The Suicidal and Learning From Japanese Literature

 It has been a long time since I thought of suicide for myself. I assume the COPD will get me; just not as quickly; and three strikes, and it is time to give up the effort.

That doesn't mean I do not take an interest in the subject. Anthony Bourdain's death made realize I never thought about buying rope, and how he, too, let his depression get the better of him.

Geoffrey Mak's Man of the West: Akutagawa’s Tragic Hero (The Paris Review) describes a mind I can understand:

Akutagawa’s suicide note is preoccupied with sin and transgression. The writer was “aware of all of his faults and weak points, every single one.” He apologizes vaguely, “I just feel sorry for anyone unfortunate enough to have had a bad husband, a bad son, a bad father like me.”

Despondency allows for no light, no sound, no thought other than one's own foulness. I do not know if I broke my mind back in 2010, or if it is the 25mg of Zoloft I have been taking since 2021, or age, or a better physical health, but this sort of despondency no longer clouds my mind. The Orthodox Church, philosophy, my writing help, too. However, there is one fact which I do not disclose very often, thinking it will disturb people close to me: I did die back in 2010. I destroyed everything that I had built up about myself, and it was done purposefully. I wanted no to eulogize me. All I failed to do was to stop breathing. So, I live now on borrowed time; when I start complaining about losses, I say to myself if I had killed myself the thing would have been lost anyway.

There is much to pay attention in the last paragraph, too. Especially for those wondering why you should stay alive.

Akutagawa might have felt a tremor of the spirit that he believed could be pacified only by merging with the void. There’s nothing all too special about that. Sometimes, you can see the void behind the snow falling on the river from the window of a subway car crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. You either make peace with it or you don’t. You can acknowledge the void, clutch your heart, squeeze your eyes closed, say your gratitude list, and then go on with your commute. Most of us know how to do this. We do it every day.

Hmm, what I meant to be mostly about this paragraph turned into something else:

Much like contemporary autofiction, I-novel fiction often hinged on a confession, particularly unflattering, made by a narrator assumed to represent the author. The bundan praised fiction for how unlikeable its protagonists appeared, which signaled a greater risk by the author—higher stakes. In Toson Shimazaki’s A New Life (1919), the author’s stand-in discloses having sex with his brother’s daughter. Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human (1948) follows a sociopathic misogynist, an outcast of society who is locked up in an insane asylum.

sch 4/29