suicide

NV and Scott, you're both cool and I like you.

<3 to all going through it. I do the yelling NO! thing too … even though I don’t really have anyone who would miss me that much. I feel like I have gotten this far, might as well see it through even if I am a nobody

i'm sure even when we don't believe it of ourselves we all have people who'd miss us badly

anyway thanks all, intrusive thoughts are some bullshit but we keep on cos fuck 'em

Damn, sarahell, we are all nobodies.

^

I know it's very little sarahell, but you are a somebody as far as I am concerned!

I have thought about it but come to the conclusion as someone still with one vulnerable dependant it would be an unforgivable act. Even if I have minor health quibbles I turn into a drama queen hypochondriac. I dread to think what I'd be like after ODing on opiates and drifting into death! I'd probably ring 111 and say yeah I've just taken enough co-dydramols to kill an elephant .. but also this recurring mild discomfort I keep experiencing in my lower chest is highly troubling, I'm worried it might be....

I used to rehash in my mind my most embarrassing moments of my life constantly but medication has helped tamp that down significantly. Empathy to NV, Scott, Sarah and all.

I still rehash embarrassing moments, even have dreams about them, but have (I think) learned to get over them. Worse than those are the moments where I didn't act in the right manner and maybe hurt someone else, and the guilt of those moments still feels crushing to me

i dont like nor buy the casting of think of those left behind because who wants to lay another burden on the burdens

but nv a mhic, a stór, your depths regardless of the surface tempest have been a resource for many of us in ways you may never know

"I still rehash embarrassing moments, even have dreams about them, but have (I think) learned to get over them."

I have had a greatest hits in my head for 40+ years and I really think I have just had to outlive them. Which unfortunately takes a hell of a long time. I also had to recognize them for what they are immediately and not let them go on and on. They suck the life out of you. It's kind of like realizing you are in a nightmare and trying to wake yourself up as soon as possible. Do whatever you can do to shut them down. You never learn from them. The loops. They're always the same. They are always dumb. If you told people half of them they would look at you like you were crazy for still thinking about some stupid thing you said or did when you were 15. At my worst, which was years ago now, I had no idea how to get out of my nightmares. My depression. I clung to the things I loved. That's all I could really think of to do. I wish I could say it was the people who loved me that kept me going but I truly believe it was art! The books. The music. Even when I didn't want to hear any music. Or read any books. Just looking at them reminded me that there were better things in life than what I was feeling. I say this in retrospect. I also self-medicated like hell. It's a fucking process. Unfortunately, I had to learn it all over again when I finally quit smoking and went on meds. It was brutal for me. Every day I wanted to die. Every morning. For a long time. And every day I somehow had to just get up and do it all over. THIS time, it was the people who loved me that kept me going. Because now I had forever love. I had a partner and kids who seemed used to my presence. And I made it through that. It really hurt. And I fear future pain. Something bad happening. Something I can't pull myself out of. So I surround myself with walls of art. I think positive. I do my best.

I can't go the Johnny Mandel route as long as my mom is alive - I don't believe in an afterlife but I'm pretty sure one would be whipped up to punish me for abandoning an increasingly elderly parent with no other family (my brother doesn't count because he's useless). Once she's gone, I dunno - I could see more hedonism in my future without much worry about the outcome. I haven't done coke in more than 20 years or had a drink in probably three - but if no one depended on me? Coke was nice. I miss American Spirits.

There's a lot of passive ideation for me - 'if my heart explodes, not gonna be too upset about it' - but I sometimes feel like really digging into it works like a pressure release valve? Like really confronting the darkest impulses, making them real, gets things to abate for a few days. And at the same time, the answer to what's the worst that can happen is usually death and if you're not supremely invested in living then that's not so bad. I worry a lot about things going even worse and ending up homeless or Alzheimer's skipping a generation and hitting me or so on.

