I haven’t decided to kill myself yet. If you’re wondering what happened, it’s probably not that. It’s the 31st of March, 2025, and I haven’t decided to kill myself yet.
I don’t think it will happen quickly. I’m not a particularly impulsive person. It feels strange to have reached the age of 24 when I never really expected to be 19. I’m thinking a bit about the statistics of male suicide, which don’t necessarily look the way you would expect. Here they are, broken down by age group:
| Age group | Suicide rate |
|---|---|
| 10-14 years | 2.8 |
| 15-24 years | 21.1 |
| 25-44 years | 29.6 |
| 45-64 years | 29.5 |
| 65-74 years | 27.2 |
| 75+ years | 43.9 |
It frankly doesn’t look like what I expected it to. I’ve been feeling for a while that I sort of “missed the window” on my suicidality, like I was “over the hump”. As though, if you’re suicidal at 17 and you make it to 24, you’re probably sort of “in remission”. If you make it that far, you’re probably not going to do it.
These statistics tell a different story. They tell a story of accumulating pain, of people lingering on the brink for their entire lives. A story more like xkcd 931:
I don’t know if that’s actually true. A better statistic to examine would probably be years after onset, which I guess is really the statistic being used by xkcd here. But this is an impossible statistic to really gather, in the way that our society is currently structured. In fact, the reforms that would make this information knowable are probably the same reforms that would actually curb suicide rates. Most suicides happen because there’s no one around to know you’re suicidal. Or because the people who should know, don’t. Can’t. I think a huge risk factor for suicide is no one knowing that you are suicidal.
I guess a major risk factor for cancer is no one knowing that you have cancer. It’s a condition.