chronic suicide
"Life is slow suicide," quoth Ben Franklin. "Nine humans in ten are suicides."
Dr. Karl Menninger, author of Man Against Himself, coined the term "chronic suicide" to describe a lifelong path of self-destruction leading to a death which wouldn't have occurred from purely "natural causes."
Chronic suicide is distinguished from plain old suicide in that one doesn't just get the job done in one bloody blast. It is, to borrow Celine's term, "death on the installment plan." It is also different from regular suicide in that one's death wish isn't as clearly articulated. The chronically suicidal tend to deny that they want to die.
I once asked a friend why she smoked cigarettes. Without pausing, she exhaled smoke and said, "I really don't want to live that long." I started flashing back through all my HIGH-risk behavior, trying to sift the "bravery" and the "honesty" and the "libertinism" from the merely "self-destructive." Everything seemed to flutter down into the last category.
I knew someone who wanted to die until the moment the doctor uttered the word "tumor." And I've come a breath away from death once or twice, only to realize it was the last thing I want.
If I were to take all the energy I've devoted to chronic suicide and focus it elsewhere, I'd be the president.
Then I could destroy others, which would be a far nobler thing.
