"No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." - David Foster Wallace in "Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (2005)
"Life is a process by which illusions are lost. This is why bodies get smaller with age: they are less bloated with the theoretical. I moved from one apartment to another. I learned to live with my own diminished significance. I had thought, foolishly, that i would achieve inner peace while shocking and outraging everyone else, but the truth was the other way around. I lost something fundamental: an idea of life as a just thing; the sense of safety a child needs to put one foot in front of the other." - Soula Emmanuel in Wild Geese (2023)
this is not another poetic report to my psychiatrist. or maybe it is, while being in words a statement about how important it is for me to have a door open to assisted suicide.
i do not need to die just now, but my need to have an open door to assisted suicide is irreducible. it emerged in the mid-2010s and became solid at the end of 2023.
i suffer, sometimes at level that cut into my dignity.
i need to know that were my suffering to go and stay at unbearable levels, i could calmly choose to depart.
i need to know that were i to have a good reason to deviate from the carefully established routines that keep me functioning and alive and the pain would shoot up and stay there, i could choose silence and peacefully depart.
i need to know that were i to experience an event that would trigger new levels of pain, i could choose to depart and do so quickly.
metaphorically, i want a treasure-button to carry with me everywhere i go, so that i know that if in too much pain, at any time i could lie down, put the button on my belly, look at the sky, say thank you to life, press and depart. bye. please gently sing to my body if you see it dead and let me go.
i did a performance in toronto in 2013 called "my body as if it were dead" where i asked audience members to volunteer to approach and be with my body as if it were dead. they were allowed to touch it. in 2014, i performed "the chicken will arrive at around 2:30pm". it was a performance meant to bring respect to the line between life (that of a hen borrowed from a local farmer and that of human beings like a friend of mine and me) and death (roasted chicken, a grave i dugged at the size of my body). the experience was profound. i learned about the power of eating. i learned something about incarnation. i learned something about lying down in a grave, surrounded by dirt. on a misty day.
but, even if some chosen ends of life come out as simple, beautiful and peaceful such as that of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, switzerland does not offer treasure-buttons, and for now, there is no ready to be used Sarco(phagus) capsule either.
there is EXIT and i will walk one more step towards them. i am a member since 2023. i need to send my medical file.
EXIT's doctor(s) will test that it aligns with the 2022 ASSM/FMH guidelines.
EXIT's lawyer(s) will test that it aligns with the latest jurisprudence and would not have the potential to trigger an accusation under our swiss Criminal code Art. 115 (161).
of course, i do not want anybody to have to be accused of anything after i die. this is very important to me.
