Henry Rollins, terror of your eighth-grade gym class, also has some opinions on depression and suicide, as is now required of any musician who’s ever donned face paint and screamed into a microphone. Writing in his latest L.A. Weekly column—in a post titled “Fuck Suicide” that nevertheless still got published—the erstwhile Black Flag frontman decries the act of killing oneself as self-centered and senseless, doing so in a rambling blog about why he, Henry Rollins, doesn’t have any respect for those who do it.
It’s an argument that should cause anyone who’s similarly on the brink to pause, then ask themselves whether Henry Rollins might think they’re being a pussy. If they are, maybe they should walk it off and take those emotions right to the squat cage. After all, it’s hard to think about suicide when you’re blasting your quads.
“I am no doctor,” Henry Rollins declares, lest anyone mistake these opinions for that of a licensed mental health practitioner. He further makes it clear that—although he’s personally known two friends who have killed themselves—he knows that “you can’t understand anyone else’s torment.” He also knows that the inner workings of a severely depressed person remains a uniquely personal, inexplicable mystery to everyone on the outside, and that depression can be “more isolating than anything else you have ever experienced.” Nevertheless, Rollins seems certain that all of this can and should be instantly negated by thinking of the children:
I simply cannot understand how any parent could kill themselves. How in the hell could you possibly do that to your children? I don’t care how well adjusted your kid might be—choosing to kill yourself, rather than to be there for that child, is every shade of awful, traumatic and confusing. I think as soon as you have children, you waive your right to take your own life. No matter what mistakes you make in life, it should be your utmost goal not to traumatize your kids. So, you don’t kill yourself.