Feeling guilty about having a plan

[LostLily]

Anyone else feeling guilty about having a ctb plan?


So I just ordered Sn and felt a sense of relief when my order went through.

Then the next day I went to work and my co-worker/friend sat next to me becuase we work beside each other. This co-worker is the only thing keeping sane in this job and I consider him a friend.

When he arrived a felt a wave of crushing guilt because if he knew what I did last night it would freighten him. A month ago his cat died and he was devastated and I hate to think how devastated he would if I were to die also.

 

[StrugglingSienna]

Yeah, a little bit. I thought that picking a date kind of at random would be helpful to me because it would motivate me to make final preparations, and it is motivating, but it also gives a morbid vibe to some of my day-to-day interactions.

Talking to my guy friend about how we want to see eachother at least once a month for all time, talking to my family about my college plans for next year, talking to my goody two-shoes little brother about how I can't wait to have his first drink with him when he turns 21... all these perfectly benign conversations suddenly become very dark. It's not like I'm lying, exactly, because were I not suicidal or were I able to push my ctb date off for a few years, these are all my actual future plans I'm discussing. But still...

 

[getoutgirl]

Anyone else feeling guilty about having a ctb plan?

When he arrived a felt a wave of crushing guilt because if he knew what I did last night it would freighten him. A month ago his cat died and he was devastated and I hate to think how devastated he would if I were to die also.

Feeling that guilt proves you are a human and an empathetic person. You are aware of the pain your death would cause on those around you, even amid your own tremendous suffering that drives you to that decision, and yet you worry for them and feel the weight of that secrecy. You care for them and you know they care for you too. That's a problem I wish you didn't have, or rather that you didn't have to consider a problem. Because it doesn't need to be one. I'm sorry you are in that situation though, I hope it can get better for you. All the best <3

Yeah, a little bit. I thought that picking a date kind of at random would be helpful to me because it would motivate me to make final preparations, and it is motivating, but it also gives a morbid vibe to some of my day-to-day interactions.

Talking to my guy friend about how we want to see eachother at least once a month for all time, talking to my family about my college plans for next year, talking to my goody two-shoes little brother about how I can't wait to have his first drink with him when he turns 21... all these perfectly benign conversations suddenly become very dark. It's not like I'm lying, exactly, because were I not suicidal or were I able to push my ctb date off for a few years, these are all my actual future plans I'm discussing. But still...

I've been there and specially during the past 8 months or so. I couldn't make up my mind or commit to either dying or living, so decided on playing both sides until I cleared it out. Meaning I planned trips for next year during day and at night researched nearby bridges and their height, organised for jobs and mapped out cctv cameras to disappear without a trace, made future promises I'd like to but might never fulfil, so on.
I feel like some of us here live like sort of Schrödinger's cats, dead/alive, a state of uncertainty, moving through the motions, pushing through the daily nausea, every conversation feeling both true and a lie. Like you say there is this underlying darkness to it all you worry others might see, or that would crush them if they do so too late. And yeah, the guilt that comes with all that... Where I'm going with this; it feels not great. :/

 

[AnonymousL]

Anyone else feeling guilty about having a ctb plan?


So I just ordered Sn and felt a sense of relief when my order went through.

Then the next day I went to work and my co-worker/friend sat next to me becuase we work beside each other. This co-worker is the only thing keeping sane in this job and I consider him a friend.

When he arrived a felt a wave of crushing guilt because if he knew what I did last night it would freighten him. A month ago his cat died and he was devastated and I hate to think how devastated he would if I were to die also.

That's exactly me with my bf right now. I cant look him in the eye wirhout almost bursting out in tears.. I am gonna hurt him so so badly.

I wish I could just stop existing and that nobody ever knew who I was.

 

[The_Hunter]

I feel this is a core issue of suicide. Believing in it causes more suffering to your daily life. All of the stories that each one of you shared is seriously real and gingerly touching.

There is this notion that we "have" to, that what you all wish for and what you want "doesn't matter" in the face of this, that your human will must be crushed in favor of death—but the reality is that there is no obligation—there is no "requirement" or mandate for an action so dependent on volition.

