Suicide is a coward’s way out. It is a cruel, stiff middle finger to anyone and everyone who has ever loved you and an outlet for inflicting the maximum amount of damage, without the burden of facing consequences for it.
My strong feelings about suicide come from a full understanding of what it feels like to consider it as an option, as well as a complete awareness of the self-pitying martyr’s complex that motivates the choice.
It is the last wickedly selfish act of a true coward.
Those who choose a public display for the spectacle of their death do so for the sake of spreading their misery, often to innocent bystanders, as well as to accomplish the public humiliation of their friends and family. To mourn a man who laid his body down on subway tracks, is to give no thought or concern for the thousands of commuters affected by a shutdown of the entire line, or the poor souls charged with cleaning his remains off the tracks, or the next of kin who are forced to examine those remains to identify their loved one. A man thinks only of himself when he does this, and in the wake of it, too many of us reward this selfishness by thinking only of him, too.
But how much worse is it when, in the act of taking his life this way, a man denies the opportunity for justice to those he may have victimized in life? Guilty or not, he robbed every last one of us of the chance to know the truth. Yet, despite that, he is mourned and hailed as a martyr, by those who now call him a victim of our viciousness. No thought to the real victims, who may never have the chance to have their stories told and no thought to the rest of us who are left to further wonder about the potential predators in our midst.
He’s gone, and he still wins.
I think of the poor bastards who have to jack up the train to dig his smashed corpse out from under it. Also anyone who had to see the stupid prick get hit. That is stuff you can't un-see. Or un-smell, for the TTC guys.
As to justice, he's experiencing it now. Good luck with that, buddy.
Posted by: The Phantom | October 06, 2009 at 01:19 PM
Speaking of sensitivity towards others, thank-you so much for leaving me with a sickening taste in my mouth as a result of invective you have spewed from your mouth. You didn't even know him and you didn't know if he was innocent or guilty and yet you took our law, "innocent until proven guilty", and abused it.
David was my friend and my colleague in the English department at Jarvis. We knew him and would not presume to judge before the facts were laid out to see. That this won't now happen is a pity for now a good, decent man, who was filled with despair at the complete public humiliation, felt he had no other recourse- his life was over already because the world is filled with the cruelty of those like you. Whether innocent or not, he would be guilty forever in the public forum. Does that not say something profoundly sad about our society?
You have no idea how precarious a position a male teacher or volunteer leader ( working with teens )is in. Teenagers can be particularly vicious when they don't get the marks they want or they feel the teacher "dissed" them. So, imagine every time a student got pissed, he called "pervert" what would happen. If these things get handled out of the direct eye of the public, eventually the truth would emerge and then you know what you're dealing with and what to do. In David's case, such public humiliation, and especially if you ARE innocent, was simply too much to bear.
Please do not jump to conclusions in future. Today there were at least 1500 of us at the funeral service. How many will each of us be lucky enough to have at our funeral under the best of circumstances?
Posted by: Rita Ancans | October 09, 2009 at 04:45 PM
Neither of us will ever know the full truth now, will we Rita? And the only person we have to thank, for robbing us of that opportunity is the one you rush to mourn.
My indictment is not based on his alleged offenses against those boys. It's solely based on the act we all know he did and the consequence that it robbed us all of the opportunity to know the truth.
A publicly gruesome suicide is a deliberate slap in the face to everyone he has ever known. That is the memory your friend left you with. Were it my friend, I would feel a deep sense of betrayal and never shed a single tear for someone who would do something so selfish. I'm sorry you will miss him but he didn't love you, or anyone else he knew, enough to spare you from that.
None of that is my fault, just because I dare to point it out.
Posted by: Wonder Woman | October 09, 2009 at 05:23 PM
No, indeed it is not your fault. I also understand the concern society has when faced with a potential abuser; I, myself, have judged others based on what has been reported even though for years I have taught that we need to be wary of what the media tells us, that we need to be critical readers.I am going to question more closely each time I read something sensationalist now, waiting for proof and, if it is not afforded me, I will hope I can let it go with grace.
Your criticism seems to stem from his very public and very violent suicide; I get that. Many think this is a cowardly act, a selfish act- even my husband. However, I know many others who believe that when someone is in a very black hole, they cannot see a shred of hope and, so, they do act selfishly- anything to be put out of this pain.When I say "this pain", I mean the humiliation and the knowledge that no matter what you do, your life is finished. The minister today said something quite striking: when we put our hand very close to our face, we cannot see anything,yet when we move it back, things come into focus. She said the darkness that must have enveloped David was like that hand too close to the face.
