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We did not see eye to eye quite often, but I respected your insights and I am sad to see you go. Have a safe journey. This place won't be the same without you.THREAD BOUNDARIES: READ BEFORE COMMENTING
Please don't say I can change my mind. Thank you, I already know that I can. I would find it distracting to read, so please respect my request.
Please don't ask my method.
Please don't ask, "Are you still with us?" At least not for the next twelve hours from the OP. I'll let you know for sure in the comments. I don't know how many hours it will be.
Please don't ask my reasons. I have never disclosed them to anyone on the forum or irl, they're going with me. Suffice it to say, my reasoning falls under one or more of the Stoic five rational reasons for exiting the party of life gone bad.
Please don't ask if I'm sure. I've done a lot of work to be certain that this is the best possible decision for me, I have weighted everything, and I am indeed sure.
Please don't ask me to change my mind or to stay. Respectfully, that's about you and not me. I will find it distracting, and it will fuck with the courage and peace I've worked very, very hard to achieve in order to reach this moment. Thank you for understanding. (Edit: It's okay to say what you feel, what you wish, stuff like that.
Can I be just a tiny bit of a dick? Saying please is an effort to be courteous. These are not requests. Edit: It's just that I'm a bit edgy about stuff like this, it's always made me hesitate about doing a goodbye thread, when it's a challenging moment to brush it off. I'm a bit more limited in inner resources at the moment.
_________________________________
I'm thankful that there is a place for me to say my last words. It means so much to me as a lifelong communicator and writer. Feel free to skip to the last two paragraphs, just above the image.
This is a fucking hard world, at times unbelievably awful and cruel beyond comprehension. I have looked at myself honestly and I can say that, while some individual situations in life may be better for my leaving, the world is not, and I am unbelievably grateful for that -- both humbled and yet proud of my efforts and the fruits of personal accomplishment. I'm not on my deathbed realizing how awful I was and regretting I did nothing about it when I could, nor smugly smiling at how I got one over on so many. Twenty to thirty years ago, it would have much been closer to 50/50 about how I impact the world, except that at least I was striving to figure out what was wrong and to try to get better. I wish more people would, but as Brené Brown says, some people are afraid of opening Pandora's box and don't realize they're actually in it.
At the same time, I am worse staying in the world, and I am both disheartened and disgusted that this is such, for myself and for so many others who are abused, tortured, and oppressed. But I am also grateful that I can leave, and do so peacefully, rationally, and with courage and a measure of love. I am humbled and feel compassionate pain for those who cannot escape atrocious situations such as human trafficking, war, unjust imprisonment, sanctioned domestic violence, and so many other things that make my heart cry for not having the power to stop it and change the world. I am grateful that from weak or even non-existent foundations, I've been privileged to have had internal and external resources and opportunities to learn how to build my own foundation, to find and grow my character, and with it, the rationality and courage to exit with my spine erect and my head high, though the exiting part was not the end goal I had in mind for those efforts. If it were even slightly beneficial to stay and fight for myself and also for others, then I would have the courage for it, but as Montaigne warned in his essay, "One is punished for defending a place obstinately without reason":
Valor has its limits; overstep them, and you tread the path of vice; consequently a man may go right through the dwelling place of valor into rashness, stubbornness and madness if he does not know where those boundaries yet lie: yet at the margins they are not easy to pick out.
I have been at the margins for quite a while, and I know where the boundaries lie. I can see where I am heading into vice to obstinately defend my life and my very self against greater forces than myself, and the fact that they are overpowering is no reflection of inherent lack or unworthiness on my part. There are no tools for this; I am resourceful and tenacious, and if the tools exist, they cannot be found, not by me. I would have liked to have overcome the forces majeure, challenges and onslaughts, or at least to have reasonable cause to purse valor, because I have great inner strength and bravery, but in the words of Samuel Johnson:
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer.
I'm leaving with the second highest human felicity. I'm not feeling very felicitous, but I'll take it.
Plutarch said that people of sense "draw from the most unfavorable circumstances something which suits them and is useful." Thanks to philosophers like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch and Montaigne, I am able to take what is useful: I have met with great, unconquerable and unmanageable misfortune, and I can swim away from the misfortune, from the great cruel forces, and from my body as from a sinking boat.
