anurgetowardlove
Member
- Aug 15, 2018
- 11
It's hard to sum up your life in a few paragraphs, or explain to anyone what it feels like to be in a constant state of not wanting to be alive. There is a difference between not wanting to live and wanting to die; it's a distinction people often don't understand or forget to make. Once you slip into "wanting to die", things become more clear, and it begins to feel like a feasible option, one that will alleviate suffering.
When you tell someone you want to kill yourself, there's more or less a list of expected responses; "don't do it", "your family loves you!", "what about how your family will feel?" "I need you", "I can't live without you", etc.. But the one that above all others makes me want to bludgeon people with heavy objects is when they say, "How can you be so selfish?".
Oh, I'm sorry, are you the fucking judgment police? I'm so sorry that me ending my own pain and suffering is makes you feel like it's okay to personally attack me. Because getting angry with someone who has more or less reached out to you is a fantastic, adult response, right? Does no one see how faulty and bullshit that line of thinking is? Is someone going to come over here and live my life for me, since I'm obviously such a selfish asshole who doesn't want to be a financial burden to people I care about?
It's like mental illness isn't as acceptable a reason to die as a physical ailment. As someone who has both and lives in chronic physical pain, I can say, by far, the psychological pain is far worse than all of that. The physical pain makes me want to curl into a ball and cry, and the psychological kind makes me want to jump of a building or hang myself in the garage. I'd shoot myself in the face, but they took my gun, back when I thought maybe I should give it a few more months. That's the reward you get for trying to be honest with other people and get some kind of support: they basically take all your rights away. No one sits down and talks to you and asks you what's wrong, or offers to stay over for a night or two until you feel a little better (which I have done for others). Instead they get angry and lash out, like you've done something wrong. They take everything away, misunderstand your intentions entirely, even when you attempt to explain, and pass you along for someone else to deal with.
They think they're helping when the police pin you down on the ground and treat you like a criminal, and then they lock you in a room somewhere with people screaming and stuck in bouts of catatonia in the hallway. You walk into the bathroom (if you're lucky enough to be allowed to move around; and let's be honest, you just have to be a decent enough liar) with a floor covered in piss, and doors without locks, so that some random deranged patient can walk in and watch you taking a shit. Because woe and betide if you want to try and murder yourself in the bathroom with the tiny piece of glass you must have hidden in your asshole prior to your patdown.
Everyone there needs different types of help, but none of them are really getting it. Instead they group you together like cattle and assume it will work itself out. Instead it's just mental illness with mental illness, and the sense of isolation tends to grow. Everyone is suffering and in pain, and the heavy-handed and childish attempts to treat them are laughable. They have group sessions where you draw or paint, which for most people who have attempted suicide or were in the process of doing so, even getting up off of your vinyl-covered mattress is too much effort. You lay there defeated and miserable. They check on you every twenty minutes and tell you five fucking times that lunch is ready when you couldn't give any less of a shit and are perfectly content to lay there and waste away staring at the white walls or the blocked windows.
I'm not sure where I was going with this. I don't attach to people. It's like that part of me is broken. I can care about people, but it's this distant, hollow thing. People get close to me, then get angry when I don't give them the emotional response they wanted, despite the fact that I previously explained to them how it works for me. They threaten suicide, or start cutting ("cutting" is probably too strong a word; it's literally nothing more than cries for attention from them, and nothing like the addiction it can become for people who chronically self-harm). They think that because I'm covered in scars that I will respond to those half-baked, attention-seeking behaviors. They don't stop to think that I harm under my clothes because I don't want help or attention: it's a private act in a solitary life. Instead, I just walk away and they cry and scream and blow up my phone.
A good way to explain it is that I, at one point, spent five years with one person, then broke up with them and moved on. It didn't upset me or make me sad. If anything, I had grown bored and tired of this person, and had already made attempts to break up with them, but it's difficult when you're living with someone. They don't want to let go, even though there's nothing left between you. Familiarity is easy. They call me a monster or a sociopath. Tell me I'm horrible and awful, despite all my warnings, despite telling them I wasn't worth the effort and they wouldn't get anywhere.
I had someone for awhile. Really had someone. It was abusive and codependent, but I attached, for the first time in my life, after years of relationships in which I felt no connection to my partners. It was like constantly living in a fire, and somehow that was more comfortable than anything else I'd tried. I guess cycles of abuse work that way; we seek out that which we've already done, often reliving childhood, again and again. Normality feels like dying. Is worse, somehow.
It's the loneliness that's killing me. It's the being in a room of people and feeling like you might as well be living with a different species for all the communicating that's going on. You feel different and alien, and they tell you everyone feels that way, but you know the truth when you see them hug and console and talk, and you feel nothing but a sharp stab of emptiness at the very center of you. Because nothing happens when you talk. Nothing happens when you "connect". You're just there physically. Everything that matters to them means nothing to you. They can talk to people and find it interesting, when you would rather be slamming your skull into a wall because listening to that inane bullshit is so fucking miserable it makes your skin crawl. All the nuances, all the facades and the poorly-painted lies. All the smiles and the "I'm doing good, how about you?"s that make you want to throw up on someone just to get a real, true response. The disgust, at least, would be real.
