Epocalymus

There’s a fine line between life and death, which is especially so in the context of Singapore. Here, in this unique island, the sick role is the hardest role one could play judging the amount one has to pay for a terrible life-threatening illness like cancer or high blood pressure. Other challenges include the food intake when one is “sorry”-sick, as well as the societal stigma the poor soul has to be exposed to. At the end of the day, being sick ought to be an experience for one to reflect upon the necessity to take good care of one’s body. In addition, it is a period for one to be consistently motivated to lead a new life, hopefully a meaningful one which the individual could make sense of.

Besides playing the sick role, which is a sociologically deviant thing to do (not that everyone likes that), living or dying takes alot of effort. Unfortunately, being sick is much harder in my opinion. Of course, to live and to die are subjected to different opinions regarding its level of difficulty. Nonetheless, in my view, Singapore is not a place to fall ill. It seems that falling ill is only meant for the well-to-dos, or the “elitists”. Yet, to contemplate the issue further, it appears that the higher the socio-economic status of an individual, the lower the chance of falling ill for that individual. I don’t know what others might say about the issue of falling ill in Singapore, but the greatest challenge any Singaporean faces, when confronted with an experience of any physical or psychological illness, is more-or-less monetary (talk about the amount one has to invest in order to recover from something that can be prevented).

Why falling sick is still widely a stigma? To keep it short and concise, the society here views a person’s value according to what he or she can contribute or how he or she can perform. Falling sick is a physiological process of being absent from performance and the temporal disability of one’s contribution. Here are some reasons why falling sick is a “bad move”:

1. Taking sick leaves, with an “S”, indirectly tells your boss that you are sickly and unable to perform at your optimum level at work. It stumps your career growth and development, and indirectly hints your boss about the wastage of the company’s resources and investment on you, the Sick One, as one of its labours in that workforce itself.
2. Falling sick robs you of your money. Either you pay a hefty sum for a bottle of antibiotics, or you remain sick with viruses and bacteria till God knows when. Sometimes, you may recover by simply leaving the sickness on its own for a few days, but if those viruses do not go away, seeing the doctor and taking the medicine can burn a hole through your pocket. For your information, paying for a simple bottle or packet of antibiotics (i.e. Augmentin) is equivalent to watching a movie in a cinema three times.
3. Falling sick means you have to stay at home. And rot. By going out of the house while you are still in a state of “Quarantine”, makes you a perfect target of social stigma. If you cough; people glare. If you sneeze; others aberantly become avoidant. If you tell others you are sick, which makes things worse, then it might just spoil the fun within the group you hang out with.
4. Falling sick means you can’t eat delicious food. It is also possible that any delicious food would most probably be tasteless. Moreover, abstaining from “sinful” delicacies defeats the purpose of a whole and complete lifestyle. Not everything in life has got to be 100% healthy you know. Pleasure comes with a price, which is our life’s expectancy depending upon the degree of pleasure or “sin”.
5. Life is boring when you are sick. Can’t go out, can’t work, can’t play much, can’t talk to people much, can’t move about (for some people)… and the list goes on. It is even harder than dying in Singapore.

Indeed, the most common thing to do and one of the easiest in Singapore is to die. For people of the lower socio-economic status, dying is the best alternative if living is too tough and falling sick is too expensive. This would probably apply to those of higher socio-economic status than the former. I will try to be helpful to those who are contemplating to kill yourselves in Singapore, since perhaps to you people, living in Singapore is stressful and that this society is overly pragmatic till it kills your dreams and aspirations to contribute your great ideals for the betterment of Singapore. Here are some less violent, gruesome, and painful way to die, even though it is long and tiresome:

1. Have fast food for every meal per day – Singapore is so infested with fast food chains that it has become a common point of venue for convenient meet-ups or pick-ups. There is no faster way to contaminate your cells with cancer like eating McDonalds, Burger King, Carl’s Junior, or KFC four times a day, and refusing to go to the doctor even when you’re sick. Don’t bother about paying for medicine since you are so focused on the dying part. Just take a break in front of the TV with some fries, burgers, and coke, and enjoy yourselves. Your days will be over faster than you can ever imagine.
2. Visit some prostitutes and ask the pimps to recommend one with AIDS – I do reckon that dying requires some forms of action like jumping off a building or railway platform for instance. However, dying is a process that also requires one to enjoy rather than just merely “feeling the pain”. Sex is pleasurable, but not AIDS. However, to think of dying in a less painful or violent manner, why not have some sex with a HIV positive slut? Well, falling into that kind of sickness is terrible but one has to be sick for a reason right? The reason has got to be death as a consequence of pleasure. So I think this method of suicide is still valid, but not as efficient.
3. Buying panadols and swallowing the whole packet of them in one go – Drug therapy is useful, especially when one has a direct access to it. And we have a candidate drug – Paracetamol AKA Panadol! Alternatively, you may try swallowing toothpaste as a meal three times daily to kill yourself. In addition, nicotine is boring, but effective. All you need to do, is to shut yourself in a small and cosy room with cartons of cigarettes or cigars, and then start smoking continuously without leaving the room for six months. If you survive, you have not tried harder. If you die, congratulations.
4. Watch pornography as your meal four times a day. Keep masturbating hundreds of times a day. If you do not die of exhaustion, then I’ve got nothing more to say.

Well, there are many creative ways to kill yourselves, because as you are currently munching your Big Mac with a Coke while surfing this website, you are already killing yourself (softly). Life is indeed worth dying, because life itself is filled with pleasures and many of us are blind to the consequences that ultimately lead us to the coffin. Well, since everyone will eventually live in the coffin, therefore to live is a gift worth dying for. It is how we live to kill ourselves with fast food, MSGs, and other activities like smoking, drinking, drug therapies, and sex, that adds the sweetness to the process of our decay. So to those who wish to kill themselves, you might follow the above advice or be innovative in your ways to make it less painful and violent. In the process, please be considerate by not littering the place with your blood or spilled DNA, otherwise more cleaners will have to be paid to clean up more mess (as more people die in a dirty manner), which in turn increases the amount of taxes we all have to pay. I posit that more people will then attempt to die as the taxes increase, but please, follow my advice – enjoy yourselves to death. Don’t just murder yourselves for nothing.