I hope that I simply go to sleep and am no more troubled or aware of it than when I am normally asleep, but if consciousness goes on, then I hope, if such a place exists, that I go where there is love, rationality, awareness, reciprocity, compassion, mercy, and great opportunity and support for continued growth. Or perhaps nirvana if there is indeed such a thing, where I step completely out of the cycles of struggle, where there is no more hatred, greed or delusion. If there is a higher being who judges me and I meet them, they have as much explaining to do to me as I to them, and are likewise accountable, for they are supposedly in me and a part of me, or we come from the same initial source if there is one; therefore there is no hubris in this, only rationality, hard-won self-respect, and respect I'm willing to offer in return when I demand they likewise give account, await my judgement, and hope for the same reason, respect, compassion and mercy from me that I hope for from them.
I encourage no one to suicide. These are my final reflections about who I am, my circumstances, and my choice to exit. Every one must look within themselves and come to their own conclusions. I joyfully support anyone who wants to keep trying. I wish, for anyone who reads this, the internal and external resources you need, all the courage, all the healing, all the resilience, and all the potential satisfaction, fulfillment and growth that you may seek. I hope that fortune smiles kindly on you, and that where it does not or is neutral, that you have all you need to find some kind of inner if not external success. If it's not too intrusive to say, I encourage you to think deeply. Some suffering is immense, but with sufficient time and growth, it can become a tool for making you a better person in some way, such as having wisdom, compassion, clarity, or an unexpected groundedness in the trials that life inevitably will bring whether we deserve them or not. No one is free of discomfort, suffering or grief, but we cannot grow without a measure of some of these things; humans and most all living things are hardwired to need challenge and struggle in order to grow, survive, and succeed. For those whose suffering is more than they are capable of going through and whose challenges are also insurmountable, you have my deep compassion, and I respect your autonomy to make the best possible choices for yourself.
I wish everyone everywhere the following: freedom from suffering; equanimity; autonomy; empowerment; receipt of compassion, comfort and mercy from themselves and from others; and an abundance of moments of both deep and expansive joy; as well as the perfect meeting of their basic and inherent needs. I wish this even for those who have harmed me or who willingly harm others, because if we all had these things, especially every thing after the first (since some suffering will happen to all), then there would be neither need nor motivation to harm, and they could connect with themselves and others in the most positive and satisfying ways. That's my view anyway.
I recently wrote on the forum that something very beneficial about this place is that we can have a sort of deathbed gathering that an older dying person with loved ones could receive, in order to have support and well wishes as they exit from life. That is my purpose for myself for this thread. For anyone who would like to do such for me, I am grateful. For those who find it too difficult, or who cannot or do not want to, I respect that. I ask for nothing that anyone is unwilling or incapable of giving, just as I do not offer things when I cannot or do not want to give them. For those who choose to react or post in support or compassion, I humbly and from the depths of my heart say thank you. Laughter is welcome here, by the way, along the lines of funny things that have happened here, or something you know me well enough to know will crack me up. If there's something to look back on and celebrate, let's honor that and celebrate, too. I must say, I am hugely grateful that I do not have to be alone in all but the last step of my incredibly challenging, strange, and occasionally fulfilling and wonderful life.
I'll make a final comment in the thread before I go, I'm not sure in how many hours it will be. If I back out, then I will say so, and I'll re-read this thread when I'm ready to attempt in order to recieve anew the support that's already been given. Whatever my last comment, I still request that the mods ban me after, and I will never ask to be unbanned, period. If such a request is received, or if someone later makes an account and claims they're me, it's not me. The forum for me has reached a point where the toxicity has tipped the scales to outweigh the significant interpersonal supportive benefits I joined for and experienced. Even if I were unwise enough to go back later and read something other than this thread, which would bait me to want to disagree or to defend myself or anyone else, I need for my own peace to move on. Whether with regard to the forum or to any situation in life, including my experience of life as it has been for some time now...
View attachment 55471
Respect is part of it, but isn't the word I'm looking for so much as sanity and safety.
