It came to me as I was writing about the breakdown of a relationship.

I was thinking about how some of us struggle to realize that we can change our own behaviour. We fail to see that we can modify our belief systems and assumptions about how we must respond to certain things. We think instead of ourselves as fixed entities. “I am the way I am, and she can’t accept that.”

We think of the other person as someone who has something “wrong” with them, either in the absolute sense, or at least, relative to ourselves. She doesn’t understand me. She doesn’t care about me. She only cares about X. I can’t communicate with her. She doesn’t make sense to me. I can’t deal with her.

Sometimes the relationship becomes outright toxic. The amount of effort required to salvage it might be a burden that’s greater than a person could bear.

I’d like to think that every relationship can potentially be salvaged. But I’ll acknowledge that such a perspective is idealistic, and perhaps naive. I will accept that sometimes relationships will fail, and sometimes it is for the best.

In this situation, it slowly becomes convincing that breaking up is a valid solution, and perhaps the merciful one- to spare both parties further suffering. A form of separation is needed. Sometimes extraction, or amputation, while painful, brings long term relief. It’s a form of self-preservation.

I then put this entire idea inside the mind of a single individual. We’re not talking about the breakdown of a relationship between two people now, but a relationship a person has with himself.

I can’t change my behaviour. I can’t modify my belief system or my ideas about how I must respond to things. I am a fixed entity. I don’t understand me. I am the way that I am, and I can’ t accept that. There is something “wrong” with me, either in the absolute sense, or at least, relative to me. I don’t understand me. I don’t care about me. I only care about X. I can’t communicate with me. I don’t make sense to me. I can’t deal with me.

Sometimes the relationship becomes outright toxic. The amount of effort required to salvage it might be a burden that’s greater than a person could bear.

I’d like to think that every relationship can potentially be salvaged. But I’ll acknowledge that such a perspective is idealistic, and perhaps naive. I will accept that sometimes relationships will fail, and sometimes it is for the best.

In this situation, it slowly becomes convincing that suicide might be a valid solution, and perhaps the merciful one- to spare both parties further suffering. A form of separation is needed. Sometimes extraction, or amputation, while painful, brings long term relief. It’s a form of self-preservation.

I always thought that suicide was about destroying the self- about going directly against the human impulse for survival. This never made sense to me.

But then I realized that the self is far more complex and multi-faceted than I formerly believed. And that suicide is not mutually exclusive with self-preservation. That perhaps people who commit suicide do it in an attempt to save them from themselves.

I could never condone it, advocate it, and I’d like to think that I’d never consider it myself.

But I think I finally understand why people do it.

A question we always ask is- is a person who commits suicide brave, or cowardly? We could ask the same question of people who break up with their significant others. And I realize that it’s a redundant question.

And I feel humbled at the realization that they might not be any more or less courageous than the rest of us, not any more or less than us in any way.

They are merely human, like us. No more, no less.