Knowing that there's an escape hatch in those scenarios that doesn't bother me so much is freeing. Doc tells me I've got early-onset Alzheimer's I'm driving to Arizona and swan diving into the Grand Canyon. That sounds kind of fun, so why worry about dementia?

❤️

Much love to you, Milo

"Coke was nice. I miss American Spirits."

mmmmmm....sorry! started daydreaming there. be well, milo.

lol coke is nice

<3 milo

Coke is awful. Spirits, on the other hand…

i'm going through another bout of SI, my first since january. so far i'm feeling ok about it. we'll see how it goes. i mean SI isn't fun but i feel good about how my last SI bout turned out. i agree with you, milo, about just like... facing it. at this point, i've kind of accepted that it's just gonna be there along with me all my life, it's not some passing impulse. i've been working hard to make friends with my SI. just saying "yeah, i hear you, life fuckin' sucks, maybe one day". just, like, accepting that i do want to die, and that it's OK to want to die. even if my life didn't suck, it'd be ok to want to die.

that doesn't mean i don't want to live. like for a long time i thought of it as an either/or, if i want to die i must not want to live. i do want to live. i just also want to die. dialectics! anyway i'm supposed to, like, do something fun this weekend, and that's really challenging for me. i basically like myself, basically think i'm a good person who deserves to have a good time, and i'm also, like, not just anhedonic but oppositionally defiant. like, fuck you, i'm not going to have a good time, i'm going to self-harm.

i've been trying to find a way of navigating the overwhelming urge to self-harm in... the least unhealthy ways. emotional self-harm is actually one of the worst kinds of self-harm, i've found, because of how isolating it is. people love me and care about me, and self-harm is a pretty aggressive way of rejecting other people's love and care for me.

it is weird because a lot of this stuff does seem pretty fuckin' real. there's this thing an acquaintance says, "i'm here for a good time, not a long time". i'd kind of... i'd like to live that way. i just look around me and i'm not seeing anybody actually having a good time. i'm seeing a bunch of people who are miserable and hopeless and...

if you ask me where i see myself in five years, five years ago i would probably have shrugged and said "idunno". you ask me now and i'll just say "dead". because allostatic load. even if i don't actually kill myself, the shit i go through, like, you can see statistically the effect it has on the lifespans of people like me. it's not just suicide, it's all causes of death. i love my body now and i'm trying to take care of it and it's really fucking hard. i don't have the spoons. i'm doing better than my girlfriend who genuinely could have a myocardial infarction any day now. if she did, that wouldn't count as "suicide", and i guess it wouldn't be. when someone's marginalized... it's pretty common, really, for marginalized people to get killed and for our deaths to be called "suicides". just happened in oklahoma recently.

i mean that is a factor. why should i bother killing myself when there are _so many_ people out there who'd be happy to kill me? i don't believe in a happily ever after but part of me is morbidly curious to see if they'll actually go that far.

i do genuinely want to have a good time. i do want to enjoy whatever life i have left. sometimes, though, sometimes i just gotta hate being alive and want to die and just lean into that.

it is comforting. these is this... just kind of comforting fog when i'm in that space where suicide seems like a real possibility. i don't have to worry about any of the other crap i have to go through. i don't have to worry about doing laundry or meeting my emotional needs or my shitty job or any of that crap. i could just kill myself. the only thing stopping me is me. the only thing that's ever really been stopping me is me, and i _have_ stopped myself, every time. not because i don't want to die - i really, really fucking want to die a lot of the time. because _i want to live_. always.

In Canada, as of last year, they've extended their MAID programme to people with "untreatable mental illness"-- you can literally talk to your doctor about dying because your brain is too broken for you to continue. Of course, this is a topic of ridicule amongst leftists-- "Canada would rather legislate your suicide than housing you". I love MAID, love the idea of its availability, not just because "sometimes I want to die", but because it's more like, oh, great, now I can actually DISCUSS wanting to die, rather than staying silent out of fear of involuntary commitment. 5150'd, as they say in California.