On the very off chance that my parents read this, there's a note for them in the spoiler below:
Ah, you jerks. My choice and action had nothing to do with you. If it did, I would have told you. I don't do bullshit, and I won't now just because I'm leaving. I have some good memories, some gratitude, some respect that you did not demand but earned, and some love, but there is so much you refused intervention and accountability for. I have compassion for what led you to function as you have throughout my life up to the very freakin' end.
I don't respect that you shut me out of the family for demanding accountability and acknowledgement of the shit that actually happened in our family, which you would have had to do if you accepted my forgiveness, and I especially don't respect that afterward you used my photo and put words into my mouth to manipulate others into believing we still have a relationship. You didn't own your choice. You repeatedly betrayed me.
If you claimed my body after rejecting me in life, you already have experienced burdens and consequences. I have compassion for fucking up and suffering the consequences, I have abundant experience with that, but I am also disgusted and justifiably angered if you made such a choice, as I strongly suspect based on your consistent behaviors throughout my life. It is yet another act to ignore my autonomy and just do what the fuck you want because of entitlement or ass-covering. If you did this, it is a huge betrayal even though I'm gone, and quite frankly, you can fuck off with that. If I guessed wrong, I am glad. I have compassion that you suffered learning I died, and that you had to make a decision about my body, though I suspect the decision was more about how you would feel rather than how I would feel about it. I'm just pissed. I'm pissed that you discarded me and yet, at the end of my life, making the hardest decision one could make, I've spent so much time considering how you would feel, how you would be impacted.
If you go searching for answers about my reasons for dying, not only is it a violation of the boundaries of my most inner, private self, but you will find no answers, because it's the one thing I never told another person. Instead, you may come across criticisms of you where I have still been trying to work out shit about you. That's what you get for sticking your noses where you know they don't belong, but justify to yourselves that you can stick them anywhere anyway -- and then get offended and defensive for any consequence or calling to account. As far as my reasons go, no matter what I say, you won't understand, and you will assume I am somehow blameworthy, as is your way. You relinquished any consideration for being told, and I'm done with both explaining and defending myself to you.
I struggled with the decision to not leave you a note, and chose not to because you just don't hear what I say. If there's even the slightest chance that what I say will get through, you had to go looking for it yourselves.
If there is such a thing as a soul or a spirit, I promise you that I will neither haunt you nor try to guide or protect you. I've made a firm decision to permanently go no contact with the world, and I have no desire to be a hovering saint; I tried enough of that in life, and I often would have done better to focus on other things.
Thank you for the great gifts of humor and laughter, which served my enjoyment of life as well as my resilience, and for instilling in me to strive to be ethical and seek to act with integrity.
I deeply and sincerely wish for your well-being, but it's your responsibilities to make happen for yourselves. I love you, I am deeply angry with you and sometimes hate you, and have always experienced all of this. For better or worse, it is at last done between us, although, really, except for the feelings, it has been for a while. Again, my leaving is nothing to do with you, nor is it something I'm doing to you.
I'm exiting life with my spine straight and my head high, and with self-worth, love and courage. I overcame much, I strove hard, and I earned my self-respect. Not a bad ending.
we love you. 
Thank you, for everything. Have a peaceful journey, sending you nothing but love and support ❤THREAD BOUNDARIES: READ BEFORE COMMENTING
Please don't say I can change my mind. Thank you, I already know that I can. I would find it distracting to read, so please respect my request.
Please don't ask my method.
Please don't ask, "Are you still with us?" At least not for the next twelve hours from the OP. I'll let you know for sure in the comments. I don't know how many hours it will be.
Please don't ask my reasons. I have never disclosed them to anyone on the forum or irl, they're going with me. Suffice it to say, my reasoning falls under one or more of the Stoic five rational reasons for exiting the party of life gone bad.
Please don't ask if I'm sure. I've done a lot of work to be certain that this is the best possible decision for me, I have weighted everything, and I am indeed sure.
Please don't ask me to change my mind or to stay. Respectfully, that's about you and not me. I will find it distracting, and it will fuck with the courage and peace I've worked very, very hard to achieve in order to reach this moment. Thank you for understanding. (Edit: It's okay to say what you feel, what you wish, stuff like that.
