Trying to follow the children

A woman in Oman tried to kill herself after killing her two children. After making a call to the police that she killed them, she tried to follow them to death but was stopped by the police. While her children were strangled, it's not clear on how she planned to kill herself.

Her failure means that not only would she not be able to be with her children (assuming one believes in the afterlife and that they would go to the same place), but she would also have to live with the fact that she killed her own children while she herself survived. That must be one of the most terrible positions a mother could be in. Not that she was justified in killing her children in the first place: while her life is her own, she had no right to take away all possible futures from her children.

Burning near presidential palace

Having burned half of your body in an attempt to burn yourself near the Italian presidential palace has got to be extremely painful. Considering that the purpose was to attract media attention to medical malpractice, a lawsuit or talking to a news reporter might have been less painful.

Plastic bags in jail

Trying to suffocate yourself by enclosing your head in a plastic bag could work. But then again it might not, which would only embarrass you if you don't manage it properly. And it would probably result in yourself being closely watched by others, which would make any further attempts very difficult.

Lying in the morgue

From an outsider's viewpoint, attempting suicide by freezing yourself in the morgue is rather morbid. While losing one's fiancee is sad, trying to leave this world by lying down with her body in the morgue and freezing would rather shock anyone who tried to retrieve her body. And if it doesn't work, you could suffer from brain damage, and that is just terrible to contemplate.

Burning in Afghanistan

Imagine that you're in a country where fundamentalist religion rules, where oppressive abuses of women are thought of as perfectly acceptable. Imagine that you're a woman. Imagine that a foreign nation invades your country, possibly causing collateral damage around you, but they promise to improve the civil rights situation after they've won. Now imagine that there has been almost no improvement to the barbaric cultural values in your country, and you're still being physically and/or sexually abused.

It wouldn't be hard to understand why some women would opt to burn themselves to death. But some of them survive, and it's hard to imagine the hardships they would have to endure after such a failed attempt. Society no longer accepting them, the burn injuries they suffer from, such things would be horrible. This is another case of being between a rock and a hard place.

Ablaze with shame

Setting yourself on fire has got to be one of the more terrible ways to go. And if it doesn't work, you'll probably end up with horrible disfigurement from the burns and a lifetime of pain. And I don't think it will erase the shame that a rape victim might feel (the shame that would push someone to suicide in the first place).

A rape victim doesn't deserve to be punished like that (they shouldn't be punished at all, in fact). I wouldn't mind the rapist suffering from a similar fate, though.

Saved by inmates

Hanging yourself when there are people around sounds like a recipe for failure. The typical human response would be to save someone who's trying to kill himself, and the jail inmates who were with this guy who tried to hang himself do not sound like people who enjoy watching someone die. Now not only does the guy have to face the fact that he's in jail, but also the fact that he failed yet another suicide attempt.

Burning everyone but yourself

If you're trying to remove yourself from the gene pool, try not to take others with you. Using something as volatile as natural gas to suffocate yourself can result in an unintentional explosion from an unexpected spark or flame somewhere, which can end up killing people around you. This would suck, especially if it doesn't kill you. It's one thing to take away your own life which should be yours to control, but taking away someone else's life, taking away all the potential choices another could make, is really, really bad.

Train hit attempt

If you get hit by a fast-moving car or train, it's not unlikely that it will get you killed. Unfortunately, if you try to get hit by a train, it is also not unlikely that the train will stop in time. Not only would you have failed to killed yourself, you would also be doing harm to presumably thousands of people who commute by train.

Pills in Kuwait

It would suck if you tried to kill yourself with poison in Kuwait and failed. Not only might you have to suffer the indignity of a stomach pump, but you might end up charged with a crime. Trying to kill oneself in a country where fundamentalist Islam reigns sounds like being between a rock and a hard place: it's too oppressive to live in, and yet you might not be able to guarantee your death in a suicide attempt.

In jail

Try not killing yourself in jail. Not only could you fail with the prison staff reviving you, you'd probably end up under close watch to prevent further suicide attempts. If the reason you wanted to kill yourself was to be free of an oppressive and bleak environment, it would suck if it turned even more oppressive and bleak.

Botching suicide

I have been too inept to actually be able to commit suicide, which is probably a major reason I'm still alive now. I know just enough to see the myriad of ways I could screw up, but I'm not knowledgeable enough nor courageous enough to actually assure success. I'll be talking about the myriad of ways that a suicide attempt can be botched.

By the way, these days I'm no longer actively thinking about wanting to die, even though passively I might think so. Maybe antidepressants do work after all.