gone beyond the point of being helped; that things have gone wrong too often, too deeply, and that it can't ever be brought back. I don't know you, and I don't know your situation. I don't know how you arrived here or what brought you to this point. And I am not an expert, and I don't know what to say, but all I do know is that you're here now, and I hope you might continue reading. Please just give me a moment.

It gets better. It does. It can, and it will. It might not get better today, or tomorrow. But it will. It can, and it will.

Yes, it might be that it gets worse again, I won't lie. The 'getting better' bit doesn't end up soaring into the sunset, leaving every problem and trouble behind. Things don't magically disappear, never to return. Things keep coming back. Sometimes, the same mistakes keep happening. But there is time - time for things to improve, time for you to accept the things that hurt so much, time for things to change, or not seem so bad as they do right now.

I know this because I've been where you are. I've been there. I have felt something like what you feel. Not the same as you, not in the same circumstances, with the same problems, or the same worries, or the same background as you, because I would never presume to think anything like that. All I know is that I've been there, at that place in their minds that people go to when they feel like they can't carry on. I have been there, and I have felt that all was lost, that nothing would ever improve, that nothing would ever get better.

I don't know what it was that helped me to fight off those feelings. I am not a strong person. I am a weak person, a failure in so many ways, a loser, a nothing, a nobody. I'm nothing good to anyone, and I have made a million mistakes. But if I can say I managed to do anything, it would be to have fought off those times in my life when I felt that things had gone too wrong, and that I was overwhelmed by the desire to sleep, and never wake. I am not strong, but I fought.

You might feel like you can't tell anybody what you feel, that you might be judged, that you might be thought of badly. That's understandable. But once that first word leaves your lips, or you manage to write down what you feel, and tell it to someone else, you will feel relief. You may want to speak to someone you trust, or someone who doesn't know you at all. There are all kinds of places where you can go, and you don't have to confront anyone, or be judged by anyone, or be thought of differently by anyone. There are people who love you, who care about you, whose lives are changed, and improved, and made better, by the fact that you're around; and there will be many more in the future.

You're not alone. This isn't how things will always be. It might feel like that way now, but this is not forever. This is only now. It might feel that you are living in the eternal present, without being able to see the future, trapped watching the mistakes and humiliations and pain of the past repeat itself in front of your eyes in your mind. But this is not forever. This is not how things will always be. You are not doomed to live in this moment forever. There will be another hour, another day, another week. Maybe take it an hour at a time. A minute at a time. Let time pass. It goes so slowly when you want it to pass, but it passes. All things pass.

I have been there, and felt those things. I have felt like it wasn't worth continuing. I have felt it would be better if I weren't around, that the world would be a better place, that I would be better off dead; I've felt like it would be the right thing to do to just end all the pain and the misery by ending my life.

It doesn't change overnight. There are small changes at first. Take baby steps. One thing at a time. And things might go wrong, or feel desperately bad, again. This is just the first moment towards recovering from how you feel now. But it gets better. It does get better, I promise, it gets better, there is so much more. Remember laughing till you cried. Remember feeling warm, and secure, and loved. Remember the things you've done that made others feel happy, that you did just because you wanted to. Remember the good things you've done. That isn't too far away. That hasn't gone forever. The bad memories are more seductive, more inviting; it's easy to cling to them and think that is all life has been, and all it will be, but that isn't the whole picture. It gets better. It can, and it will.

I can't tell you that your life will change, or that you will change, or anything like that. All I do know is that there was a time, not so long ago, when I felt that there was no escape, no option, nothing to do but end everything. I felt that there was no alternative. I felt there was nothing else that could be done. And that was that, and I wanted it all to stop.

