Wow. This story was incredible and difficult. It blew me away. While I can understand why suicide is sometimes framed as selfish (taking the perspective of those left behind when a loved one dies), I don't think that gets at the heart of this story (or the nature of suicide for that matter). For me, it was a story about depression, the social structures that make dealing with depression extra difficult, and the way this is compounded by things like fame, which can turn you into a product to be consumed while simultaneously isolating you from the social support that could help ease the pain. Depression (and accompanying suicidal thoughts) is about brain chemistry in interaction with social supports, but we often make it out to be some kind of vice. As if being in that dark place is a choice that anyone makes, and that anyone can just change their brain chemistry by wishing it so.
In fact, "This is a Ghost Story" explicitly addresses this problem. I especially loved the part about how people will try to point out how much better you have it than people in the third world, as if human suffering exists as some sort of yard stick to measure ourselves against. But the fact of the matter is that sometimes what we need is permission to be sad, permission to be screwed up without answers and without a neat, pat narrative arc like a washed-up rockstar. Note how the story circles again and again to the way people demand this arc from you. You can admit to depression, addiction, and suicidal thoughts, but only if it's in the past tense and you're doing better now. Otherwise no-one knows what to do with you at all, and everyone is just uncomfortable about it, which then makes it even worse.
It all boils down to the fact that we treat mental illness differently from how we treat other kinds of illness. Instead of recognizing that a person is in excruciating suffering, we stigmatize it, say they're selfish or narcissistic, and fail to see how suicide might just seem like the only good option left when you're in such a dark place. We would understand it if a person were in awful physical pain if they just wanted it to end. But when the pain is in your brain chemistry itself, we make it out to be a moral failing to suffer so.
I think
this comic offers an outstanding explanation of depression for anyone who hasn't been there before, and I'd recommend it as a place to start if this story was difficult for anyone to get into.
Anyway, great story. Thanks for running it, and thanks to Dave for refusing to trivialize the very dark and frankly depressing stuff going on in the world right now. Much love to all of my fellow forumites, and may all of you have what you need to get through the dark place, if you ever find yourself there.