Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post on the "Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here" thread - put them here

same

Aching Desire For One True Love Separated By Fate Still No Match For A Good Porkin’ https://t.co/utsSI90si9 pic.twitter.com/X03fFw72wy

— The Onion (@TheOnion) August 6, 2020

The experience of a real crush in the moment is often, maybe even mainly, negative but I can’t help but rep for something so thoroughly unproductive

you know, it genuinely did not occur to me before, like, just now, how often the phrase "dysphoria" occurs in "infinite jest". i haven't revisited it since that one indeterminate year in the late 1990s i spent plowing through it while waiting for the bus.

in one sense it's not surprising that the concept of gender dysphoria comes up in infinite jest - goddamn near _everything_ comes up in infinite jest. it is a Novel About Everything. in another sense... it wasn't a concept i commonly came across in the 1990s. dfw talked about lots of things i had no idea about, like tennis, often through confusing and unexplained references, and in any case i had already decided definitively that i was Definitely Not Trans so whatever the hell he was talking about had no bearing on me whatsoever.

i wonder what i might find were i to choose to reread that book.

most of my memory of dfw, these days, comes from my much more recent (shortly after it came out) reading of "the pale king", which i found striking in how thoroughly and completely dfw failed to understand boredom, the topic he was allegedly writing a novel about. i mean, on par with black sabbath writing a song about clinical depression and calling it "paranoid", that level of complete misunderstanding.

I am overdue for a break for the internet but

Jeez is that all you guys think about

Really glad I didn’t post anything flippant about noted author Adolf Hitler’s suicide now

― Rishi don’t lose my voucher (wins), Thursday, August 6, 2020 1:44 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Been thinking about this a lot tbh

There's a difference between "a suicidal episode" and "persistent suicidal ideation", there's a difference between "a period of depression" and "chronic ongoing struggles with depression". I'd experienced the former of both examples here-and-there in my life, but the latter of both examples really started to set in hard-core about four years ago, escalating to become, rather awfully, a defining feature of my personality. (It goes without saying that there's a huge difference between killing oneself in a bunker after committing a genocide and losing a war, and succumbing to a long battle with suicidal depression, as dfw did.)

Considering that, after cancer, suicide is the #2 most prevalent death-by-illness in adults age 18-55 (North America and Europe), considering the stigma and lack of understanding about "what persistent ideation is like" amongst people who are either psychonormative or mentally-ill-in-other-ways, it feels like an impossible struggle to be understood or to receive the care one needs. Just now I had lunch with a friend and made a plan to go to the island this coming week, and despite the fact that it was made good-naturedly, I couldn't shake the feeling that this was a social favour-- this is how ideation colours your every moment.

Considering that "cancer jokes" are somewhat taboo, reserved for the most odious individuals who are afflicted with it (Rush Limbaugh)-- and the #1 cause of death in this same demographic is "accidents" (car crashes), and I don't think I've ever heard a good joke about a car crash-- it is disheartening to see people speak about suicidality in flippant ways, to not afford the same gravity and care to the affliction as they do other similarly dangerous afflictions. (Remembering, too, that many people with persistent suicidal ideation do live, to die of other causes, either because they are able to recover and/or they just struggle with it until death finds another way.)

A living god of a musician who struggles very, very hard with mental illness once surprised me with a request that she might reach out to me when she was in distress. "It's not the disorder that kills you," she said, "it's the loneliness." This entire statement is not an admonishment so much as a plea for understanding-- to understand that ideating individuals already feel so, so isolated, like a burden to everyone, and that flippant comments about those who've succumbed to this illness can exacerbate this feeling of isolating. (rushomancy's comment was very tame and I don't think anyone was pressed about it but it was nice that they addressed it, thank you rushomancy!)

I couldn't shake the feeling that this was a social favour-- this is how ideation colours your every moment.

otm ... this is my life tbh ... and why I spend so much of it doing things for other people, because I feel like I have no innate self-worth or appealing traits, thus, acting in a helpful, useful manner is what will "earn" me these social favors.

Yep. My favourite mode of socialization is having dinner parties. Part of my brain cannot shake that "people socializing with me" has to be coerced in some way, so I try and make that apparent "coercion" as pleasant for others as possible, by making people food. Even though I'm often reassured by my social circle that I'm "great at parties" and "a lot of fun", the feeling of social inadequacy persists, largely because of my struggles with mental illness and my worry that people are exhausted by these struggles-- which is, in certain cases, absolutely the case.

Thank you for sharing fgti.

It's a difficult thing. People with cancer are treated just as awkwardly as people with suicidal depression, there's misunderstanding, there's awkwardness around it. Met someone today and one of the first things they said was that they were getting chemo for stage IV cancer and do you think I had anything to say to that?

People back away from me if I talk too openly about suicide. Hell, complete honesty here, I back away from other people if they talk too openly about suicide. I've lost people to suicide. I don't blame them for what they did, I'm not angry at them. I'm proud of them for lasting as long as they did with what they had to live with. Knowing them is still in inspiration to me, still drives me. And it's been four years still hurts, hurts like fucking hell that they're gone, hurts like fucking hell what happened to them. I'm really afraid to lose anybody else like that.