That's a really good point, and true of broader discourse about mental health I think. Maybe I like Laing more than I should but I'm so tired of pathologising the relationships we're expected to have to a dysfunctional world as if every rejection is somehow an illness

Obv the whole horrible shitshow of responses around the lad who self-immolated as a stand against genocide recently has fed into my revulsion

i put on the last courtney barnett album because i hadn't really followed her newer music and i actually thought: man, is she okay? i wanted to do a wellness check. i had to stop playing it. it was putting me in a place i didn't want to be in. i will listen to it again when feeling brighter though. then i see she made a whole documentary about depression. anyway, she really knows how to articulate that feeling of just...drowning in it. oof. hope she is well. good thoughts to all of you.

The overall situation _is_ definitely a challenge for me. I lived a lot of my life in denial and it took until 2016 for it to really hit home that wow, this is a fucked up world, and from there realizing all of the ways in which it fucked up my gay ass(metaphorical). And all of the ways in which... the situation I'm in kind of reinforces all of the fucked-up-ness I've spent my life soaking in.

I do view my propensity to self-harm as an addiction, like alcohol. One of the things I see in alcoholism is that when you kick the habit, you have to kind of dump all your old friends. Because the only thing you have in common is drinking. And I've got this group of friends now, and...

This morning I'm talking to some people I know, talking about how every time I go on a date with someone they wind up telling me about wanting to kill themselves, and they tell me "You need to get better friends". They say, oh yeah, the younger people don't have anything to do with the dungeons and drag bars, they meet in other ways, through other venues.

I've done a lot of work. I'm doing really well, when it comes to my suicidality. To the point where I can manage it a lot better than, well, most of the people who were historically my friends. To the point where being around them does, like, make my life worse. So what am I supposed to do, dump them? For who? I think it's great that there are younger people who have the skills to be intimate with each other in emotionally healthy ways, to be there for each other in emotionally healthy ways. Part of that skill, though, is, like... not getting too close to some 48-year-old trans lady, no matter _how_ emotonionally healthy she _seems_ to be. I mean if you ask someone if they want to die and their answer is "Oh hell yes, I'm absolutely suicidal", and you're _not_ someone who has chronic SI... that's kind of a big red flag, right?

Like I hate to put it in "I wouldn't belong to a club that would have me as a member" but the truth is that I have my shit together more than the _vast majority_ of my local friends. Part of being emotionally healthy, though, is having, like. Social needs. Intimacy needs. And when I try to get those needs met... the places that are available to me are fucked up places filled with fucked up people. That's frustrating for me. That poses a real challenge.

In Canada, as of last year, they've extended their MAID programme to people with "untreatable mental illness"-- you can literally talk to your doctor about dying because your brain is too broken for you to continue. Of course, this is a topic of ridicule amongst leftists-- "Canada would rather legislate your suicide than housing you". I love MAID, love the idea of its availability, not just because "sometimes I want to die", but because it's more like, oh, great, now I can actually DISCUSS wanting to die, rather than staying silent out of fear of involuntary commitment. 5150'd, as they say in California.

― Premises, Premises (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, 29 March 2024 bookmarkflaglink

That position is complicated by who is pushing this over here.

How it starts: with a school erasing disabled kids from a class photo.

How it ends: in Matthew Parris's dystopian future in which - once you're no longer economically productive - you deserve to be culled for the sake of herd.

Assisted dying as good economics. Monstrous. https://t.co/yoee7Opgp3

— Dr Rachel Clarke (@doctor_oxford) March 30, 2024

A lot of people do take their lives because they couldn't provide for their families, or because they found the economic grind too difficult so the "leftists" have a point.

In this country I can't remember a time where welfare against the disabled has not been under attack.

The fact that some people have bad takes on assisted dying shouldn't really influence whether it's legal or not. Personally, I feel relieved to be living in a jurisdiction where it was recently made legal for people in pain with terminal illnesses.