I fear that one of you may end up against a wall one dark evening, and feel tremendous guilt alongside pains of bodily death. I do not wish such a fate upon anybody. For this reason, I don't want anybody to partake in actions they feel deeply guilty and uncomfortable with: because, that can easily become a means for one violating one's self, and no one deserves to feel that.

I think that suicide comes out very, very short, on it's utilitarian promise: to reduce suffering. There is so much guilt and pain involved in the mere conception of the idea of acting on it, so much pain and remorse and suffocation caused by the very accepting of the proposition—that it almost becomes a mercy to remind yourself that you do have a choice, that nothing can overturn your absolute will, in the end.

You don't have to do anything you don't have to. If you feel you are forced against your will—even by your own self—know you ever hold the inalienable right, to decline: to dissent.

It's for this reason that I am quite sure of two things. The first is that even uneducated people, whether sunk in the theocratic despotisms of yore, or the more modernised totalitarianisms of today (or the other way about, if you prefer) have an innate capacity to resist and, if not even to think for themselves, to have thoughts occur to them. We know this empirically, because such people always appear as if from nowhere when despotisms fall. But I also believe that we can know it by induction.

I was most heartened to have your reply. It is true that the odds in favor of stupidity or superstition or unchecked authority seem intimidating and that vast stretches of human time have seemingly elapsed with no successful challenge to these things. But it is no less true that there is an ineradicable instinct to see beyond, or through, these tyrannical conditions. One way of phrasing it might be to say that injustice and irrationality are inevitable parts of the human condition, but that challenges to them are inevitable also.
On Sigmund Freud's memorial in Vienna appear the words: "The voice of reason is small, but very persistent."
Philosophers and theologians have cogitated or defined this in differing ways, postulating that we respond to a divinely implanted "conscience" or that—as Adam Smith had it—we carry around an unseen witness to our thoughts and doings and seek to make a good impression on this worthy bystander. Neither assumption need be valid; it's enough that we know that this innate spirit exists. We have to add the qualification, however, that even if it is presumptively latent in all of us, it very often remains just that—latent. Its existence guarantees nothing in itself, and the catalytic or Promethean moment only occurs when one individual is prepared to cease being the passive listener to such a voice and to become instead its spokesman, or representative.

You ask me for some encouraging examples. I don't wish to furnish the sort of slogan that might appear on some cheery poster or be used as some uplifting motto. Again, it is a matter of how one thinks and not of what one thinks. However, there are some flashes of human intelligence that rise above the merely contrary and that can show us how some of our predecessors dealt with fiercer opposition than we face at present.

The second, which is only a corollary of the first, is that we do not naturally aspire to any hazy, narcotic Nirvana, where our critical and ironic faculties would be of no use to us. Imagine a state of endless praise and gratitude and adoration, as the Testaments ceaselessly enjoin us to do, and you have conjured a world of hellish nullity and conformism. Imagine a state of bliss and perpetual happiness and harmony, and you have summoned a vision of tedium and pointlessness and predictability, such as Huxley with all his gifts was only able to sketch. Only one other sacred text mentions "happiness" without embarrassment. But even in 1776, this concept was thought to be mentionable only as the consequence of a bitter struggle, just then being embarked upon. The beautiful word "pursuit," however we construe it, would be vacuous in any other context.

I close by saying, as I may well have occasion to say again: Always look to the language.

[all 3 of these quotes from:]
—Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian (ch. III)

 

[Michi_Violeta]

I understand the shame, the guilt, as others have said you're not alone and it only proves you're a decent human. You don't want to hurt others, you don't want to cause them pain despite you being in pain. Some of us prefer to take the hit so others won't suffer, we carry this weight willingly, and sometimes the burden just breaks your back.

When you lose the will to live, it feels like you live against your will. That's when I feel trapped. It feels like I must choose between hurting others or keep hurting myself. And someone could say, well, just stop hurting yourself and heal. Yeah, great idea Poindexter, but I'm tired of this endless cycle of trauma and healing, I no longer find sense in this.

It's a difficult choice. Nobody can make it for you, nobody can judge you for it. You can try and minimize the damage, maybe inform a couple very close loved ones so it won't come as a surprise, be clear in your final letters. It won't do much, my best friend has told me, but it's the least we can do.