I'm lucky, or unlucky, in that I was raised to have a horror of cowardice (or, more properly, being thought a coward) and also that suicide was the cowards' way out. That, and my natural bloody-mindedness, pushed me through a good deal of shit.

Someone I knew once confided in me that they were seriously considering suicide. In default of anything else, I asked "Do you want to talk about it?". A bathtubs-worth of coffee and three packs of smokes later, I made bacon sandwiches and we ate them watching the sun come up. Whether he was really suicidal or not, I'll never know. Nor do I really care. What matters is that by the time the sun was up, he was ready to face the world again.