I feel a profound sadness for the subway driver who said David looked him straight in the eye as he tried to stop that train- he will probably not have a restful or sound sleep, maybe for years, and he did nothing to deserve that. But life is unfair and we never know what lies at the end of the tunnel for us. This is his challenge, David had his, and we all have ours.
I do not have the answers here but I feel it in my gut and I do not believe it is simply wishful thinking. If you had known him, you, too, would have supported him.
Rita
Posted by: Rita Ancans | October 09, 2009 at 09:28 PM
I must agree WW, that Rita is misguidedly glorifying/excusing/apologizing or something enabling the cowardly and public atrocity that this fellow committed. Rita, do you ever wonder if the copy-cat suicides that can follow a very public one are enabled by your approach to dealing with them versus WW's?
Posted by: epador | October 09, 2009 at 10:44 PM
epador:
I am glorifying no one, nor am I excusing anyone or apologizing for anyone. But there is never only one way of looking at things. Maybe David was leaving us a public message and maybe it was that if you hanged me in the public court, then I will make my case very public indeed. However, I do not think he was in any condition to worry about others. If you are willing to go in such a violent manner, how can you be in any condition to worry about commuters being hung up,
In what way, exactly, is my attitude enabling copy cat suicides? How can compassion be a bad thing? It has taken me many years to realize the beauty of compassion- I'm just asking others to take a moment to stop and reflect on what brings a man to this point.
Posted by: Rita Ancans | October 10, 2009 at 12:13 AM
Rita,
I fully understand what brings someone to this point. As I said, I have been there, having activated charcoal forced down my throat, begging to be left to die. I know what brought me there and it is an episode of my life for which I am truly ashamed because I realize the cruel selfishness and spite that motivated the choice.
I truly hope you find that the faith you've placed in your friend is justified. But if it turns out that he wasn't the man you thought you knew, I encourage you to not waste another moment mourning him. We all must suffer for our poor choices. It is the only true justice there is, in this world. The only one not left suffering now is David. I hope he's earned that peace and that we don't find he stole it from the rest of us. For the sake of my own children.
Posted by: Wonder Woman | October 10, 2009 at 09:50 AM
I am so sorry for your past troubles and I am happy that you are past that. I truly hope that the after effects are not crippling or debilitating to you. Recognizing that that act was one of selfishness is one thing; however, compassion for that individual's pain is another. No one who goes to this dark place goes there willingly, right? I am guessing that it is a place of last resort. Fortunately you did not succeed.I hope you received support. I wish David had not chosen this very violent way but, to him, a certain one. One can only guess at what was happening in his head. He was in the care of his parents at that point who live close to the station. The family had talked about David needing to go out for a walk, from time to time, to clear his head. Early that morning he awoke and was heard rustling about downstairs. After a short while, his brother noticed that it was very quiet downstairs and went to check on David who was gone. He went looking for him and by the time he got back home, the police were already there. Who knows if David had thought it out or, perhaps, as he walked he passed the station he suddenly had a brainwave- that would put him out of his misery and take the pressure and spotlight off his family (yes that is warped thinking but gee.....). This method suggests convenience, ease of doing (although I couldn't imagine that), and certain results.
Just a final note here. Truly I hope he is innocent but I cannot say this for sure. This is true. However, should we find out that this, in fact, is what it was purported as being, I will continue to mourn him and love him. Here is why: although this would be a terrible thing to have done, if done with malice and the hope of more to come, the facts remain that nothing more did happen. Nothing happened at the camp this past summer. Why not? The supposed emails date back to the Spring of '09. The boys did not even live in Toronto which suggests a long way to go to make this type of "come on" feasible. David had a whole school to choose from plus a city community that is the gay community of Canada. David, in his short life, accomplished so much good- and that good was for youth- that this cannot negate that mountain of good. The students and everyone who knew him felt that instinctively and felt his goodness.
We have, unfortunately, had three incidents in our school over the past 15 years- all male teachers- all tried and found guilty and punished. In each case, there was something "off' about each one of them. No one adored them as they did David, they had qualities about them that suggested they were a bit "sleazy" or "odd". My own high school music teacher was a victimizer of boys. He was only discovered years after I had started teaching myself. IN retrospect, though, he paid an undue amount of attention to certain boys in the class. So, in the end, I was not very surprised. This is not the case with David. And this is why I will mourn him always.
All that I know about him is good.
Posted by: Rita Ancans | October 10, 2009 at 12:24 PM