Yeah bad original take xyzzzz and bad response too imo— referring to that dumb-as-rocks exchange on Twitter; also nobody here (certainly not me) is debating that capitalism exacerbates suicidality

MAID presents two massive benefits: greater availability of treatment for suicidality amongst those whose affliction is treatable is the first most obvious one. “Decriminalizing drug use will lead to more drug addiction” no it won’t, the opposite is true.

The second benefit is to dignify something that is already happening at epidemic levels: the elderly killing themselves, suicide already pops back up to #3 most deadly-killer once you hit age 65.

I cannot possibly reiterate enough what a completely different experience it was having two relatives choose MAID— celebrating their lives while they’re still alive, there was no grief afterward. Their lives feel like a victory in retrospect, that my cousin who worked as a geriatric nurse and was the life of every party got an ALS diagnosis and said “no thanks” and we were able to celebrate w her right up until the end

Idk maybe this is too touchy a subject for me to be reading English Tweets about

Fgti otm… apart from my mental health problems, I think about my aging parents and my friends’ aging parents…. Parkinsons, alzheimers, cancers where the treatment is more unpleasant than the disease…

That’s really touching about your relatives, fgti, I love that framing and sounds so loving and compassionate

I get kinda emotional about it, it's hard for me to type about. I apologise if I ever sound snippy about this topic. Or overdramatic or whatever.

My father is cancer-free, but aside from that basically has everything under the sun-- Parkinson's, dementia, Crohn's, shingles flare-ups. Totally bedridden, and every month there's a new thing he has to deal with. Despite this, he is so happy. Lots of media to engage with, avid baseball and classical music fan-- psychologically, he's great. He has no desire to voluntarily end his life, in the present tense. I wish we could have the discussion about it, like, will he eventually want to? When? Can we make plans for it? I honestly think he's "old school" enough that he doesn't even consider MAID an option, and that's fine.

Adolescent suicidality, adult suicidality, the desire for the infirm or the elderly to die instead of continue suffering-- if all these things could be addressed by a normalisation of "the right to choose the moment of one's death", if it could be a topic of detached and non-judgemental discussion, it not only suggests relief for those with treatable suicidality, it suggests a complete revision as to how we currently view "later life" and its mechanisms-- psychiatric wards, chronic wards, retirement communities, hospices. I've been inundated since birth with the idea that "suicide is not an option", it is consistently demonised throughout history and media, it still is so taboo; this all contributes to why it remains such an "epidemic", which it is. We are living through a plague. If society were to normalise the idea that when one desires to die, that the option is available to them, it would shift our entire perspective on death as a whole. The difference between "living until one's body fails" or "living until an accident claims us", and the alternate: "living until one elects to end one's life", there is such a wide gulf. When considering the latter it fills me with such optimism, that the end of my own life, when it arrives, might be something that I can plan, that me and my friends and family can accept and celebrate, rather than just... "waiting for it to happen", or "committing suicide (in the traditional sense)". I literally have wonderful optimistic reveries about it. I legitimately look forward to the time when I will have to plan my own death and do so with the support of my friends and family. I see it as "something great that is approaching", like a birthday or my retirement or a vacation I want to take.

When MAID became introduced in Canada, the entire dialogue about my own struggles with suicidality shifted. I called my doctor and said "OK, so MAID is being introduced in four months, and I want to die. What steps do I need to do to get dead?" My doctor didn't freak out or moralise or offer platitudes, he put me in touch with the mechanisms in place to pursue this. What followed was a psych exam. What followed that was a diagnosis, and they told me my suicidality was, likely, treatable. And it was treatable, and the treatment(s) I subsequently received worked. After playing games with doctors and therapists for over a decade to attempt to express suicidality without getting summarily committed, having learned when to say "no, I'm not in any danger", navigating the ridiculous tightrope of trying to find treatment without getting everyone alarmed, MAID legislation effectively solved the issue by allowing me to speak about it bluntly and clearly. "I want to legally die and I plan to follow this plan to its conclusion" is a far easier thing to say to caregivers rather than "I can't stop thinking about/planning to kill myself".

