bagatelle

Thanks, Jetée. I understand, that this tradition in Japan was meant to honor the person's dignity, right?

Would it be even arrogant for me to oppose to tradition that is hundreds of years old? When it was accepted by the whole culture as the way they dealt with shame, defeat and honor, was ending one's life easier to accept? Dying was less intimidating than continuing life in those circumstances.

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Anonymous Member

I'm considering suicide. I have been for years. Especially the last couple of days. I am so dead inside I feel like it wouldn't even be a suicide. Just an ending of a biological organism.

I have little support. Ive been seeing a psychiatrist and counselor for several years and they really haven't helped. So even though they're technically supporting me, I don't feel I'm receiving support.

I don't speak to my Dad but once about 1.5 times a month. He's never very encouraging.

My mom just flat out refuses to talk about anything dark.

My "good" friends never even ask how I'm doing after Ive told them about my afflictions.

I just feel alone and dead already. Trying to think, what's to stop me? I mean, really, why shouldn't I? Emotional turmoil from family is the only thing really stopping me I think. But then again that life. Death is a part of it. We all die sometime.

This crushing depression I've had for years is just using up the last of my willpower.

levite

I think you shouldn't do it.

You say you've been seeing a psychiatrist and counselor, but they haven't helped. Why not look for new ones? Therapeutic relationships need chemistry, just like other relationships. I've been in therapy several times, and each time I had to carefully shop around for therapists that I felt really comfortable with, and with whom I just connected, and felt like they got me and could help me get to where I needed to go.

Have you tried antidepressants? You'd need to get your dosage regulated just right by a good psychopharmacologist, which can take a while, but they can do great things. My wife is on an antidepressant-- she has been since I've known her-- and she says they changed her life, and very much for the better.

But my point is, even if things have been really hard for a long time, that doesn't mean that they can't change, or won't change if you want to work on changing them.

I'm not going to defend your family's problems, or your friends' refusal to hear what they need to help you with. There's no excuse.

But they're not the only people out there: you never know who you might meet tomorrow, or next month, or next year. It could be the lifelong friend-of-the-soul that you've always wanted, or the love of your life, or just some people who are better at giving a damn.

And no one can ever tell where their life is going to take them, what kind of meaning or fulfillment they might find down the road. The last time I thought about suicide was twenty years ago, and I was dreadfully unhappy and depressed. My family sucked, I didn't have a girlfriend, it didn't seem like I could get any respect, and I just didn't see it getting better.

But it did. Not overnight, and not without a lot of inner work. But it did. I would hate to have missed out on what my life brought me.

Don't do it.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

pan6467

I think there is a time when we all go through a period like this. For me, it was much of my 20's and into the present. I went to a great public school where it was taught that you were a failure if you weren't making a salary equal or above your age by 25. And for whatever reason I was unable to (I could blame my addiction to gambling but that would just be an excuse). I can only speak from my personal experience in life. Yours maybe totally different.

I always felt like a failure. Family sucked, friends were only "friends" until they found someone "better" to hang with so my social skills suffered. I'm not athletic had no desire to ever be. I always felt I was a schleprock, with a black cloud hanging over my head and I allowed life to control me and not allow myself to control my life.

Depression can eventually become our safe zone, so to speak. I was so convinced that I was a failure and that everything I would do I would fail at, that friends and lovers were always going to leave me for someone better. That when I did have good times I wouldn't allow myself to enjoy them, because I knew somewhere, someday it would all end. So, I would wrap myself into my comfort zone and be depressed. This only makes matters worse, friends don't want to be around someone that brings them down all the time and is a Negative Nelly. True friends, family and doctors can only do as much as you allow them to do.

Life is tough, but when I think of what death is, I'm scared and as much as I have thought suicide would end my pain, I can't do it for fear of what death is.

I don't know what your religious or philosophical background and beliefs are but my suggestion is to find something spiritual and unique to you.

Everyone has a purpose. Mine is to try and help others. Find yours and your life will get better.

If you'd like you can drop me a message and we can talk. I won't pass judgement or in anyway degrade how you feel. It's your life, you are allowed to feel how you feel. I will however listen and offer advice.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Anonymous Member

I PMd most of this to Pan, but I think on the whole I'd like to stay anon.

I have serious medical conditions that will not be going away. I am disabled. I have extreme anxiety. I often only get out of the house once a week as I have agoraphobia and my friends kind of suck.

