Image via andsoitbeginsfilms.com
I do understand suicide. I understand the need to kill pain; to end suffering. I believe we are masters of our own bodies & that life is not just a right but a choice.
Having stated my beliefs I find myself in opposition to them. True suicide, still shocks me even though I have had my own brush with it. When I hear of someone who has committed suicide I am just as shocked & saddened as anyone else. However, I also feel intrigue; a need to know every detail. I am sure I am not alone. The search for answers is almost always fruitless when it comes to suicide, but I undergo the search anyway.
While I am conducting these searches I typically end up getting quite jaded about the whole thing.
This week the world heard about the suicide/death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. The details have since revealed themselves as heroin related. I am not sure how anyone ever knows a heroin overdose is suicide or just an accident. Unless of course there is a note. In any case, P.S.H was a successful, talented & no doubt wealthy man. A man with flaws & a man with an addiction. I wonder what it is that made him make those choices? Were they choices at all? Did it all just get out of his control? I wonder, if you slowly kill your body with addiction to drugs can it be classified as suicide when those drugs finally take over?
I will never know, but what I think he has accomplished, suicide or not, is the definitive end of his life. Unfortunately for those he leaves behind they are the ones that have to suffer for his art, they are the ones with few words to explain.
Words I do have: waste, addiction, shame. Words I do not have: tragic, sad, understand. Rest Philip Seymour Hoffman, if you can.
Violet Ashes 