Suicide

I know this is a touchy subject. I am not trying to offend or even start a discussion, I am simply expressing my thoughts and trying to work this out in my own head. If you may get upset by this, please do not read on.

Nearly half a million attempt suicide every year in the United States, fifty thousand succeed.
In the past two years I have known a few personally that had gone this way. My neighbor down the street hung herself one afternoon while her husband was at work and her kids were at Grandma's. The 19 year old boy across the street from my mother's house in Draper hung himself in the barn while his family was on a weekend get away. My mothers good friends son(between 20 and 25) shot himself in a hotel room in Vegas last summer. A father of five, killed himself while the whole family was visiting his parents in the middle of the night a month or so ago. And an extended family member attempted to overdose on sleeping pills not to long ago.
I don't understand this. On the surface the act of suicide seems like one of great selfishness. It is like the indivual is thinking, "I don't want this pain, so I will make everyone around me suffer so I don't have too."
I know that often in the case of suicide the individual is suffering from depression or some kind of mood disorder. But is this always the case?
This past year I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. She wrote about a character who is institutionalized because she suffers from depression, seems to get better and ends up taking her own life at the end. The book is semi biographical of Sylvia's own life and death, she was also institutionalized earlier in her life and committed suicide only a month after it was first published. Although this book is was first released in 1963 it still seemed current to me. But I still don't GET it.
Everyone has bad days. That I get. Everyone goes things hard things. But the feeling like suffering will never end, that I don't get. Honestly, I hope I never do.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints I know the purpose of this life is to live a life that will lead me to live in the presence of my Heavenly Father. I wonder how suicide fits into all of that.

I recently read an article by M. Russell Ballard on the subject and it left me with a little more perspective on this subject. Here is some of what he said and quoted:
First, President George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency made a clear statement about the seriousness of suicide when he said: “Man did not create himself. He did not furnish his spirit with a human dwelling place. It is God who created man, both body and spirit. Man has no right, therefore, to destroy that which he had no agency in creating. They who do so are guilty of murder, self-murder it is true; but they are no more justified in killing themselves than they are in killing others. What difference of punishment there is for the two crimes, I do not know; but it is clear that no one can destroy so precious a gift as that of life without incurring a severe penalty.” (Gospel Truth, 2 vols., Salt Lake City: Zion’s Book Store, 1957, 1:30; italics added.)
President Spencer W. Kimball made an equally strong statement in 1976. “It is a terrible criminal act for a person to go out and shorten his life by suicide,” he said. (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982, p. 187.)
Those statements on their own might seem to leave no room for hope. However, although they stress the seriousness of suicide, the statements do not mention the final destination of those who take their own lives.
“And it is requisite with the justice of God that men should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good.” (Alma 41:2–3.)
As I think about the worry and agony of those whose loved one has taken his or her own life, I find deep comfort and faith in the Lord’s promise and blessing to us who remain in mortality: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27.)

I am grateful for the great plan of salvation our Father in Heaven has provided for us. It is a plan of great fairness and a plan of great love.