I used to love to read and learn things. I graduated college at 21 with 4 minors. Then the medical stuff hit. I've been going to the docs every since (for 5 years). I literally can't do any of the things I love anymore. I'm imprisoned in a house with my ignoble mother. Never had a girlfriend. Always always get rejected.

My friends and family barely seem to care about me. I speak to my dad like twice a month (and *I* have to call him) and he rarely even asks how I'm doing. My mom simply refuses to talk about anything dark/depressing. She's a bit of a narcissist and thinks her life is much much worse (she just dislikes her job).

I'm sick of video games. I don't have the willpower to exercise anymore. What is there left for me to do on this earth? I feel as if I am already dead.

The only way I've survived the last couple of years has been from abusing drugs and alcohol (nothing hard, I mean like pot) and cutting myself to relieve some pain.

I've been in a deep dark hole for 5 years straight. I have no ladder and the walls are slippery. I have no idea how to get out. This hole is my grave.

What's left for me?

genuinegirly

There's more to life than getting out of the house every day. Many of history's greatest minds were reclusive.

Anon, you are a capable writer.
You must have enjoyed school if you picked up 4 minors.
Have you considered sharing your love for learning with others? You don't even have to leave the house to do it. You could start by designing a regular blog that discusses current news on a topic of your choosing (science, mathematics, etc). You could make cheezy electronic youtube videos on scientific or other academic topics, or how about writing a biography about someone famous, or a novel? It may take you a long time to write a book, but it would fill your days with something worthwhile.

Your disabilites don't have to define your life. Sure, it can force you to adjust, but it doesn't have to stop you completely. You're actually at a pretty good place right now. You've figured out your limits. Now start finding ways to work within them, to add a little happiness to each day.

__________________
"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq

"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy

levite

The pragmatic problems, if you're not physically able to drive or otherwise get out of the house much on your own, are hard, but could be dealt with. There are some public services that could help, and if not, there are usually some services run by community or religious organizations that can do something. But I think talking about those things is secondary.

You are suffering from feeling a lack of meaning in your life. Also from clinical depression and a clinical anxiety disorder. But certainly from a lack of meaning. There's a wonderful book by a psychologist named Viktor Frankl, called Man's Search for Meaning, wherein he talks about surviving Auschwitz, and how in the process of doing so, he noted that those who survived were those who made meaning in their lives when life was otherwise not presenting them with meaning. That meaning, he noted, could be anything at all, not just a desire to survive per se, or a desire for vengeance. It could be a desire to cook again, or a desire to see another movie, or a desire to study some favored discipline or musical instrument, or anything else that the people around him were prevented from doing but decided they wished to do, or anything they felt would be a better occupation of their time than what was going on in their lives at that moment.

Don't get me wrong, I stand by what I said earlier: I think you need to find better therapists, whom you have better chemistry with, and I think you need antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. And now I think so even more, because you haven't been abusing pot, you've been self-medicating with it. Marijuana, whether it's legal for the purpose where you are or not, is medication, and can be used not only for the relief of physical pain, but for its euphoric qualities, in order to stave off psychological pain or panic. Which, it seems clear, is what you've been doing-- either both, or the latter. And, BTW, I have no problem with using pot for that purpose: I'm a big supporter of doing so. But what you're dealing with needs something more specific and effective.

But in addition to that, you need to find things that lend meaning to your life. In one sense or another, you're going through something many (if not most) of us go through: something is preventing us from doing things we'd rather be doing with our days, and instead forcing us to do something less meaningful to us, which means we have to figure out how to get meaning into our lives some other way. Sometimes this prevention comes from a lack of talent: for example, when I was a kid, I really wanted to learn to dance. Unfortunately, I am built much like a water buffalo, with coordination to match. Didn't happen. Sometimes the prevention comes from conflict with other parts of one's life: for example, I was trained as an actor, and I loved it; but then I began to be an observant Jew again, and found that, since most plays run on Friday nights and Saturdays, they will not cast someone who can't work those times. So I had to find another career. Sometimes the prevention comes for other reasons; and sometimes, like in your case, it comes from being physically prevented from doing what you would otherwise want to do. But in every case, the answer is to either find ways around it, or find different things that are not prevented. (I'm not, by the way, trying to minimize your pain or challenges by comparing them to my own, clearly less trying circumstances, only to point out that the underlying principle of prevention and alternatives remains constant, even if the degree is very different.)

I don't know what your life plans were before your medical stuff came up. But if those plans are really incompatible with your life now (and you may find on further reflection that, while much harder, they aren't; but then again, maybe they are), then find new ones.