Can I be just a tiny bit of a dick? Saying please is an effort to be courteous. These are not requests. Edit: It's just that I'm a bit edgy about stuff like this, it's always made me hesitate about doing a goodbye thread, when it's a challenging moment to brush it off. I'm a bit more limited in inner resources at the moment.
_________________________________
I'm thankful that there is a place for me to say my last words. It means so much to me as a lifelong communicator and writer. Feel free to skip to the last two paragraphs, just above the image.
This is a fucking hard world, at times unbelievably awful and cruel beyond comprehension. I have looked at myself honestly and I can say that, while some individual situations in life may be better for my leaving, the world is not, and I am unbelievably grateful for that -- both humbled and yet proud of my efforts and the fruits of personal accomplishment. I'm not on my deathbed realizing how awful I was and regretting I did nothing about it when I could, nor smugly smiling at how I got one over on so many. Twenty to thirty years ago, it would have much been closer to 50/50 about how I impact the world, except that at least I was striving to figure out what was wrong and to try to get better. I wish more people would, but as Brené Brown says, some people are afraid of opening Pandora's box and don't realize they're actually in it.
At the same time, I am worse staying in the world, and I am both disheartened and disgusted that this is such, for myself and for so many others who are abused, tortured, and oppressed. But I am also grateful that I can leave, and do so peacefully, rationally, and with courage and a measure of love. I am humbled and feel compassionate pain for those who cannot escape atrocious situations such as human trafficking, war, unjust imprisonment, sanctioned domestic violence, and so many other things that make my heart cry for not having the power to stop it and change the world. I am grateful that from weak or even non-existent foundations, I've been privileged to have had internal and external resources and opportunities to learn how to build my own foundation, to find and grow my character, and with it, the rationality and courage to exit with my spine erect and my head high, though the exiting part was not the end goal I had in mind for those efforts. If it were even slightly beneficial to stay and fight for myself and also for others, then I would have the courage for it, but as Montaigne warned in his essay, "One is punished for defending a place obstinately without reason":
Valor has its limits; overstep them, and you tread the path of vice; consequently a man may go right through the dwelling place of valor into rashness, stubbornness and madness if he does not know where those boundaries yet lie: yet at the margins they are not easy to pick out.
I have been at the margins for quite a while, and I know where the boundaries lie. I can see where I am heading into vice to obstinately defend my life and my very self against greater forces than myself, and the fact that they are overpowering is no reflection of inherent lack or unworthiness on my part. There are no tools for this; I am resourceful and tenacious, and if the tools exist, they cannot be found, not by me. I would have liked to have overcome the forces majeure, challenges and onslaughts, or at least to have reasonable cause to purse valor, because I have great inner strength and bravery, but in the words of Samuel Johnson:
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer.
I'm leaving with the second highest human felicity. I'm not feeling very felicitous, but I'll take it.
Plutarch said that people of sense "draw from the most unfavorable circumstances something which suits them and is useful." Thanks to philosophers like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch and Montaigne, I am able to take what is useful: I have met with great, unconquerable and unmanageable misfortune, and I can swim away from the misfortune, from the great cruel forces, and from my body as from a sinking boat.
I hope that I simply go to sleep and am no more troubled or aware of it than when I am normally asleep, but if consciousness goes on, then I hope, if such a place exists, that I go where there is love, rationality, awareness, reciprocity, compassion, mercy, and great opportunity and support for continued growth. Or perhaps nirvana if there is indeed such a thing, where I step completely out of the cycles of struggle, where there is no more hatred, greed or delusion. If there is a higher being who judges me and I meet them, they have as much explaining to do to me as I to them, and are likewise accountable, for they are supposedly in me and a part of me, or we come from the same initial source if there is one; therefore there is no hubris in this, only rationality, hard-won self-respect, and respect I'm willing to offer in return when I demand they likewise give account, await my judgement, and hope for the same reason, respect, compassion and mercy from me that I hope for from them.