For that matter I'm really afraid that even talking about it too directly could hurt somebody, could hurt somebody who's in a really vulnerable and fragile place, and that's a fear I push through, there's no safety when one is in that place, everything is a risk, and I don't know how to live without taking that risk sometimes.

I'm really afraid that the people who care about me might someday lose me like that. My reference to DFW's suicide... I wasn't coming from a place of flippancy, but from a place of weary over-familiarity. I know too well the crushing tedium of experiencing chronic suicidality, the sort of agony that makes time itself seem meaningless. It was this sort of depressive tedium that DFW, at some point, stopped being able to differentiate from mere boredom, to the point where he tried to write an entire book about what he took to be "boredom".

There are ways out, even if they're invisible a lot of the time, to a lot of us, even if it's mostly just blind fumbling. There are choices. A lot of them are crappy ones and there's no recognition, you know, for all the good choices we make. All of the times, all of the days, I've had to choose to not die that day... that's not a choice people who aren't suicidal have to ever make. My friend made that choice countless times in his life, beat the illness trying to take his life over and over and over again, and then one day, he couldn't, and nobody was there to give him the help and support he needed, the help and support he deserved, so he died. I don't count that as a personal failing of his.

These are helpful posts to read and I think we should take it to a more appropriate thread if this discussion is to continue! Thanks for your post rushomancy <3

I left a movie critic message board not too recently because a male poster made a hilarious rape joke about a real person, a female poster summoned a mod to delete the post, and the hilarious rape jokester whined and whined, calling the female poster a snitch, asking her if she was so sensitive because she got raped, and suggesting that maybe she should seek therapy instead of infringing on his free speech rights.

Eventually, all the male posters on the board took his side.

I am so happy ILX is not that place.

(Posted here, and not on "Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here", out of respect for the late Bimble.)

Eventually, all the male posters on the board took his side.

I am so happy ILX is not that place.

(Posted here, and not on "Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here", out of respect for the late Bimble.)

― oder doch?, Monday, August 10, 2020 11:25 AM (nine minutes ago)

thank you oder doch. i understand that dynamic very well. it is always painful to see it play out.

What's all this about Daryl Stuermer all of a sudden?

wow, kinda otm

but it's like peeing in your pants when you're wearing a dark suit. you get a warm feeling all over but no one notices.

not much of a defense of PHil Collins there ^

ffs

YOU WILL FIND THAT IT IS YOU WHO ARE MISTAKEN, ABOUT A GREAT MANY THINGS.

haha lololol because Old

o my sides

I never know when this thread is deliberately and/or mistakenly used instead of the main second thoughts thread or whether posts herein truly refer to the main second thoughts thread (I wrote ‘thoughts’ in the plural, sorry not sorry).

Gotta say I am low-key digging the trend of people just typing in what they WOULD link to instead of linking to it

Way better than trying to link something in, failing, and then saying "fuck, that didn't work. what I meant was..."

(galaxybrain.jpg)

It's like the old meta-joke about people who have been prison together for a long time, and who just refer to jokes by number

you mean marriage?

Go fuck a diaper

the issue of having sex in front of a baby actually came up at work the other day

^ was going to post anniehallmarshallmcluhan.jpg until I realised potential for misinterpretation, but I was already on this thread so I couldn't just take it to here

Before the introduction of individual bedrooms and our contemporary ideas of private space, sex in the same room as babies and small children must have been commonplace.

I mean, I'm not recommending ito as a fun practice or a spicy kink or anything.

Simply that many of our ancestors lived in more communal spaces than we ourselves are used to. The survival of the species (and the existence of large families) suggests that an awful lot of our forebears must have made whoopee near babies and small children.

Surely the way to save the planet is to troll.

https://cdn.statcdn.com/Statistic/635000/638990-blank-355.png

Yes, but we all know that some FPs are officially sanctioned and some are dismissed.

dear lord get a life

You're one to talk, go and annoy some Americans, that's all about all you're good for, you tedious Canadian cunt.

Lol wtf

Now see, addressing other posters in that manner IS one of the ways people find their FP count rising.

It's a fair cop, guv'nor.

the opening post on this thread was inspired by none other than our dear departed friend, and is exactly why I’m going to miss him forever.

<3

so glad you could notify us about your general superiority to the general US poster consensus

Just two different perspectives I held, at different times, about how Morbs' attitude related to it, and vice versa.

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-have-different-opinions-Even-if-I-believe-in-my-opinion-with-a-whole-heart-there-are-still-people-who-disagree-Has-that-something-to-do-with-who-you-are-or-is-it-in-the-brain

lmao

deems yknow I genuinely wonder that sometimes it’s a source of distress

Oh I think we all go through it!

See also:

should other people have different opinions?

Where’d esby go btw?

is it in the brain

Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one, and mine is best lavished with slow, wet kisses :/

D:

Jfc

whenever UK ilxors post about US politics, I often agree, but mostly I think about making a grilled cheese sandwich though I never do make that sandwich, I just think about the ideal grilled cheese sandwich

Real testament to the charter school movement’s success aren’t you

I read through the Morbs RIP thread again the other week when someone mentioned him, and am not 100% sure that saying "I thought the same thing as everyone else" was the best way to signal my superiority to everyone else tbh

the real hasn't been in circulation for 150 years