Stop calling it Suicide

Suicide, Suicide, Suicide!

What does that even mean?

From Etymology Online

Suicide (n): The deliberate killing of oneself. 1650s, from Modern Latin suicidium “suicide,” from Latin sui “of oneself” (genitive of se “self”), from PIE *s(u)w-o- “one’s own,” from root *s(w)e- (see idiom) + -cidium “a killing,” from caedere “to slay” (from PIE root *kae-id- “to strike”).

Why isn’t it murder? What is it, if not premeditated murder upon oneself.

My opinion is that using the word Suicide removes some of the stigmas of murder and makes what is happening or has happened clinical. To me, Suicide sounds so…”Clinical”. It separates us from the ugliness and horror of what we are planning. It prevents us from seeing what is really happening. It’s a cold and unemotional view of what is happening.

As I myself struggled through this journey, I stopped using the word suicide and instead started using the word murder.

Murder (n): the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another, the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice From latin murdrum “a killing in secret”, “the killing of an unknown man”

When I was in suicidal despair, I was certainly premeditating the act, there was a lot of malice, and in some countries it is illegal. Then I got to a place where I could ask myself, would I ever commit murder? No, I never would, how could I? I am not a violent person.

Murdrum – from Medieval Latin murdrum -A secret killing, distinguished from simple homicide in that the victim and the killer are unknown.

The problem was that I didn’t even know who I was planning on killing.