The Next Level of Weird

We're undergoing a serious Charlie renovation. A character overhaul. New sinks, new tile, might even take that wall out over there. So, she's dabbling with suicide. We know this. Her dramatic finish in Paris may or may not have been a cry for (character development) help.

My dear friend and fellow writer D read the second draft and said she wasn't an appealing character. Didn't inspire empathy. And, when I re-read the script, I found that to be true. She's just kind of nebulously miserable. One of those really negative, poor-me people that you really wish would just go away. Always crying and minorly fucking up their lives but never doing enough damage that they reach the westbound Rock Bottom Life Change turnpike. So they just exist in this impossible-to-like Life Sucks and I'm Going to Talk About It purgatory. I actually hate people like that. I'm sorry. I know that's not very Buddha of me.

But honestly, sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better. Before someone reaches the TSN Turning Point of their lives and decides to take responsibility for themselves. So hey, if you aren't interested in making things better, why not get busy making things worse? Take up that meth habit you've been toying with. Marry that guy with the third-mortgage and the gambling problem. Siphon several hundred thousand off the top of the company coffers. Go for it! You can do it!

I say these things not without compassion. I've been there. And I'm sure the people in my life who had to watch the slow-motion train wreck of my early 20s went through hell. And I think we all felt huge relief once the Worst Marriage Ever Recorded finally bit the dust. Thank God, we all thought, it can't possibly get worse. (A risky thing to think, I know, but in this case it was accurate. One knows Rock Bottom when one sees it.)

A word about Rock Bottom. It is SO not as bad as it's marketed to be. I can tell you, from personal experience, that Rock Bottom is a great place. It is a hell of a lot better than plunging through the hellish, dark abyss. The thunk of hitting bottom is the first time you've felt solid ground under you for a long, long time. It's odd, but it actually feels supportive. Rock bottom is really the place where you can actually begin to stand up.

I need to send Charlie to rock bottom. But in a totally different way than I thought. Being 'just suicidal' isn't enough. It's not clearly motivated. Why? Why is she so obsessed with death? And if she's so bloody interested in suicide as a lifestyle choice, why not push that further?

So, my wee brain started chugging and it came up with this: maybe she's a student of suicide. Researching methods and variable efficacy of these methods and physics and chemistry...a suicientist. I remembered hearing about a web site that gave practical guidance on how to commit suicide. Comparative analysis on various methods, etc. I went about looking for it.

On my way there, I came across an article called 'How Not To Commit Suicide.' The article included stories of failed suicides. The human body is not easy to kill, it turns out. It's horribly sad and morbid, but many of the failed suicide stories were darkly funny. Like how most folks who slit their wrists and sit in the tub end up waking up in a bathtub full of cold bloody water. Imagine how that anticlimax would feel. Goodbye cruel world! Hello prune hands.

The site also included suicide notes collected by the coroner's office. Probably 90% of the notes said something to the effect of: "You hurt my feelings. This will show you." I think that was the most depressing part. People used suicide to get the attention of people who had hurt them. How terribly misguided.

Then I found the notorious suicide how-to site. There, one of the first things I discovered was a whole other side to the Pro-Life/Pro-Choice debate. Interesting, no? You never think of it that way. It's always in the context of abortion, not suicide or euthanasia.

After the comedy of errors of the first site, this one is a whole new world. This place is for serious seekers. It includes rational decision-making models to ensure that you are making a well-thought-out choice. It has a chart outlining the matrix of Lethality, Time and Agony of the various methods. Cyanide and Gunshot To Head are similar in lethality (97%) and time (under 3 mins), but gunshot trumps cyanide on the Agony factor (13 vs. 51.5).

I got to thinking...who writes this stuff? Who starts a web site or a blog about how to commit suicide? Are they suicidal? Or are they living vicariously through their army of kamikaze lab rats? I might take Charlie for a test drive down this road. See what happens.