Semicolon and Anti-Suicide Movement

It happened around three years ago; I was in a Grammar course when this lecturer taught us Complex Clause—clause that has a main clause and more than one subordinate clauses. This lecturer, then, asked us to compose as long as sentence as possible. That was when I started to like making long sentences; and by the way, at that time, I made a sentence that exceeded a full-page.

My habit—which can either be good or bad; I don’t know—continued for a few semesters. I got excited even more when I met and befriended Semicolon (;), this punctuation that helps me lengthen my sentence. 

I don’t know; I just like to write a long sentence—it is not OCD for sure.

It was until a lecturer came, reproved me and said that it is bad; he explained to me that it is as if we spoke without stopping. It hurts the listener or the reader. 

That was when I realized that that writing style of mine sucks.

I tried to shortened my sentence ever since.

A few years later—because I was too busy; or too lazy; I don’t know—I googled the use of semicolon and found some unique articles about semicolon.

It says that there is this Semicolon Project, a worldwide project where people got a tattoo of Semicolon on their wrist dedicated to those who suffer from depression and suicidal behavior. It is an anti-suicide movement enforcing the idea that we should choose to continue, instead of stopping; because we can.

The message is that “[a] semicolon represents a sentence the author could have ended, but chose not to. That author is you and the sentence is your life”.

That sentence struck me for a moment. 

I did not know that a punctuation can matter this much. It perpetuates some existentialist idea, though, that we are the master of our own fate, instead of thinking that we are the puppet played by the unseen hands that we have no control over.

Suicide, I think, is a permanent action for a temporal problem. We are all going to die someday, just be patient, please. 

There have been too many great people died by committing suicide and every time it happens, the world cries. 

I am not exaggerating.

I have been missing the literary works I could have read if the author did not commit suicide. 

There are some more things we could have had, though.

When rules and grammar compel a sentence to stop, an author can always decide to put semicolon and continue writing;…