You graduated with four minors. Clearly you are brilliant. You could dedicate your life to learning. Many with physical challenges have done so, and bettered themselves and society for doing it. You could find employment as a researcher.

If nothing else, the acquisition of knowledge can be meaningful as an end in and of itself, if you choose it to be so.

I think if you got the proper help and chose to search for meaning, you would have other options, also-- I just offered the pursuit of knowledge in one form or another as the first solid thing off the top of my head.

You have suffered greatly. But it still seems like there is hope that you need not suffer forever. I have various friends who have survived traumas or congenital conditions of one sort or another and found ways to thrive. I know it can be done.

My own wife survived a brain aneurysm seven years ago. Half the people who have what she had don't live to tell about it. Of the half who do live, more than half end up as vegetables. She went through years of physical rehab, learned to walk and talk again, and still suffers from balance issues, walks with a cane, has periodic nausea and vertigo, and other sundry such physical issues. But she finished her graduate work, became a rabbi, drives again, teaches, and writes, and works, and she plays with our dog, and we travel together, and we have a great, full life, including a terrific sex life. None of which, by the way, she ever expected to be able to do when it first happened to her, and most of which she never expected to happen during the depression she fell into for the first couple of years after. Toward the end of her rehab, she found an amazing therapist who had her go on antidepressants, and it began to go steadily better for her. I met her a little over three years ago, and we were married last year.

It can be done. Whatever you face is survivable, is able to be worked with, can be lived with, if you decide to make it so. I'm not saying it will be easy. But I am saying it can happen.

Think about it. And if you want to talk in private, you can PM me too. Or keep anon, and don't be shy about reaching out here.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

The_Jazz

What's left for you? Well, I could blather on about sunshine and puppies, but neither of us would believe it - you because it's me and me because I don't believe it either.

What seems clear to me is that your doctors have failed you. If this is where you are after 5 years, clearly they've fucked up. I think that you need to print out your post and show it to your doctor(s). My guess is that they just don't have a clue where your head is.

What's left for you is that you owe to the rest of us to keep going. You reached out to us. Levite, who's proven to everyone here without a shadow of a doubt that he's a better man than I, reached back. Pan reached back. You owe to both of them to keep going. What would it do to them if you kill yourself? You're not that selfish, dude.

Listen to GG, too. She's on to something, I think. There are things you can do, ways you can help others. No magic bullets, bud. Just hard work. But there's payoff in that work.

These are your feelings and that makes them valid. No one else is in your head with you. A girlfriend or a friend that blows your phone up every day to do stuff isn't going to fix you. You're right - you have a disability. But it's not permanent and you're not alone. This isn't a "rah-rah" post, and you can't just rub some dirt on it and walk it off. But if you can get your doctors to either realize they aren't helping or find ones that will, you can start feeling better.

There's a member here that's a quadripligic. He hasn't walked in decades and never held one of his kids. He's also one of the funniest motherfuckers here. He's got a disability that might kill him without any effort on his part. Think about that - you can live with a disability and still be liked and respected.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Anonymous Member

Wow, thank you all for the support. It makes me feel a lot better at this moment. Hopefully it will last. It makes me want to do something (well learn something, I've always loved learning).

As to the docs. Well I've been through like 6 doctors, 2 psychiatrists, 2 counselors...I don't think its them. But maybe I've had incredibly bad luck who knows.

Right now I am on anti-depressants + some other shit I'm not even sure of and they don't do shit. I'm on max dosage too IIRC. I'm on 6 medications...7 if you count my inhaler.

zenda

Hi, Anonymous

I've carefully read what you've read, and the responses you've got. Those responses are solid gold.

My times of zero mobility have been times for me to reach out to others and myself with whatever remains. I've felt like I've had to climb, sometimes vertically, to build value and meaning. It is easier to be happy/in touch with a sense of meaning when the sun is shining. In the bitter times of life, it is hard, but still there to be built, like the fire on a wet day, is may be harder to light and maintain, but it's warmth and light is good and essential.

What has been written above is precisely what I would have needed to hear at the worst of those times, and as I re-read those responses, I stand, in spirit, shoulder to shoulder with you.

I'm looking at the suggested review of the medical situation, and at the idea that you need better psychological support, also at how your present ability to communicate is your power and touchstone ... a bridge from here to your future.

Those elements in your environment which you identify as ignoble ... be they friends, father or mother - Mom, dad and your 'close to physical home' friends might have been OK when you were OK, but crap at dealing with someone close who's become disabled. Sounds like they are just not up to the job. Your mom and dad are definitely lacking in the skills you need in your circle in your present condition of life.

