and he did it to open up the right-to-die debate. He had a terminal lung condition and he told the media he was going to kill himself. Friday, he followed through. No one tried to stop him. I didn't hear about it today because I don't buy newspapers and don't watch the news. But I am with an activist group and that's how I found out.

I've been asked by Father Lindsay to write to the newspapers to counteract the support that this man's actions are likely to get, presumably because of my writing flair, but more perhaps because I've actually lived with the threat of suicide at my door.

I fight on for close to a year with depression and then something like this happens. It makes me wonder why I'm fighting. It's a thankless job with little hope of relief in sight. The hope I do have is coming from the parish priest buying a tube of cream that is beyond my financial abilities to rely on.

It's too bad no one threatened to call the cops on him. Then again from what I hear, there's nothing they could have done. It's a free country, after all.

The only thought that sustains me in moments of darkness is thoughts of Heaven that will surely be mine, if I survive this. But Heaven seems like a flimsy excuse tonight and the path I have chosen has brought only more physical pain, with more psychic pain to come.

Not that I'm going to give up that path, but I just feel like I've been had. This guy makes national news for killing himself, while I've been fighting pain for close to a year in dead silence and may be fighting it forever. There is hardly a word spoken for those who want to survive, or who are at least trying to.

All I have to show for all this is one man's pride in me and he's not even flesh and blood. And why should he be proud of me for merely surviving? I haven't even written any books yet!

Yep, I've been had, boys and girls.