A physically healthy Dutch woman who did not want to turn 30 has finally got her tragic wish: to die by assisted suicide.

29-year-old Zoraya ter Beek’s life was terminated last week after waiting three years for final approval for her euthanasia, which is legal in the Netherlands if the patient is deemed to be experiencing “unbearable suffering with no prospect of improvement.”

In Zoraya’s case, the bane of her existence was her autism, which she was diagnosed with at 21. By the time she was 22, Zoraya was already wearing a “Do Not Resuscitate” tag around her neck. She says she had wanted to end her life ever since she was a child as she was bullied growing up and often felt like she didn’t fit in.

Zoraya told The Free Press:

“For me, autism is the major hiccup in my life. That bothers me the most.”

Despite being perfectly healthy in a physical sense, Zoraya struggled for years with depression, anxiety, and an unspecified personality disorder. In school, she went full goth to ward off bullies and seem scarier.

“The whole black look looked right, because that is how I felt on the inside.”

You may be surprised to hear that Zoraya had a loving boyfriend, Stein, a programmer 10 years her senior. Unfortunately, her parents didn’t approve of the age gap and she had been estranged from her mum and three older sisters for six years, while her dad died from cancer last year.

Zoraya tried several treatments to get over her depression, including 33 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy, in which electric currents jolt the brain. But, after her last treatment in August 2020, her psychiatrist told her, “There’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never going to get any better,” which is quite a mental thing for a psychiatrist to say, if true.

“After we heard that, we kind of knew what that meant. I was always very clear: if it doesn’t get better, I can’t do this. My whole friends and my support system, we really did it together.”

During her three year wait for assisted suicide, Zoraya saw herself as an ambassador and advocate for the Dutch euthanasia program, and believes it’s set up in a way that prevents anyone abusing the system:

“We’ve had this law for more than 20 years. There are really strict rules, and it’s really safe.”

Assisted suicide is obviously a very controversial topic, especially when it pertains to physically healthy people who insist they would rather not exist than to continue through life feeling depressed. Was Zoraya failed by the system/her friends/family/herself? Did she give in to her weaknesses and fears too easily?

Was she even fully aware of the permanence of her decision? The answer to that is: probably, yes. She went through many professional evaluations and waited three years, during which she could have changed her mind, but ultimately didn’t. With that in mind it would seem that her decision was more intentional than someone impulsively putting a gun in their mouth or overdosing on drugs, or whatever.

Either way, RIP Zoraya. She got her wish, even if the rest of us can’t/don’t understand her decision.

For the rapper who accidentally shot himself in the head live on TikTok after pointing a gun to his head, click HERE. No assist necessary.