Life sucks sometimes.
Undoubtedly, there have been parts in everybody’s lives where this thought crosses their mind.
For most of us, though, these times are not too lengthy or strenuous for us to do anything serious about it.
However, for some people in the world, this feeling becomes too much to handle, and they do what they can to escape their current situation. For some, it means taking their own life.
Some argue suicide is nothing more than a selfish and cowardly way out of a temporary problem, yet there are certain situations where this argument seems to hold no weight whatsoever.
In Afghanistan, for example, a disturbing amount of women have been trying to take their lives to escape the treatment they receive from their husbands and his family.
Often treated as nothing more than a servant, and with United Nations statistics saying 45 percent are married before 18, it’s not hard to see why these women would want to escape their lives.
Simply running away, however, has severe risks involved.
Should they be caught, these women potentially face rape and imprisonment. If wives return to their families, many husbands decide to kill the runaway wives in an “honor killing” by stabbing, shooting or stoning them.
Trapped in a society where obedience is expected of wives and where brutality or death at the hands of their own in-laws is prominent, these women often feel there is no other choice but suicide.
Thus, instead of running away, many women in this position turn to something much more final: death.
According to a Washington Post article, unlike most who attempt suicide here in the U.S., these women do not have many options or know of other methods, turning to cooking oil and matches to end their lives.
Last year, at least 300 cases of suicide by burning occurred in Afghanistan, and at least 80 percent were successful. These are only the women who made it to a hospital, and rights workers in Afghanistan believe the actual number is far higher.
Closer to home, we have been seeing a surge of suicides related to students being bullied for their sexual preferences.
From being teased to being secretly taped having sex with a partner, students as young as age 13 have taken their lives in the past several months.
While any kind of bullying -related suicide is a travesty, the  recent number of suicides related to homosexual bullying is appalling.
As with the wives in Afghanistan, many of these victims feel they are trapped in a society where there is no other choice available.
Obviously, there are men and women who lead everyday lives while also having different sexual preferences than the majority of Americans. However, if you just look around at our society, you can see why some aspects of it drive some to believe life isn’t worth it.
Between the inability to marry the person you love in a majority of the country, having intimate parts of your life referred to as  abominations and members of the population believing you simply need to be cured, should we be surprised that some gays and lesbians are pushed to taking their own lives?
Just like the Afghani wives, our society is trapping some of the population for their beliefs, and these people find suicide the only way out of this trap.
While suicide might be a horrible thing, by no means can we say it is always selfish.
What we need to do as a society is take these victims’ deaths as a sign to fix the respective problems and make sure no one else feels the need to do the same.
No matter how much life might suck at times, we need to facilitate a hope for change and improvement.
 
Zachary Davis is a 19-year-old history sophomore from Warsaw, Poland. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_zdavis.
 
 
 
—
Contact Zachary Davis at [email protected]