Two Steps

I found out a few minutes ago that Junior Seau died, apparently from a self-inflicted shot to the chest. This makes me feel odd in a number of ways: some of which are more relevant than others.

The main thought I have is “what in the world made him kill himself: he had money, fame, respect, and if he picked five women on any random day he could probably get with four of them”. Just goes to show that in his case and that of other athletes who’ve committed similar acts, we as fans don’t know what’s going on in their heads.

It was easy to see that something wasn’t right with Junior’s life after he and his SUV went off the road and down the side of a mountain. If I remember correctly, he was accused of hitting his girlfriend right around the same time and the two events were believed to be related. I still don’t get why men in those situations (i.e. when they attract plenty of women) don’t just hit the Nino Brown - without the wine-pouring - and say “cancel that -----, I’ll buy another one”. Why deal with stress when you don’t have to?

Now, it’s unknown (at least to me) whether the shooting is related to the above incidents. Let’s say that it is, since running yourself off the road to a 30-foot fall and shooting yourself in the chest are likely to bring similar results. Why wouldn’t Junior just give it up?

He was better off than probably 98 percent of men in the world. He was rich and he was in shape. To the outside world, he was living the life of Riley. However, with all that he had he still felt something more powerful that forced him to throw all that away, along with the rest of his life.

So now I wonder “how did his thought process get so jacked that he made this decision”. Was it a chemical imbalance of some sort? Did he just place such a different level of priority on some things that they outweighed others so immensely? Was there something early in his life - a ghost from his past of some sort - that he kept trying to chase? While it’s so easy to say that some external factor caused this to happen, we also have to remember that this ultimately falls on Seau because he made the decision to end his own life.

That’s the thing with suicides. They don’t happen unless there is both an external rationalization and an internal motivation. People can want to do it, but not have anything to take them to that point. People can go to that point, but something can stop them. Unfortunately, Seau was in neither of those hypothetical groups.

I would be one of the 98 percent: I’d quickly trade places with - and take ten years off my life - to have the life that (I think) Seau had. The strange thing is that he probably would have traded places with me too.