Despite having lived the life of someone who bails out quickly, the one thing I've learned--if anything--is that suicide is never an option. In America alone, 3559 males and 627 females between the ages of 15 and 24 took their lives in 1997 (see http://www.who.int/mental_health/Topic_Suicide/suicide1.html). Those frightening statistics are increasing rapidly every year. In the year 2000, the average death by suicide rate worldwide was predicted to be 1 every 40 seconds (see http://www.who.int/mental_health/Topic_Suicide/Suicide4.htm). It is entirely too simple for someone to think they have a reason to end their life; people give up because they are depressed and it is easier to die than to deal with the pain. The media also sensationalizes this destruction to an extent, with movies such as Heathers and news programs broadcasting celebrity overdoses in trashed hotel rooms; they almost convince that suicide is good or the "cool" thing to do. In January of my eleventh year, my live-in uncle ended his own life. He'd been staying with us for four months, ever since he and his wife had divorced. She had re-married in two weeks, taking my uncle's kids with her out of state. Although he had a traveling job--I think now that he kept it to get away from his life and thoughts--when he was around, he was like a second dad to my little brother and me. I didn't know it until I was old enough to reflect on it and recognize the signs, but he was severely depressed. One morning he just drove out to a favored fishing spot of my family near White's Bridge, parked his blue van, jimmy-rigged a hose to his exhaust pipe, and sat waiting for Death's cold and unremovable kiss. That night marked the beginning of my dance with the game of desired death. Even as a child, I was passionate and easily upset, at the same time always trying to make a memorable impression one anyone I met. I thought too much for anyone twice my age and at times, I felt that I would take any escape from these uninterrupted and depressing ideas. More often though, I would grow irrationally angry with my father or one of my friends and stalk away in a screaming huff, ending up at the bridge blocks from my house, imaging how bad it would make that person feel if I jumped into the shallow and gushing blackness, breaking my neck or back on the craggy rocks right below the water. I have matured at least a little since, but I still feel the impulse once in a while. Going through a recent breakup that ended up being much more difficult than was necessary, I thought often of my old courtier Death. I know now that I will never give in to it though because I have been given a precious jewel, the best humanly possible defense against it; my beloved brother admitted to me that if I were to kill myself, he would do the same and that thought is the most unbearable I've ever had. Two years ago, I had a friend who men wanted to be and women wanted to be with. He lived in the center of almost all our lives; back in this time of drugs and "friends" that you couldn't really trust, he was one of the few friends that you could rely on. Something as small in the big picture--the break-up of him and his girlfriend of a year and a half--as a piece of grass is in a field, induced him to swallow a bottle of aspirin and landed him in the hospital. No one was able to see him for almost a month; even after he was released from ICU, he left to stay with his sister more than an hour's drive away. The shock sent ripples through my tiny world. No one would ever have guessed that he would be the one to do something so drastic and unprofitable. Another colleague of mine accidentally overdosed on a hallucinogen that he was dealing at the time and his parents sent him to a mental institution. For his body size, I believe the legal overdose limit was 40 grams and he had taken one more gram than that. In short, he should have been dead. His parents refused to tell me where he was being kept. They blamed me because he was my boyfriend and I hadn't stopped him from taking drugs. I blamed them because they were his parents and they didn't know enough or care enough about him to even know that he was dealing drugs out of their basement. When he was finally allowed to call me on the phone, two weeks had passed and I had been going through the closest thing to Hell that I can imagine. It took another month for them to relax enough for me to see him, and even then that was only under their constant supervision. Aside from the fact that he was on so much depression and anti-psychotic prescriptions that it quite possibly could have killed him had he started experimenting again, I was so scared by his brush with death that I never let him touch any drug for the remainder of the time we were together. My personal experience with suicide is not as extensive as many unfortunate others and I am thankful for that. Out of everyone I've been close to in my life, I've really only had one family member go through with the hideous concept. Still, as the statistics mentioned earlier, it is a problem that needs to be dealt with in some way. Compared with inaction, it is so simple to help a person overcome their depression. There are several ways that the government or a person/corporation with power could change and save lives. Support and treatment of people with depression would be a start. Reduction of the ability for these unstable people to access means of suicide, such as toxic substances or guns, would make a big difference as well. Also, proper training of primary health care workers--to make them more able to help a person dying of suicide--would make an impact (see http://www.who.int/mental_health/Topic_Suicide/Suidice5.htm). If something were to be done about this unrecognized (but completely curable) dilemma, the climbing rate of suicide in America could be reduced by more than half in less than a year, I am sure; the only thing that these people really need (and entirely deserve) is some attention.