I encourage no one to suicide. These are my final reflections about who I am, my circumstances, and my choice to exit. Every one must look within themselves and come to their own conclusions. I joyfully support anyone who wants to keep trying. I wish, for anyone who reads this, the internal and external resources you need, all the courage, all the healing, all the resilience, and all the potential satisfaction, fulfillment and growth that you may seek. I hope that fortune smiles kindly on you, and that where it does not or is neutral, that you have all you need to find some kind of inner if not external success. If it's not too intrusive to say, I encourage you to think deeply. Some suffering is immense, but with sufficient time and growth, it can become a tool for making you a better person in some way, such as having wisdom, compassion, clarity, or an unexpected groundedness in the trials that life inevitably will bring whether we deserve them or not. No one is free of discomfort, suffering or grief, but we cannot grow without a measure of some of these things; humans and most all living things are hardwired to need challenge and struggle in order to grow, survive, and succeed. For those whose suffering is more than they are capable of going through and whose challenges are also insurmountable, you have my deep compassion, and I respect your autonomy to make the best possible choices for yourself.
I wish everyone everywhere the following: freedom from suffering; equanimity; autonomy; empowerment; receipt of compassion, comfort and mercy from themselves and from others; and an abundance of moments of both deep and expansive joy; as well as the perfect meeting of their basic and inherent needs. I wish this even for those who have harmed me or who willingly harm others, because if we all had these things, especially every thing after the first (since some suffering will happen to all), then there would be neither need nor motivation to harm, and they could connect with themselves and others in the most positive and satisfying ways. That's my view anyway.
I recently wrote on the forum that something very beneficial about this place is that we can have a sort of deathbed gathering that an older dying person with loved ones could receive, in order to have support and well wishes as they exit from life. That is my purpose for myself for this thread. For anyone who would like to do such for me, I am grateful. For those who find it too difficult, or who cannot or do not want to, I respect that. I ask for nothing that anyone is unwilling or incapable of giving, just as I do not offer things when I cannot or do not want to give them. For those who choose to react or post in support or compassion, I humbly and from the depths of my heart say thank you. Laughter is welcome here, by the way, along the lines of funny things that have happened here, or something you know me well enough to know will crack me up. If there's something to look back on and celebrate, let's honor that and celebrate, too. I must say, I am hugely grateful that I do not have to be alone in all but the last step of my incredibly challenging, strange, and occasionally fulfilling and wonderful life.
I'll make a final comment in the thread before I go, I'm not sure in how many hours it will be. If I back out, then I will say so, and I'll re-read this thread when I'm ready to attempt in order to recieve anew the support that's already been given. Whatever my last comment, I still request that the mods ban me after, and I will never ask to be unbanned, period. If such a request is received, or if someone later makes an account and claims they're me, it's not me. The forum for me has reached a point where the toxicity has tipped the scales to outweigh the significant interpersonal supportive benefits I joined for and experienced. Even if I were unwise enough to go back later and read something other than this thread, which would bait me to want to disagree or to defend myself or anyone else, I need for my own peace to move on. Whether with regard to the forum or to any situation in life, including my experience of life as it has been for some time now...
View attachment 55471
Respect is part of it, but isn't the word I'm looking for so much as sanity and safety.
On the very off chance that my parents read this, there's a note for them in the spoiler below:
Ah, you jerks. My choice and action had nothing to do with you. If it did, I would have told you. I don't do bullshit, and I won't now just because I'm leaving. I have some good memories, some gratitude, some respect that you did not demand but earned, and some love, but there is so much you refused intervention and accountability for. I have compassion for what led you to function as you have throughout my life up to the very freakin' end.
I don't respect that you shut me out of the family for demanding accountability and acknowledgement of the shit that actually happened in our family, which you would have had to do if you accepted my forgiveness, and I especially don't respect that afterward you used my photo and put words into my mouth to manipulate others into believing we still have a relationship. You didn't own your choice. You repeatedly betrayed me.