I didn't stop. I kept going. It's got better. It's got easier. Not easy, because it isn't easy. For some of us, life is more difficult. For some of us, everything is more difficult. That might be your situation, or it might just be what you're going through now that makes you feel the way you do. But no matter how much it hurts, the hurt lessens. It doesn't fly away, never to return, but it begins to hurt less. Every second, every minute that takes you further away from this moment is something to treasure, and enjoy. Every second and every minute you fight this feeling is a victory, a little victory, but a victory. Take it a minute at a time, then there will be one day at a time. Then there will be a month, another month, a season, a year. Things will change.

I can't offer any magic or any solution. I can't offer you anything to hold on to other than hope. There is always hope. When hope seems like it's all gone, it still remains. It never leaves, and will never leave you. Hope will never leave you. There is a glowing ember, a fire in your blood, the oxygen that burns, the fire of life. Keep it burning.

Every now and then I experience what I like to call the 'Daily Mail hang on a bloody minute moment'. It happens when I'm flicking through the dead-tree Mail, or surfing the choppy waters of its website, and I come across something so insultingly hypocritical that I have to re-read it and re-read it to make sure I'm not hallucinating.

You've got to have a sneaky admiration for the Mail, just as James Bond did for Scaramanga. Only they would have the brass neck, the cojones, the brio, the chutzpah, to run a story like this.

X Factor contestant from Bridgend 'was forced to talk about suicides during auditions'

Let's get the X-Factor out of the way first. It was creaking when it was created, a hotch-potch of the Pop Idol format slung together with a few bells and whistles that weren't, as it turned out, enough to save it from the threat of legal action for being, well, essentially Pop Idol, but with a few bits tacked on the side. It was a Ford Mondeo with a Ferrari badge on the front. It relies on a clapped-out 'audition' section combining the truly awful, deluded and borderline special needs contestants who go home crying, with the epiphanous revelation of 'the contenders', who tell their lachrymose backstories to a schmaltzily pitiful glurge soundtrack to try and make you go "Awww, innit sweet, innit sad". Fuck off! It's a turd-stained toilet bowl of light entertainment. Ooh, here are the loonies, look! They think they're good, but they're not! (Well yes of course they do. They've been through seven bloody auditions already before they got in front of the cameras, at each of which they've been told to stay behind, all the time seeing half-decent singers get booted off for not being televisual enough) And here are the great ones! Aren't they rounded human beings with sad little stories to keep you rooting for them all the way to the fucking dismal Simon Cowell dirge Christmas Number One piece of fetid dirty wank that will play over slow-motion highlights of the winner's 'journey' from audition to ticker-tape celebration! Do me a fucking favour. Get the fucking Generation Game back on, Game for a Laugh, Blind Date, Jesus anything, even Jim cunting Davidson was better than this, any fucking thing other than this dogshit. Do the country a favour and crash those fucking helicopters at the start of the show, sparing us any more of Cowell's beaming monotooth or Tweedy's perfect dimples. Fuck! Off! Now!

Sorry, bit ranty there, but come on. Is this what Saturday night telly's come to? What a sad state of affairs. Don't blame Jock McStalin - blame this shower of shit on my TV every weekend! No wonder everyone would rather fuck off down the pub and glass each other.

Anyway, it's a bit rich of the Mail to publish the story about some poor girl who feels she's been exploited over the Bridgend Suicides when they've hardly treated the subject with the respect and compassion it's deserved, have they?

How do they cover suicide? Have a gander here, here, here, here, or here, and for sensitive and balanced coverage on Bridgend in particular, take a look here, here, here , here or here.

Enjoy that? So after the Mail's very own exploitation of Bridgend's suicides to ramp up its readership with a prurient interest in these deaths - including simply disgraceful descriptions of details of suicide methods in articles pretending to wring their hands about copycat suicides and imitation - coupled to a pathetic linking of suicide with social networking sites and, latterly, with emo music (or 'the sinister cult of emo'), it has the affrontery to pretend it gives a shit about some girl on the X-Factor who's a bit pissed off that she was asked about Bridgend Suicides. What the fuck?

Sometimes I almost want to applaud the Mail for its balls. How can you pretend to give a shit, when all you've done is exploit Bridgend? But they can, and they do.

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