Homelessness or Suicide, That is the Question

I have no intention whatsoever of committing suicide.  I have many good reasons not to--four children who need me, family who would mourn me, pets, a roof over my head--mazurkas yet to write, books to read, trees to walk under.  Not to mention a fairly normal fear of pain and suffering.  But....

A couple in a city not far from here committed suicide a week and a half ago.

Many people have judged them for their selfishness, and/or stated with absolute conviction that this couple will rot in hell for all eternity.

The Kinzers were my age--mid-to-late forties.  They had no children.  They apparently had no relationship with their families.  They lived in a trailer park.  They both struggled with ill health and were unemployed.  Their bills were piling up.  Their lights had recently been turned off.  And they were about to be evicted.

They thought about it, and made what seems to me to be an almost logical decision.  They wrote a fourteen-page letter explaining their decision to their families.  And then....the husband shot his wife, and then himself.

They may have reached out for help--we don't know--from the government, from charitable organizations, from family and neighbors.  Some people have assumed that they never reached out, and wondered why.  But....

We've reached out.  Repeatedly.  We're not getting unemployment, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, CANI, help from a health clinic--you name it, we are not getting it.  My husband is looking for a full-time job and not finding one.  I am looking for work online with no education or job experience, and for government benefits of any kind.  My family is all that is standing between us and homelessness.  Even if we lost our home we would have somewhere to go.

If I had no children and no relationship with my family, if I was facing homelessness this winter--and I would quite likely not survive winter homeless with the disease that I have--I would probably give the idea of suicide serious consideration.  Especially after all the times I've been told how poor and worthless and lazy I am, how I'm not really sick and I should get a job, all the times I've reached out....

I might decide that it would be better to die at home, before I lost what little I had left and went off to die in the cold somewhere.

Please don't worry--I haven't even thought about suicide, and if all else failed one day, I'd still be a mother with children living at home to whom I could never dream of doing that.  And I'm lucky--I have at least a handful of people who would drop everything if I even hinted at it.  But I think I've caught at least a glimpse of the despair and loneliness that would drive someone to it.

I hope I would keep talking, to family members and friends, acquaintances, a suicide hot line, a church....surely somebody somewhere would help....