"he was in a lot of pain."

This pisses me off and is one of the reasons I think suicide is so selfish.

Please, be very, very careful about saying things like this. It can be incredibly hurtful to those of us who lost someone to suicide.

I know as a fact that my brother was in insurmountable pain, and it was that pain that lead directly to his suicide. It was not selfish of him to end his suffering in that manner, it was selfish of everyone else to ignore the extent of his pain.

He suffered a traumatic brain injury that literally scrambled his brain and every single moment of his life from the moment he came out of his coma until he took his life was pure agony for him. I know this because he mentioned it, though almost joking and in passing, and the extent of his meaning didn't come into focus until after he was gone. It was selfish of me to ignore this.

I thought he was being selfish when, despite his injury he started drinking heavily again. After months of intense physical and occupational therapy, literally learning to do everything again, from breathing on his own, to being able to eat, to being able to speak, to walking, to grooming himself, everything, I thought he was being selfish and throwing all that away. It was selfish of me to not realize he was really just working up the nerve to end his suffering. But that all came into focus after he was gone.

So when you, or anybody, says suicide is selfish you undermine the degree of pain that permeates the life of the suicidal person. When you undermine the extent of that pain you make it seem like there was something those of us who cared could have done.

A suicidal person doesn't end their life to be selfish, they end it because they become convinced they have no other choice, and almost always genuinely think they are doing their loved ones a favor. When you say suicide is selfish you actually imply that those of us who cared, failed.