“navigating the ridiculous tightrope of trying to find treatment without getting everyone alarmed”

yes this, this is the worst as I personally have experienced.

my mother in law’s recent suicide has really shaken up the snowglobe on this kind of thing for me. She was a miserable, misanthropic, abusive, manipulative person. She completely blamed my wife in her suicide note for her death. My wife is mourning like crazy but she is pissed having to clean up after her and realizing the extent to which her mom made her life miserable for so so long. It’s a weird mix of emotions. Obviously she was NOT ALL BAD and did raise my wife to be an absolute badass with guts of steel, unmatched wit, compassion and humor. And she was a truly loving dog mom too. Sorry, just thoughts. Processing.

that sounds horrible. its good you are there for your wife! it must be such a whirlwind of emotions for her. and you. do you have someone to talk to about it other than your wife?

"Yeah bad original take xyzzzz and bad response too imo— referring to that dumb-as-rocks exchange on Twitter; also nobody here (certainly not me) is debating that capitalism exacerbates suicidality"

Haven't seen what twitter thread it's referring and no doubt it's dumb.

Ofc in many scenarios taking one's own life is the path taken. It's not for me to debate that but I thought to say that there is something else going on with some of this. That thread was thoughtful in pushing back on where AD could go. It quotes the article and here is the thread for those who cannot access.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1773967442093486575.html?utm_campaign=topunroll

xp yeah a couple of old friends and my cousin and uncle have been really sweet and supportive. and I’m lucky I can just call/text my mom and be a total mess and she can get me slowed down.

oh, good, brim. that's good.

Thanks Scott, it’s been hard to reach out to others cause I’m just used to brooding/compartmentalizing. My wife gratefully has amazing mental health care providers who are such an hugely significant source of support right now too. Plus her friends and colleagues have really showed up for her And her uncle is a real cool dude, we started connecting with him more this year and having him in our lives more has been really special

i just know for myself that i have been through some heavy/scary stuff and not had people who i thought i could turn to and talk about what i was going through and as i got older i realized how friggin' important that is. even if you have to collar someone on the street and let loose. or make that barista really earn that tip when they ask you how your day is going.

or just write about it on secret message borads...

but, yeah, fundamentally, i too am someone who had always bottled things up. i come from a long line of bottlers. it can be so liberating though to talk it out with someone on the outside.

Allergic to the economic argument for migration, but yes it's accurate as to what is happening. We will all be a lot poorer in all sorts of ways as routes for migration are shut.

In some ways the Tories are throwing the economy under the bus for the next government but it's unlikely Labour will do anything #provemewrong

Wrong thread!

i wish i didn't have such therapist fear. i don't know why i do. i have this fear that if i sat one on one with someone that i would just lose it. like really really lose it. i feel the same way about massages. i've always been afraid that if i got a massage that i would die. that the tension in my back and neck and shoulders is the only thing keeping me upright.

Great to read such honest discussion. I hope y’all find the right paths and that they include sticking around here for a good while.

i've always been afraid that if i got a massage that i would die. that the tension in my back and neck and shoulders is the only thing keeping me upright.

I had persistent shoulder pain for about a year to the point that I couldn't scratch my own back. Finally I went to an acupuncturist and it didn't stop the pain instantly or anything, but at one point he put a bunch of needles in between my toes and my whole body felt like it was melting. It was wild.

my mother in law’s recent suicide has really shaken up the snowglobe on this kind of thing for me. She was a miserable, misanthropic, abusive, manipulative person. She completely blamed my wife in her suicide note for her death. My wife is mourning like crazy but she is pissed having to clean up after her and realizing the extent to which her mom made her life miserable for so so long. It’s a weird mix of emotions. Obviously she was NOT ALL BAD and did raise my wife to be an absolute badass with guts of steel, unmatched wit, compassion and humor. And she was a truly loving dog mom too. Sorry, just thoughts. Processing.

