Suicide

I saw a New Paper headline, “this hunk is a Government Scholar” on the New Paper. A few days later, I saw another headline where a scholar, ostensibly because of the failed pursuit of a girl from China, jumped to his death. Maybe they should take a picture of the mess at the bottom of the HDB block and headline it, “this gunk used to be a Government Scholar”.

They are making a big deal out of it isn’t it? People usually kill themselves for larger reasons than just the end of a love affair. The decision to die involves the ending of a life, and it usually reflects the belief, rightly or wrongly, that definitely more than one aspect of the life have failed. It could not possibly be that a girl had just rejected him. He must have felt that he failed in other aspects as well. The way that the suicide was reported therefore makes the reasons seem unnecessarily frivolous. Maybe he had just come home from a place where winters are extremely long and dreary. Maybe he couldn’t fit in socially with his new workplace.

There are 2 general meanings of suicide. One of them is a cry for help. The other one is a true unwillingness to carry on living. The first could come across as a little disingenuous: you don’t really want to kill yourself but you’re sending a strong signal that you want people to help you. In the second you don’t give a damn and you just want it to end. Statistics on suicide usually show that women attempt suicide more often, and men commit suicide more often, which highly suggests that the first reason appeals more to women and the second reason more to men.

There have been 2 times when I seriously considered suicide, and thankfully it has stayed this way for quite a few years. During the second time I was in the uni and yes – I had just ended a relationship, but I think it was more than that that drove me to despair. I couldn’t find an easy way out of my troubles, my future was murky, I didn’t know how I was going to slog through the rest of my uni years. There had been a period of optimism before that, when I thought that I had solved a lot of problems in my life, and later on I found out that at least some of the solutions were temporary. For the record I am acquainted with another scholar who “attempted” suicide. She was female.

Thank goodness nothing happened. I could deal with the fact that my life was over, but what would happen if my name was splashed across the papers, as an example of a recipient of privilege who cocked it up in a uniquely spectacular fashion? I would be dead by then, of course, and unable to know anything about the consequences, but my God, the shame! Thank goodness it never got to be a thought in my mind.

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On another note, I recently heard that a divorce had taken place. It was sad. I didn't know the couple that well but it never seemed to me that the couple had anything in common. It was sad because that wedding was one of the first I had been to, and I saw what it was like when the groom (he was a colleague at that time) was scurrying around to fix things up.

I am a little superstitious. I have been to like maybe 3 dates in 10 years, but I noticed that if I were to go dating in places that close down soon after, the relationship is near the end. There was the annex of a spaghetti restaurant (the second floor was closed soon after.) There was a date at Scott's food court not long before it got closed down. Both didn't last. OK, one of them petered out to its fairly unseemly conclusion, in the other case both of us didn't click and we didn't pursue it.

OK, it's superstition. But psychological research shows that human behaviour is very much shaped by its environment. I suppose that the strength of a relationship - any one, not just a spousal one - depends on there being a shared environment. That's why I would want that environment, that context to be a lasting one. If an environment that symbolises a relationship were to disappear without being adequately replaced, that is very dangerous.

Well that wedding took place in a place that closed down soon afterwards and while I never allowed myself to think that the "curse of the closing down location" would affect this guy, this does fit in with the natural pattern. I would be very wary about closing down places.

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An update on this earlier post - I think that water girl is still living in my block. I bumped into her at the lift. She still looks great, but I feel much less crazy about her than years ago.