How Superannuation Saved My Life

(TW: graphic descriptions of self-harm, suicide, and suicide ideation.)

I used to be a terrible perfectionist.

If I couldn’t get it right first try then I wouldn’t try at all. At least, not until I’d thoroughly presented myself with every possible argument for how it could, and very likely would, go horribly wrong. Thus, when I began to have a good, hard think about all the ways I could kill myself, it seemed logical that I get it right. It had to be the perfect suicide, or there’d be no point trying.

It started as random thoughts.

During lunch breaks I’d find myself standing on a city corner, waiting to cross at the lights, and as buses and trucks roared by, I’d think of the ease with which I could step out into the rush. It was the same on train platforms, especially those with express services barrelling through, whipping your hair into your face as they sped past.

I always managed to get a look at the drivers of those trains.

Really look at him. And yes, it was always a him. Often I’d make eye contact. Did I really want to screw up his day? His life? How unfair – not the comradely behaviour of a good unionist at all. Invariably, I stepped back. Oft-times the driver’s eyes flickered and there’d be the hint of a nod – I rather imagine in relief.

I wasn’t doing it right. I needed a plan.

At the time my paid job was devising national plans, involving thousands of people and hundreds of activities spanning years; the irony was noted. And so, I began to plan my perfect suicide.

Obviously, I needed to tidy things up:

Write my will, properly sort and pack and label my meagre belongings.  I could spend quite literally hours plotting an extensive to-do list. And I did. I was kept occupied for many a small wee hour, after I had nicked the first tiny slice and before I heaved my last shattered sob.

There was the method to consider.

I don’t like pain. Not proper ouchy pain. The small cuts I made to the inside of my thigh every few days weren’t real pain. Having a surgical grade scalpel with multiple unused, precision-sharp blades left over from my failed attempt at a science career twenty years earlier certainly helped.

The first time I cut myself, do you think I could find anything sharp enough for the job?

Every knife was blunter than Peter Dutton’s face, and the rusty scissors struggled to tear through a Herald Scum masthead. Eventually, I remembered my trusty biology dissection kit, wrapped in my old lab coat and tucked away in the back of my wardrobe. Further evidence of giving up when imperfect. Regardless, I had worked out that whichever method I used when I did, finally, kill myself, it couldn’t require anything that would actually hurt.

It’d have to be the drugs then.

A mate had lung cancer, terminal. Really terminal. Dead-in-three-months terminal. Except he didn’t. Twelve months after he sold all his earthly possessions and spent what was left on a three-day wake, he was disappointingly still very much alive. He bought some high-grade heroin, shot it up and three days later woke on his lounge-room floor, covered in piss and shit, feeling nothing more than badly hung-over.

Maybe not drugs then.

It couldn’t be something too messy either – think of the poor bastard that had to clean it up. And what about the ambos? Did I really want them to find my disgusting fat ugly bloated body and have to lug it out of the house? This was a plan that was far from perfect.

I put method on the back burner and returned to arranging my affairs.

The only significant assets I owned were my superannuation funds, so I started there. Beyond a few pieces of Real Art, some pretty but ultimately worthless crockery, and a comprehensive archive of trade union paraphernalia, my super was all I had to leave to my family. There was a sweet two hundred grand tucked away and I wanted to make sure Mum got every cent of it.

Did you know that if you kill yourself, they won’t release your super?

I sure as hell didn’t. I worked it out pretty bloody quickly though. My nighttime planning sessions shifted to circling endlessly around what could be made to look like an accident.

I thought about drowning.

Everyone knew I liked to swim but not in the ocean because Completely Rational Fear of Sharks. Everyone also knew I could manage a paddle in the shallows. My friend’s family owned a beach house in a small quiet coastal town. I could take a break and stay down there for a while and one night just accidentally wade out too far and just keep wading and one day my body would bob back up a few miles down the coast or however currents work and it would all be just a terrible, sad mistake.

It was perfect!

I’d worked it out! I’d made a completely rational plan in which not only could I kill myself with minimal mess and without it looking too suss, but Mum would still get my super and everything would be ace.

I experienced a brief, rare flare of euphoria.

At which point my rational brain, watching with quiet disinterest from the sidelines, raised a ragged red flag: how would I know my perfect suicide had gone according to plan? What would be the review mechanism? Would I be certain that Mum had been paid the entire amount? Let’s face it, wouldn’t having a chat with my doctor be a better use of my time because be honest mate, I’m just not gonna this right, so what’s the point in even trying?

As it turned out, I later discovered that superannuation is only withheld if the suicide is within the first 12 months of opening the policy. Seriously mate. Hashtag irony.

Obligatory reference to Lifeline (in Australia): 131114

I won’t refer to that other organisation because Jeff Kennett is a fucking cunt.
Update: Kennett is no longer part of that organisation thank fuck but I'm still not in any ood t be sharing them.