As I was growing up, I noticed that almost every time a suicide survivor talked about their experience, they said they would never do it again. Then when I was seventeen my oldest brother introduced me to a guy that I only knew as "Bullet Brain". That was their nickname for him among their peer group, which was mostly bikers like my brother. Bullet Brain pointed a gun into the roof of his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the roof of his mouth up into his skull right between his eyes and lodged between his brain and skull right at the hairline. It actually caused a bump sticking out in his head where the bullet still resides. But the only after effect is a change in personality and a few coordination problems.

But this guy did not seem depressed or suicidal. In fact he was quite full of life and told me how glad he was to be alive and how he appreciates every day now. Here it was again, someone going from so depressed that they tried to kill themselves, to happy they did not succeed. And he had this certainty about not wanting to kill himself anymore. (Disclaimer: I know this does not happen for everyone and some people do go on to kill themselves). I didn't question him further because I had just met him and I was really only taking in what he was offering. So I never found out how this change happened to him.

So when I reached my own existential crisis with the realization that it really does not matter how or when I die and that really nothing had any meaning anyway, I thought about Bullet Brain. What did he have to live for that he didn't have before that fateful day?

I finally threw away all that kind of thinking and decided that it made no difference if not existing were equivalent to existing. Life does not have to have meaning to be worth living. First, just looking at the universe to see how much matter has become sentient, it must be an incredibly rare event. But of all the matter in my universe, I was lucky enough to become sentient. The carbon that makes me up could easily be buried thousands of feet underground as coal or oil, but it's not. It became me.

If in the end it never means anything, it doesn't matter. I get to be here now. That is how I beat my existential crisis. Living in the moment and being thankful for everyone I get. I think that is what Bullet Brain was trying to tell me.

Elizabeth

Lol, good to know. I was getting worried there for a second.

You've obviously given this a lot of thought...and arrived at gratitude? I know that it matters very little if I live or die, but it sure can be fun, while it lasts..So, I'm trying to make it last...just like a whole lot of other people living their meaningless, but happy, lives..It really is a razor's edge...I conciously force myself to try to be happy..and it works most of the time..but there are down moments, too...Life is a Chinese menu: some from column A, some from column B...Thanks for this topic...Jackie

About 20 years ago, in the days of Prodigy, back when AOL was just beginning and Prodigy and CompuServe were the big ones, I met a 14 year-old boy on Prodigy and regularly communicated with him. He wrote poetry and loved life, but some of the messages he sent me took him four hours to write, because he had to write them with a mouth-stick, poking them out one letter at a time with a stick in his mouth. He was born with cerebral palsy, and other than his head, he couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He had been using the mouth stick to communicate since he was two. This kid never asked for pity, and he went out of his way to help others on the board. We began our communication because I was asking questions about a young friend that became paralyzed while visiting me, and this boy wrote pages in response to my questions and concerns about my friend.

His name was Roger Daltry _____ named after the singer. He was adopted, given up by his birth parents because of his birth defects, adopted by parents that had already adopted other severely handicapped kids, one of whom had died. His adopted father had no legs.

Roger was in and out of the hospital all the time and was often on a ventilator, which he hated. When I told him I'd like a picture of him, he said, "You wouldn't want a picture of me. I'm an ugly quad." (quad = quadriplegic).

The last message I had from Roger was: "I'm going into the hospital for a while, but I'll be OK," he said explaining why I might not hear from him. He never came home from the hospital.

Anytime I start to feel sorry for myself, I think about Roger, who despite everything, loved life.