Gonzo and a hip replacement just didn't mix.
Hunter S Thompson shot himself when the pain and infirmity of his medical conditions became too much to bear. The air of weary resignation in my old friend's suicide note turns out to be typical. The cliché of a cry for help is wide of the mark. But what all suicides share is the certainty that they are better off dead than alive. The reasons people kill themselves are as varied as the reasons the rest of us choose to stay alive, no matter what life chucks at us. Most of us can identify with those regrets, and can imagine feeling something similar at the end of our time - regretting losing sight of what was truly precious as we fought to get ahead, letting people we love drift away, denying our feelings, thinking happiness was waiting a little further down the road. The famous regret of the dying poet, Sir John Betjeman - "I wish I had had more sex" - is nowhere to be seen. Until he spoke to me from beyond the grave. We never spoke again - not on that trip, not ever. The row stopped just short of physical violence. I thought he was gratuitously unpleasant. We were on a trip to Bali - that's how tight we were, close enough to go on holiday together - and I strongly objected to the way he addressed a female beggar and her baby. It was one of those friendships where you share endless big laughs and bright lights, only to one day realise how much you despise each other. We had not drifted apart - we had fallen out. In truth, we had not been close for many years. Can something seem both shocking yet inevitable? That is what his suicide felt like to me. He signed off with six little words: "My life, my choice, my death." And then he killed himself. Because - no matter how many one-liners you try to cram into your suicide note (and this one is definitely at the stand-up comedy end of the spectrum) in the end it comes down to one bleak truth: this life is too painful to go on living. Most of us will never know such desperation, and we can be glad of that. Friday - getting desperate now - he imbibed dozens of tranquilizers and sleeping pills, but still it didn't work.īy the end of these seven days he knew how hard it is to take your own life - the boldness it takes, the bravery, and the overwhelming helplessness.
0 kommentar(er)
