This is more for the benefit of the thread and the discussion more than you Zoo, you know all of this already from what we've talked about. LoL!
I think it's a complicated situation with complex emotions that has no one simple explanation, rationalization, or sentiment that can describe the person who made this choice or that choice.
My husband has always thought suicide was a selfish choice. It was one of the few debates I couldn't have with him for the whole of our relationship because he firmly believed it was selfish, the people who did it were selfish, their reasons were selfish, he almost spoke about people who killed themselves with disgust.
Then we had a friend who we loved take his own life. The first person we've known in our immediate circle that had done such a thing.
When our friend died, my husband was the poster child for the 5 stages of grief. When he was settling in to acceptance, he realized his thoughts about suicide weren't matching about our friend... He was struggling with depression and had been for years and years. While the choice was certainly impulsive, my husband was really struggling with the idea of what he did was selfish, at least, maliciously selfish. He knew that our friend was struggling and having seen how dark things got for him, he knew when things got that dark, he was begging for, and not finding, relief. We all tried to help him as best as we knew how (and we all second guessed what we could have done to help him more), but we knew... When it was bad, it was bad. There was nothing we could do. I think seeing our friend's father after the fact and seeing his funeral was a celebration of his life, but most importantly, seeing his mother after-the-fact and hearing her say "He's struggled so long, so hard, we struggled with him... But I thank God he's at least at peace now. He's fought this disease for so long and we always knew it was a terminal illness." I think it hit him hard... Our friend's family was every bit the brokenhearted, grieving, mournful, devastated family... But when he hears our friend's parents say it was an all consuming disease that plagued him... I think reality hit. I think reality hit more when he heard one of our friends say "when my father had cancer, he fought and fought, but when he was tired of fighting and had accepted this was going to kill him, he could go to a doctor and say 'no more, I want no more treatment, I accept what's going to happen' and have that choice be accepted for what it is. We told him he was brave, the doctor gave him pills so he wasn't uncomfortable, we celebrated his life and then he died. (Friend's name) had a disease too and I think this is his same way of doing what my father did. He knew he had no more fight and it was time. Looking at his family, they act a lot like we did when we found out Dad said he was ready to let go. Maybe that's it."
That was the seed that got my husband thinking that maybe it is selfish, but it's not a selfish with a malicious intent. I think he saw our friend was really, really struggling, he thought he was hurting his family with his depression, the expense and stress of dealing with it, and that further fueled his depression. He felt that what he did not only gave him relief after a decade of darkness, but also removed the pain his family felt. I think it was clear that he knew his death would hurt his family, but it would also give them closure and a chance to move on once the grief had subsided. I do know that the pain his family experienced and his guilt over it was massive. He wanted an out for them as much as himself and that's what he thought it was on an impulsive, really dark night.
Shortly after the death of our friend, after a long, really brutal struggle, I was diagnosed with manic depression and then eventually Bipolar II Disorder (Lyme... The disease that keeps on giving). I think that was the tipping point for him, where he figured out that the depression people are in when they choose suicide isn't one of negligent or malicious selfishness. People who kill themselves aren't generally trying to make a point, actively hurt those who they love, or anything like that... They're making a choice that they belief will bring them and their family relief after battling something as awful, all-consuming, and life-changing as cancer, without even the promise of recovery or successful management of the illness, just the promise of good days, bad days and "sticking with it" to see if things get better.
My husband watched me struggle for months and months. He saw me angry and frustrated over nothing, on the brink of tears and completely unable to tell anybody why, he saw pain and didn't know how to fix it. He thought it was his fault, he didn't make me happy, he wanted to fix it and didn't know why sometimes it made it worse. He struggled right along with me, right at ground zero, he saw how guilty I felt that he thought what was wrong with me was him, he felt guilty that made me feel guilty... It was a downward spiral.
I tried to explain to him how it feels. It feels like everything that's great, makes you happy, your good memories, everything that's positive is like water in a bucket that sits under a faucet and that bucket has a huge leak at the bottom where water just pours out. Sometimes that faucet that fills the bucket is on at just a drip, sometimes the faucet is on at full blast... But always, always, no matter how much water is going into the bucket, you're always leaking out the bottom. Depression is that leak at the bottom that you always feel draining, the knowledge that that water is going out the leak and you can't stop it, and this constant fear that the faucet that fills the bucket will shut off, the bucket will empty, or worse, the faucet will shut off while the bucket is empty and never come back on. All you can think about is that leak and what you're losing and the fear and pain over what you're losing and how it won't come back.
Now, I'm horribly lucky... When I'm at my darkest, I never got to full fledged suicidal thoughts. But I did get to a point where my pain was so self-destructive that I would start thinking "I hate that my kids see me like this all the time. I don't want this to be my legacy. If I died tomorrow, I don't want them to remember me like this" and "I bet my husband misses how I was. I hate letting him down everyday. I don't want him to think of me like this." Then, more guilt, more pain, more fueling of the depression... And it was that point where I realized that these thoughts were the gateway thoughts to suicidal thoughts. In the highs, which were lower and lower highs, I was able to ground myself with "hang in there for your husband, he loves you" and "try to beat this for your kids." When it started to feel like it wasn't enough, I knew I was in trouble and it all culminated in me having a breakdown, telling my husband something was really wrong and I needed help, and he said whatever I needed I needed to do because he knew something was really, really wrong.
We had to confront if I was suicidal and I wasn't, but my husband said that seeing what depression, real depression, is like at ground zero, he sees how people get there. It's not selfishness, it's a cry for relief after relentlessly managing the worst of one's inner demons, exhaustion, maybe impulse during a time when your bucket is empty and the faucet isn't turning on, misplaced belief that you're giving relief to others, a desperate attempt to have the only control in a uncontrollable situation... Even if we take it as a selfish action that's done for one's self only, it's not malicious. Most don't do it to hurt their loved ones, but because they hurt so much and just want it to stop.
I think people would be surprised to hear the number of people who make this choice that think "I'm tired of putting my friends and family through hell... And I'm the hell. I can't keep doing this to them and me. This is my only choice."
I for sure think Robin was there. And seeing how Zelda talks about it, I see a lot of what I saw in my friend's family... An acknowledgement of the demons of depression and implications that while she's devastated she's gone, she's glad he's finally free of what was killing him.