You need, as you are doing here, to surround them with many other elements - positive ones of your own choosing, ones which are more, lets be blunt, QUALIFIED to be your friends and family given where you are at. Graduates and fellow students of the School of Hard Knocks are your proper peers, as are members of the Research Faculty for Climbing Slippery Vertical Surfaces.

You are not dead. You feel like you are ... and many elements in your home environment are helping you feel that way. They only had time for the 'Not Ill' you. The Ill You is, as it were, dead to them - I re-read your descriptions of them. You're not going to confuse THEIR perceptions with YOUR reality, are you? Also, by your own view, you are in a state MASSIVELY different from what 'being alive' was to have been when you were healthy. You don't want to live the way you are living at the moment. You're not going to confuse YOUR perceptions with THEIR reality, are you? It's a pain in the ass that your present condition and extenal external influence have woven the ignoble illusion.


You come across to me as a very living and frustrated person who had had good reason to feel that you're dead at the moment. You haven't needed to hanker after taking your life ... that's already been, for a while, taken. By which I mean that your heart is beating and there's neural activity, and intelligence and spirit enough to speak up whilst in this ruddy strange dead/notalive half-live which is between that old life you grew to manhood expecting, and the life you are now building.

Ruddy strange. Let's re-read those solid gold responses above again.

Best wishes

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ZENDA

Anonymous Member

Wow, this is really honestly touching. I was seriously planning out the attempt several days ago. But now I'm not. I still feel just as shitty but I feel like I can take it for a little while longer until something better come along.

One of the staff members (won't say who) PMd me about all sorts of programs that help the disabled go out and do something like going back to college. Thank you everyone. Please feel free to keep the sagely advice coming though.

levite

I can't even tell you how relieved I am to hear you say that. I've been praying for you.

Keep checking in, let us know how you're doing.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

zenda

+1

__________________
ZENDA

noodle

I'm glad to hear that you're feeling a little less hope-less, Anonymous Member, however do please remember that you can't fully count on an online forum to keep you from doing something to harm yourself. I'm sure that you don't particularly feel that way, but because of who I am and my background, I feel compelled to put it out there. You've got a lot of potential and seem to just need more encouragement.

I am particularly glad to hear that someone has passed along resources for you as well. This is tremendously important because the ADA has put many programs into place specific to certain disabilities and to protect the rights of all people who are differently-abled and/or impacted by a chronic illness. I do have a strong background in chronic illness (coupled with mental health) and if you are seeking more information about how to go about accessing services, I'd be happy to give you a little general, and if possible, more specific direction via PM. I hope that you're able to continue to find and set little goals that help you feel productive.

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Anonymous Member

Ugh, another really bad day. I don't know what to do with myself. I just keep thinking....what's really wrong with suicide?

I mean, it causes terrible emotions from loved ones...but then so does divorce and break ups. How is suicide really any different as far as causing emotional damage to those around you?

It's just so fucking tempting. I have such a curiosity for what's on the other side, combined with all my pain. Its just so tempting.

I feel like a shit that a dog shat out after he ate rotten meat and had diarrhea. Then ate the diarrhea and vomited it back out.

zenda

Hi

When you divorce of break up, your loved ones are hurt .... but you've not left THEM. They are witnesses, but not victims.

When someone suicides, they get to be the victims ... all of them.

That's a big difference.


Noodle's response about an internet forum only being able to go so far is one I concur with wholeheartedly. Me .. I'm about to go out of the house, but I saw your recent post and was able to get back to you, if only to to make a few lines of comment. You've got to get people around you who are within phone or driving contact.

Sharing is a crucial thing ... you KNOW that I and others hear you ... we read this and wish you well.

Getting some kind of response is also important. You put forward valid questions, and it is right that you make sure you've got people you can discuss them with.

Whether or not you'd been thinking about actually doing it, the questions are worhty to discuss. However, given where you are at, it is important to be able to discuss them at short notice.

When I get home, I'll check on your thread. Twice digested and regurgitated dog-poop is not a good place to be.

take care


[please pardon hasty typos, Anon]

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ZENDA

Zeraph

Hmm I'm not seeing a huge difference. I kind of agree with anon. People divorce and break each others hearts all the time. They lose custody of their kids. It seems quite similar to suicide.

KirStang

A divorce or break up is not like suicide. They will have lost you forever. Please reconsider anon, and if you feel up for it, please talk to your family or friends. I hope to see your posts again, Anon.

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