― brimstead

oh god that's so complicated. particularly the "not all bad" thing. so many of the important relationships in my life are like that. so much of my better qualities are things i learned from my mom, for instance. i try to talk about my marriage and i say "aside from the emotional and sexual abuse it was a really good marriage" and people think i'm being flip, and i guess i am but it's also literally true. it was a really good marriage, to the extent that someone can be a "good person" i genuinely think she is one. the fact that she did some messed up things to me doesn't change that.

there are just... so many ways to kill oneself, so many ways to _hurt_ oneself, and most of them don't get recognized as "suicide" or "self-harm". people make a bright line where none exists. if i don't take care of my body because i'm passively suicidal and i have a massive myocardial infarction at age 42 and die, that's not considered suicide. conversely, if someone spends their entire life being bullied and abused and the pain gets so overwhelming they take their own life, that _is_ considered suicide. it's one of those _concepts_ that tries to impose a sense of moral order onto an act, a sense of meaning and value. it's well-intentioned a lot of times, but it's so innately reductive. for people with chronic suicidality navigating all of the gatekeeping around mental illness is so complicated.

getting my surgery referral letters for my GRS written was a really difficult process for me... like the letter needed to convey that this surgery was important and it was something that was "medically necessary" because not having it was causing me mental distress, but at the same time i needed to convey that i was a fundamentally well-adjusted person capable of making healthy medical decisions for myself. "Oh don't get me wrong the gender dysphoria is killing me, having the genitals i have causes me agonizing emotional pain, but other than that I'm fine really." i mean ok i guess that's what the insurance company needed to hear. and that is what it's all about, mental health is about ticking off the appropriate boxes.

like being mentally ill is a skill and i've gotten really good at it. and some people think that's a bad thing, that like when you're mentally ill the goal is to stop being mentally ill rather than doing a better job at it, and that is the absolute _opposite_ of my experience. it's honestly, like... pain management.

suicidality for me is really simple, sometimes it hurts really really bad for a long time and it hurts so bad that i want to die, and i have to figure out how to navigate that without dying. there are reasons why i hurt that bad and they aren't easy to address. they're complicated and they take a lot of work, and a lot of time, and when it hurts really really bad, my brain is not, like. cognitively capable of doing that work. so when i hurt really really bad i have to figure out how to, like, get myself to hurt less bad, so i can address the underlying issues that cause me to hurt really really bad sometimes.

which is all difficult enough but then people keep doing things that cause me to hurt really really bad. i'm doing all this work and i'm doing it well and at the same time i'm running as fast as i can to just try and stay in the same place. whatever doesn't kill us _doesn't_ make us stronger, often it makes us weaker. it's so stupid to me that people keep pulling out that nietzsche quote like it's remotely true. sometimes something won't kill me and as a result of that i have to work really hard to become stronger as a result of that, but i didn't get _stronger_ because i survived having a piano fall on me from a great height. come on, that's ridiculous. (that's a hypothetical example btw, i've never had a piano fall on me from a great height.)

anyway the thing about, like, hurting really really bad is that it is really hard to make good decisions when i'm in that state. i've made some extremely bad decisions in my life and most of them were because i was hurting a lot and it negatively impacted my ability to make good decisions. none of those decisions involved killing myself, or even overtly _attempting_ suicide, but if i did do that, for me it would be the same kind of decision. and that sucks, and also one of the things i've learned is that sometimes making a "good decision" is not an option. like i know there was all that controversy about the old game _depression quest_ but i think one of the things it demonstrated really well is that sometimes for various reasons i don't get to do the "right thing". so it's me and it's 1996, do i want to transition and not be able to do any work except sex work and have the world treat me with undisguised disgust for a couple decades, or do i decide to pretend i'm a cis person and go through decades of trauma from untreated, unrelieved gender dysphoria, spend decades suffering from extreme mental illness, dissociation, and depersonalization? ha ha, trick question, the answer is that i don't have a choice because i'm not able to even _recognize_ what the hell it is that's wrong with me. that's how trauma is.