If you claimed my body after rejecting me in life, you already have experienced burdens and consequences. I have compassion for fucking up and suffering the consequences, I have abundant experience with that, but I am also disgusted and justifiably angered if you made such a choice, as I strongly suspect based on your consistent behaviors throughout my life. It is yet another act to ignore my autonomy and just do what the fuck you want because of entitlement or ass-covering. If you did this, it is a huge betrayal even though I'm gone, and quite frankly, you can fuck off with that. If I guessed wrong, I am glad. I have compassion that you suffered learning I died, and that you had to make a decision about my body, though I suspect the decision was more about how you would feel rather than how I would feel about it. I'm just pissed. I'm pissed that you discarded me and yet, at the end of my life, making the hardest decision one could make, I've spent so much time considering how you would feel, how you would be impacted.
If you go searching for answers about my reasons for dying, not only is it a violation of the boundaries of my most inner, private self, but you will find no answers, because it's the one thing I never told another person. Instead, you may come across criticisms of you where I have still been trying to work out shit about you. That's what you get for sticking your noses where you know they don't belong, but justify to yourselves that you can stick them anywhere anyway -- and then get offended and defensive for any consequence or calling to account. As far as my reasons go, no matter what I say, you won't understand, and you will assume I am somehow blameworthy, as is your way. You relinquished any consideration for being told, and I'm done with both explaining and defending myself to you.
I struggled with the decision to not leave you a note, and chose not to because you just don't hear what I say. If there's even the slightest chance that what I say will get through, you had to go looking for it yourselves.
If there is such a thing as a soul or a spirit, I promise you that I will neither haunt you nor try to guide or protect you. I've made a firm decision to permanently go no contact with the world, and I have no desire to be a hovering saint; I tried enough of that in life, and I often would have done better to focus on other things.
Thank you for the great gifts of humor and laughter, which served my enjoyment of life as well as my resilience, and for instilling in me to strive to be ethical and seek to act with integrity.
I deeply and sincerely wish for your well-being, but it's your responsibilities to make happen for yourselves. I love you, I am deeply angry with you and sometimes hate you, and have always experienced all of this. For better or worse, it is at last done between us, although, really, except for the feelings, it has been for a while. Again, my leaving is nothing to do with you, nor is it something I'm doing to you.
I'm exiting life with my spine straight and my head high, and with self-worth, love and courage. I overcame much, I strove hard, and I earned my self-respect. Not a bad ending.
So much respect.
as a striving stoic, your goodbye deeply touches me and drew me to tears. I am still on the boundary of choosing to stay or leave, which will probably be decided within the next year. I hope you find peace, and please know that this was a beautiful post filled with meaningful messages. also, nice punTHREAD BOUNDARIES: READ BEFORE COMMENTING
Please don't say I can change my mind. Thank you, I already know that I can. I would find it distracting to read, so please respect my request.
Please don't ask my method.
Please don't ask, "Are you still with us?" At least not for the next twelve hours from the OP. I'll let you know for sure in the comments. I don't know how many hours it will be.
Please don't ask my reasons. I have never disclosed them to anyone on the forum or irl, they're going with me. Suffice it to say, my reasoning falls under one or more of the Stoic five rational reasons for exiting the party of life gone bad.
Please don't ask if I'm sure. I've done a lot of work to be certain that this is the best possible decision for me, I have weighted everything, and I am indeed sure.
Please don't ask me to change my mind or to stay. Respectfully, that's about you and not me. I will find it distracting, and it will fuck with the courage and peace I've worked very, very hard to achieve in order to reach this moment. Thank you for understanding. (Edit: It's okay to say what you feel, what you wish, stuff like that.
Can I be just a tiny bit of a dick? Saying please is an effort to be courteous. These are not requests. Edit: It's just that I'm a bit edgy about stuff like this, it's always made me hesitate about doing a goodbye thread, when it's a challenging moment to brush it off. I'm a bit more limited in inner resources at the moment.
_________________________________
I'm thankful that there is a place for me to say my last words. It means so much to me as a lifelong communicator and writer. Feel free to skip to the last two paragraphs, just above the image.
