suicide

I'm not trying to be antagonistic btw -- just asking questions :)

(Thanks for responding--around ILX I seem to be Tha Threadkilla.) I work for a specialized temp agency. I'm also on the rolls of two competing agencies, and there are other agencies in this market, but right now I'm in the depths of depression and fear, and thus am mindful of the several months of underemployment that preceded this assignment. For that matter I have one solid and several less-solid reasons why the job is a bad fit for me, but....

I'm just thinking that maybe this could be a very exciting time for you rather than a time when you are thinking about suicide. i mean, for real. i am kind of an optimist and even cornily so, but i'm not stupid and i'm not even that far beyond pragmatic on the general spectrum. i just like to look for potential bright spots and this sort of sounds like one to me.

i also realize that i am an internet stranger who doesn't know anything close to the whole story, so please disregard if i am way off base here

just shooting for the stars

No, no, thanks for responding. Just this morning I was feeling positively cheerful as I was walking in a park. Then I get home from my vacation and find that e-mail re. Tuesday, and....

Oh man, you're totally gonna be ok. You knew it! You know it.

( i am really tired and gotta sleep, but i hope that you feel better and i know that you will!)

fuck suicide but.

i think about it all the time.

life sucks.

it really does.

u know when yesterday u were all 'please can my friends stop dying' well imagine other ppl thinking that abt u - us included :)

fortitude, unity and all that

LJ otm. I think about it all the time, too, but when I imagine how that would make my mom feel I get really mad at myself for even letting it enter my mind.

table, I hope you aren't trying to blot out the pain, because that right there will kill you sure as shit. you have to make a place for it. you can't uninvite it. it's part of you.

Hi dere.

Ha, that's the plainest not-really-about-to-die piece of shit attention-grabbing thing ever, isn't it? Every time I've actually meant it I've not posted on message boards about it. Right now is just the 'oh please tell me how great I am so I don't have to do it' stage, which is bullshit on so many levels not least of which is the fact that I'm not a nice person at all and probably deserve to die horribly and painfully.

best advice I can give is talk it out with someone (strangers on the internet are perfect for this), and wait it out. it will at least eventually get interesting, if not better.

Seriousy, I cannot imagine anything better than this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_cyanide

emil.y what's up? you are a smart and cool poster and I always delight in finding one of your posts, like finding $5 in a pair of jeans you haven't worn in forever.

Oh, it's always been like this, I just usually don't post drunk enough to wave my arms about going 'look at me! Depressed horrible person over here!'. Which, you know, is only a good thing.

I can't honestly believe that anyone has noticed my posts over the entire 10 years I've been posting, tbh.

you always have intelligent & insightful things to say on philosophy and crit theory threads - also grad school threads - sorry if this sounds stalkerish

Ha, I never thought anything I said was particularly useful - I'm one of those shit-but-usually-right philosophers that take the middle ground and thus never get into arguments. (Although this is probably not true and I end up getting into many more arguments than I intend.)

Going back to the topic of the thread, anyway, the main fact is, as I said above, I know this isn't IT, because if it was I wouldn't even mention it, I'd just try to stop everything (and probably fail again for like the millionth time). What I have now just feels very similar to it. But similar is enough, and it suffocates me.

Ugh.

On the other hand, if not now, when?

sleep on it

you'll probably wake up a little further from the abyss

emil.y, don't. OK? you're not a horrible person.

emil.y -- i'm a worse person, and i'm planning on staying alive. you should do the same.

That's all very well and good, but what if every singly day is a sequence of moving closer and further to and from the abyss? Wouldn't you just get sick of it? Wouldn't you just want a resolution one way or another?

xxpost

Neither of you know how horrible or otherwise I am! I'm pretty terrible.

I mean, the only reason why I'm posting and not actually carrying out the act is so people can convince me not to. This is the way that all the people who I hated because they got help acted while I ended up hospitalised and given no help because I was too 'odd'. I guess this is progress?

That's all very well and good, but what if every singly day is a sequence of moving closer and further to and from the abyss? Wouldn't you just get sick of it? Wouldn't you just want a resolution one way or another?

i dunno - that's just a way, a fairly reductive way, of describing life though. it's moving closer and retreating from the abyss, pushing the rock up the hill and watching it roll down over and over again. but there are things you experience in the process of doing this that are enjoyable and meaningful, even if they're kinda dumb trivial things.

You are obviously correct. But.... why? Why bother? What is it that should keep me here, feeling so bad, always so horrible? Do I owe the deity of life something?

because death is kinda boring? like, you just get one chance at being you? also, presumably you have people irl - not internet strangers like me - that care about you and appreciate your existence, even if it sometimes seems like they're idiots for doing so, or are maybe just humoring you.

I mean, there really isn't anything better I could be doing with my life other than ending it. I have nothing to give this world.

you just get one chance at being you?

I feel like I ran this through by my mid-twenties. I did myself, I know exactly who I am, which is one of the reasons why people don't like me that much - I'm very moral and very loyal, to myself as much as anyone.

you shouldn't think of it so expansively -- because that's demoralizing -- it may sound selfish and arrogant, but think about what this world has to give you

i'm not sure how old you are, but my mid-20s were a decade ago, and sometimes I find it hard to reconcile myself with who I was then -- and I dunno if it's so much that you really change, but you frame that self-knowledge differently ... i dunno, maybe you are far more precocious than i am.

hey emil.y,

I don't know you or know anything about you but I want you to know that I want you to stay alive. I really do. Not because I want you to keep experiencing pain, because I don't, but because I believe that it is possible to continue living without pain consuming you. There is help out there. Not just people who will diagnose you and hospitalize you and make you miserable, but people who have had similar experiences to you who want you to be alive and feel better. And I promise you that somewhere out there is a mental health professional who you will be able to stand talking to and who will help you figure out what it is you need to do to start feeling better. There is help, stay with us.

There is nothing life can give me that wouldn't be better than it having never given me anything.

I think my grammar might have een forsaken me. Which is pretty bad for someone like me.

xp - how's that?

i mean, so far, all you've demonstrated to me is positive qualities: moral, loyal, diplomatic ...

hope you feel better, emily. once it's over, it's over. you won't even get the chance to regret it.

* even. Jesus. i am clearly not on top of this.

xpost how? In the most obvious of ways - nothing would be this bad if existence had never happened.

I think about the myth of silenus all the time too, emil.y. but here we are, and on we go.

I can't honestly believe that anyone has noticed my posts over the entire 10 years I've been posting, tbh.

not true, tbh

once it's over, it's over. you won't even get the chance to regret it.

I don't know how this was meant, but... it's always been the most comforting thing to me... the idea that one cannot even reget it, because once you're gone, there is no regret.

yeah, but it's not universally, consistently bad is the thing. like, sometimes it hurts and sucks worse than non-existence (i forget the robert ashley lyric this reminds me of something about "preferring" and "non-state") ...but it's often better.

plus who knows maybe the reincarnationists were right and you'd just go right back into the womb

maybe you'd end up as a truly horrible person, like a pedophile or an abuser of puppies

or a neverending stream of $1 goldfish that die and get flushed down the toilet once a month or so

I guess I never shrugged off my teenage existentialism. Even when things aren't so bad I still want to be rid of existence. Don't think I can ever get over what my mind does to myself.

And ha, I would probably rather be a repeated goldfish than a repeated teenage miserablist. All of ours were called Sam, I believe.

(goldfish, not existentialists)

really? i dunno. i think i'd rather a pathetic miserable teenager than a one dollar goldfish. At least, as a teenager i could read and listen to Joy Division and Bauhaus and go for walks in the hills and smoke cigarettes.