the other thing is that gender dysphoria is, like. a pretty minor example. like, gender dysphoria hurt like hell and it's had a major affect on my life and i just have _so many_ other problems and traumas, so much _other_ messed up stuff going on in my life. i see that in a lot of other queer people, compound trauma. plus, on top of that, the extensive abuse i suffered means that i see abuse as normal, like i'm _conditioned_ to seek out self-harm. and what can someone say to that? "have you tried not hurting yourself?" it is like that, it's just so inexplicable to anybody who hasn't had that experience. i do things and other people see what i do and they're like "why the hell did you do that". not only is it useless to explain, sometimes i can't explain. how does someone answer a question like that? "i was bored". or maybe, if one has done something particularly heinous, "i don't like mondays". the question has an actual answer, but nobody fucking wants to know that answer, to understand what it actually takes to change things for the better. now that people see me as a woman, they want me to be _happy_, they want me to _smile_, but nobody questions whether or not i have a _reason_ to be happy. that's not important. what's important is that i smile and look pretty. and i mean. people who get seen as men have their own expectations that are just as fucked up and toxic. in a lot of ways it's _easier_ for me that i just get to smile and people won't ask me too many difficult questions.

the other weird thing is that in a lot of ways transition has... given me a lot more skills to deal with suicidality. i do this thing that's really taboo and that other people really don't want me to do, and i learn that fuck what other people expect of me, i gotta do what's right for me. and i get to consider that, you know, maybe that decision _is_ suicide. it doesn't come from a position of, like, _I NEED TO DO THIS_, but more like... well, let's actually consider this here. the first thing people say is "don't make a plan", which is basic means reduction. that was _effective_ for me to a certain extent, at a certain point. "well i really want to die but i don't have the means or a way to get the means and anyway i'd probably just mess it up and be a failure at that too". and that, like. that wasn't a healthy attitude for me. that was disempowering. that was me saying "i don't have any control over my own life". i mean it keeps me alive until the suicidality passes, but then i gotta deal with having reinforced that message of my own basic helplessness, there's this pain that comes over me that's severe and overwhelming and i can't do anything about it.

in my last suicidal crisis back in january i got to a point where i realized, wait. i could do this. i could do this. i have the skills, i have the means, i have a plan, i have the opportunity. i could genuinely do this right now and nobody would be able to stop me. like i have a _choice_. but that also means i had to confront, like. oh wait i do want to die but i also genuinely want to live. and i'm not just choosing to _not_ kill myself, i'm like genuinely proactively choosing to live, because i _want_ to live, not because of anyone else's expectations. it doesn't make the pain _worth it_, i don't _need_ to suffer through the pain. it's just like, i can choose how i deal with that pain, and one of those choices is suicide. it was liberating.

that's why, i think that's one of the reasons why when people start antidepressants there's such a risk, because suddenly one's not in that state of learned helplessness, suddenly i was like "oh wait if i want to do something i can do it", but what i wanted to do is kill myself. that gets called "agitated depression" sometimes, which, ok, i guess if that's what they want to call it. anyway the way i dealt with that for a long time was, ok, if i want to do something, the most important thing in the world for me is to not do it. like i couldn't differentiate between wanting to do something that would be really bad and wanting to do something that would be positive and helpful. i was just like "well here's something i want to do, better not do _that_". i'd already been taught extensively by my mom that nothing i ever did would ever be good enough, that i was destined to be a worthless failure... so i applied that pre-existing concept to my desire to kill myself, i really worked to strengthen it. that's a big part of why even though i'm in a lot of ways exceptionally competent i don't ever achieve any of my goals. because that's what i learned to do, as a survival mechanism. if i really felt capable of achieving my goals, i would've died a really long time ago. there are lots of reasons to stay alive. for me, i'm alive because i centered my whole life around experiencing intense pain and not doing anything to alleviate that pain, including actively avoiding anything that might give me a real sense of accomplishment or joy. what was the point in feeling good? i was just going to feel bad again. feeling good was meaningless.