This is a fucking hard world, at times unbelievably awful and cruel beyond comprehension. I have looked at myself honestly and I can say that, while some individual situations in life may be better for my leaving, the world is not, and I am unbelievably grateful for that -- both humbled and yet proud of my efforts and the fruits of personal accomplishment. I'm not on my deathbed realizing how awful I was and regretting I did nothing about it when I could, nor smugly smiling at how I got one over on so many. Twenty to thirty years ago, it would have much been closer to 50/50 about how I impact the world, except that at least I was striving to figure out what was wrong and to try to get better. I wish more people would, but as Brené Brown says, some people are afraid of opening Pandora's box and don't realize they're actually in it.
At the same time, I am worse staying in the world, and I am both disheartened and disgusted that this is such, for myself and for so many others who are abused, tortured, and oppressed. But I am also grateful that I can leave, and do so peacefully, rationally, and with courage and a measure of love. I am humbled and feel compassionate pain for those who cannot escape atrocious situations such as human trafficking, war, unjust imprisonment, sanctioned domestic violence, and so many other things that make my heart cry for not having the power to stop it and change the world. I am grateful that from weak or even non-existent foundations, I've been privileged to have had internal and external resources and opportunities to learn how to build my own foundation, to find and grow my character, and with it, the rationality and courage to exit with my spine erect and my head high, though the exiting part was not the end goal I had in mind for those efforts. If it were even slightly beneficial to stay and fight for myself and also for others, then I would have the courage for it, but as Montaigne warned in his essay, "One is punished for defending a place obstinately without reason":
Valor has its limits; overstep them, and you tread the path of vice; consequently a man may go right through the dwelling place of valor into rashness, stubbornness and madness if he does not know where those boundaries yet lie: yet at the margins they are not easy to pick out.
I have been at the margins for quite a while, and I know where the boundaries lie. I can see where I am heading into vice to obstinately defend my life and my very self against greater forces than myself, and the fact that they are overpowering is no reflection of inherent lack or unworthiness on my part. There are no tools for this; I am resourceful and tenacious, and if the tools exist, they cannot be found, not by me. I would have liked to have overcome the forces majeure, challenges and onslaughts, or at least to have reasonable cause to purse valor, because I have great inner strength and bravery, but in the words of Samuel Johnson:
To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer.
I'm leaving with the second highest human felicity. I'm not feeling very felicitous, but I'll take it.
Plutarch said that people of sense "draw from the most unfavorable circumstances something which suits them and is useful." Thanks to philosophers like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch and Montaigne, I am able to take what is useful: I have met with great, unconquerable and unmanageable misfortune, and I can swim away from the misfortune, from the great cruel forces, and from my body as from a sinking boat.
I hope that I simply go to sleep and am no more troubled or aware of it than when I am normally asleep, but if consciousness goes on, then I hope, if such a place exists, that I go where there is love, rationality, awareness, reciprocity, compassion, mercy, and great opportunity and support for continued growth. Or perhaps nirvana if there is indeed such a thing, where I step completely out of the cycles of struggle, where there is no more hatred, greed or delusion. If there is a higher being who judges me and I meet them, they have as much explaining to do to me as I to them, and are likewise accountable, for they are supposedly in me and a part of me, or we come from the same initial source if there is one; therefore there is no hubris in this, only rationality, hard-won self-respect, and respect I'm willing to offer in return when I demand they likewise give account, await my judgement, and hope for the same reason, respect, compassion and mercy from me that I hope for from them.
I encourage no one to suicide. These are my final reflections about who I am, my circumstances, and my choice to exit. Every one must look within themselves and come to their own conclusions. I joyfully support anyone who wants to keep trying. I wish, for anyone who reads this, the internal and external resources you need, all the courage, all the healing, all the resilience, and all the potential satisfaction, fulfillment and growth that you may seek. I hope that fortune smiles kindly on you, and that where it does not or is neutral, that you have all you need to find some kind of inner if not external success. If it's not too intrusive to say, I encourage you to think deeply. Some suffering is immense, but with sufficient time and growth, it can become a tool for making you a better person in some way, such as having wisdom, compassion, clarity, or an unexpected groundedness in the trials that life inevitably will bring whether we deserve them or not. No one is free of discomfort, suffering or grief, but we cannot grow without a measure of some of these things; humans and most all living things are hardwired to need challenge and struggle in order to grow, survive, and succeed. For those whose suffering is more than they are capable of going through and whose challenges are also insurmountable, you have my deep compassion, and I respect your autonomy to make the best possible choices for yourself.