I feel like I'm fading away. I don't even want to participate in that world anymore. It's easier to sit here alone, than bother with anyone, bother with their lies and bullshit and pseudo well-wishing like it somehow matters or evokes a response from you. The distance is growing.
When you tell someone you want to kill yourself, there's more or less a list of expected responses; "don't do it", "your family loves you!", "what about how your family will feel?" "I need you", "I can't live without you", etc.. But the one that above all others makes me want to bludgeon people with heavy objects is when they say, "How can you be so selfish?".
Oh, I'm sorry, are you the fucking judgment police? I'm so sorry that me ending my own pain and suffering is makes you feel like it's okay to personally attack me. Because getting angry with someone who has more or less reached out to you is a fantastic, adult response, right? Does no one see how faulty and bullshit that line of thinking is? Is someone going to come over here and live my life for me, since I'm obviously such a selfish asshole who doesn't want to be a financial burden to people I care about?
It's like mental illness isn't as acceptable a reason to die as a physical ailment. As someone who has both and lives in chronic physical pain, I can say, by far, the psychological pain is far worse than all of that. The physical pain makes me want to curl into a ball and cry, and the psychological kind makes me want to jump of a building or hang myself in the garage. I'd shoot myself in the face, but they took my gun, back when I thought maybe I should give it a few more months. That's the reward you get for trying to be honest with other people and get some kind of support: they basically take all your rights away. No one sits down and talks to you and asks you what's wrong, or offers to stay over for a night or two until you feel a little better (which I have done for others). Instead they get angry and lash out, like you've done something wrong. They take everything away, misunderstand your intentions entirely, even when you attempt to explain, and pass you along for someone else to deal with.
They think they're helping when the police pin you down on the ground and treat you like a criminal, and then they lock you in a room somewhere with people screaming and stuck in bouts of catatonia in the hallway. You walk into the bathroom (if you're lucky enough to be allowed to move around; and let's be honest, you just have to be a decent enough liar) with a floor covered in piss, and doors without locks, so that some random deranged patient can walk in and watch you taking a shit. Because woe and betide if you want to try and murder yourself in the bathroom with the tiny piece of glass you must have hidden in your asshole prior to your patdown.
Everyone there needs different types of help, but none of them are really getting it. Instead they group you together like cattle and assume it will work itself out. Instead it's just mental illness with mental illness, and the sense of isolation tends to grow. Everyone is suffering and in pain, and the heavy-handed and childish attempts to treat them are laughable. They have group sessions where you draw or paint, which for most people who have attempted suicide or were in the process of doing so, even getting up off of your vinyl-covered mattress is too much effort. You lay there defeated and miserable. They check on you every twenty minutes and tell you five fucking times that lunch is ready when you couldn't give any less of a shit and are perfectly content to lay there and waste away staring at the white walls or the blocked windows.
I'm not sure where I was going with this. I don't attach to people. It's like that part of me is broken. I can care about people, but it's this distant, hollow thing. People get close to me, then get angry when I don't give them the emotional response they wanted, despite the fact that I previously explained to them how it works for me. They threaten suicide, or start cutting ("cutting" is probably too strong a word; it's literally nothing more than cries for attention from them, and nothing like the addiction it can become for people who chronically self-harm). They think that because I'm covered in scars that I will respond to those half-baked, attention-seeking behaviors. They don't stop to think that I harm under my clothes because I don't want help or attention: it's a private act in a solitary life. Instead, I just walk away and they cry and scream and blow up my phone.
A good way to explain it is that I, at one point, spent five years with one person, then broke up with them and moved on. It didn't upset me or make me sad. If anything, I had grown bored and tired of this person, and had already made attempts to break up with them, but it's difficult when you're living with someone. They don't want to let go, even though there's nothing left between you. Familiarity is easy. They call me a monster or a sociopath. Tell me I'm horrible and awful, despite all my warnings, despite telling them I wasn't worth the effort and they wouldn't get anywhere.
I had someone for awhile. Really had someone. It was abusive and codependent, but I attached, for the first time in my life, after years of relationships in which I felt no connection to my partners. It was like constantly living in a fire, and somehow that was more comfortable than anything else I'd tried. I guess cycles of abuse work that way; we seek out that which we've already done, often reliving childhood, again and again. Normality feels like dying. Is worse, somehow.
It's the loneliness that's killing me. It's the being in a room of people and feeling like you might as well be living with a different species for all the communicating that's going on. You feel different and alien, and they tell you everyone feels that way, but you know the truth when you see them hug and console and talk, and you feel nothing but a sharp stab of emptiness at the very center of you. Because nothing happens when you talk. Nothing happens when you "connect". You're just there physically. Everything that matters to them means nothing to you. They can talk to people and find it interesting, when you would rather be slamming your skull into a wall because listening to that inane bullshit is so fucking miserable it makes your skin crawl. All the nuances, all the facades and the poorly-painted lies. All the smiles and the "I'm doing good, how about you?"s that make you want to throw up on someone just to get a real, true response. The disgust, at least, would be real.
I feel like I'm fading away. I don't even want to participate in that world anymore. It's easier to sit here alone, than bother with anyone, bother with their lies and bullshit and pseudo well-wishing like it somehow matters or evokes a response from you. The distance is growing.