so it really fucked me up when i transitioned, intending for all the world to make myself into a grotesque unloveable monster in defiance of the world's cisheteronormative standards, to put myself through all of the hatred the world had to offer, because what actually happened was that i basically instantly started making my life like a billion degrees better. i wasn't expecting that. that _really_ pissed me off. like, what do you mean, i'm well-adjusted and happy and i love myself? THAT WAS NOT WHAT I WAS GOING FOR. i still really resent being, like, a basically normal middle-aged woman. because really i'm not cut out for that shit.

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i also really feel you scott when you talk about... like i worried a lot for a long time that if i started letting out my emotions i would just cry and cry and cry and never stop. and that like in fact has happened to me. last year i went on a spiral for like three months where i basically didn't get out of bed. when that's something that could actually happen, i mean, it's really easy to repress. plus my history of abuse plays into it as well... my history is that a lot of times in the past when i've opened myself up and made myself vulnerable it's been weaponized against me by people who, like, didn't have my best interests at heart. i'm not a man but i do see that men in particular do have that experience a lot. vulnerability in men is pretty strongly punished and mocked and shamed. i mean god, _expressing any emotion_, you might as well be a girl, right? unless it's anger. if it's anger, than you're a Toxic Abusive Man. god, it's so fucked up. the pressure is to bury and bury and bury and yeah _that's_ why i'm carrying around all of this fucking bullshit around with me, and then it all comes up whenever anything happens that reminds me of it.

like a good example, i've been really suicidal the last couple of days because i've been sort of "breaking up" with my girlfriend. like. dealing with rejection. because she has been rejecting me for the past six months, not because, like, there's anything wrong with me, but because she has so much going on she's just not capable of being a girlfriend on top of all that other stuff. and that other stuff is genuinely more important for her to do than being my girlfriend is. i don't want a girlfriend who doesn't take care of herself, and taking care of herself means that she can't be my girlfriend.

so it's basically a healthy relationship with a healthy ending and it still hurts, it still feels like a rejection, particularly since i'm still, like, undergoing abuse on an ongoing basis professionally. and because all of this is happening around a community that i have really conflicted feelings about, where there's been a lot of, like, fucked up abusive shit going on over the past year that's really affected me a lot. and so what happens is that i'm in a real real real lot of pain and making healthy decisions is not an option. i just gotta kind of like hang on, even though at that point i don't have any idea what the hell is going on, all i can say is "IT HURTS", even though i'm not in a state where i'm _able_ to actually figure out what's going on. that's what i mean by "learning to be mentally ill"... like that's going to cause _some_ sort of damage to me and/or to my relationships with other people, and i'm kind of like...

like, i've tried doing self-defense training, and most of that isn't physical stuff. the thing is that if you're gonna do physical stuff, you have to be able to do it _without thinking about it_. like someone comes at you and just instinctively you gotta be able to do what's necessary to give yourself space to get the fuck away from them to safety. that's kind of what acute chronic suicidality is for me. i'm literally not capable of thinking rationally and i just have to _instinctively_ be able to handle that situation. that's what "learning to be mentally ill" means to me.

go to work tomorrow or kill self tough call

go to work, hate it or love it, and find some time to make posts that will intentionally and/or unintentionally irritate people here!

But please stay.

i'm sorry, that was an irresponsible drunk post
really

the voice keeps screaming at me but i'm not planning, for my loved ones' sake if not my own

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