I wish everyone everywhere the following: freedom from suffering; equanimity; autonomy; empowerment; receipt of compassion, comfort and mercy from themselves and from others; and an abundance of moments of both deep and expansive joy; as well as the perfect meeting of their basic and inherent needs. I wish this even for those who have harmed me or who willingly harm others, because if we all had these things, especially every thing after the first (since some suffering will happen to all), then there would be neither need nor motivation to harm, and they could connect with themselves and others in the most positive and satisfying ways. That's my view anyway.
I recently wrote on the forum that something very beneficial about this place is that we can have a sort of deathbed gathering that an older dying person with loved ones could receive, in order to have support and well wishes as they exit from life. That is my purpose for myself for this thread. For anyone who would like to do such for me, I am grateful. For those who find it too difficult, or who cannot or do not want to, I respect that. I ask for nothing that anyone is unwilling or incapable of giving, just as I do not offer things when I cannot or do not want to give them. For those who choose to react or post in support or compassion, I humbly and from the depths of my heart say thank you. Laughter is welcome here, by the way, along the lines of funny things that have happened here, or something you know me well enough to know will crack me up. If there's something to look back on and celebrate, let's honor that and celebrate, too. I must say, I am hugely grateful that I do not have to be alone in all but the last step of my incredibly challenging, strange, and occasionally fulfilling and wonderful life.
I'll make a final comment in the thread before I go, I'm not sure in how many hours it will be. If I back out, then I will say so, and I'll re-read this thread when I'm ready to attempt in order to recieve anew the support that's already been given. Whatever my last comment, I still request that the mods ban me after, and I will never ask to be unbanned, period. If such a request is received, or if someone later makes an account and claims they're me, it's not me. The forum for me has reached a point where the toxicity has tipped the scales to outweigh the significant interpersonal supportive benefits I joined for and experienced. Even if I were unwise enough to go back later and read something other than this thread, which would bait me to want to disagree or to defend myself or anyone else, I need for my own peace to move on. Whether with regard to the forum or to any situation in life, including my experience of life as it has been for some time now...
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Respect is part of it, but isn't the word I'm looking for so much as sanity and safety.
On the very off chance that my parents read this, there's a note for them in the spoiler below:
Ah, you jerks. My choice and action had nothing to do with you. If it did, I would have told you. I don't do bullshit, and I won't now just because I'm leaving. I have some good memories, some gratitude, some respect that you did not demand but earned, and some love, but there is so much you refused intervention and accountability for. I have compassion for what led you to function as you have throughout my life up to the very freakin' end.
I don't respect that you shut me out of the family for demanding accountability and acknowledgement of the shit that actually happened in our family, which you would have had to do if you accepted my forgiveness, and I especially don't respect that afterward you used my photo and put words into my mouth to manipulate others into believing we still have a relationship. You didn't own your choice. You repeatedly betrayed me.
If you claimed my body after rejecting me in life, you already have experienced burdens and consequences. I have compassion for fucking up and suffering the consequences, I have abundant experience with that, but I am also disgusted and justifiably angered if you made such a choice, as I strongly suspect based on your consistent behaviors throughout my life. It is yet another act to ignore my autonomy and just do what the fuck you want because of entitlement or ass-covering. If you did this, it is a huge betrayal even though I'm gone, and quite frankly, you can fuck off with that. If I guessed wrong, I am glad. I have compassion that you suffered learning I died, and that you had to make a decision about my body, though I suspect the decision was more about how you would feel rather than how I would feel about it. I'm just pissed. I'm pissed that you discarded me and yet, at the end of my life, making the hardest decision one could make, I've spent so much time considering how you would feel, how you would be impacted.
If you go searching for answers about my reasons for dying, not only is it a violation of the boundaries of my most inner, private self, but you will find no answers, because it's the one thing I never told another person. Instead, you may come across criticisms of you where I have still been trying to work out shit about you. That's what you get for sticking your noses where you know they don't belong, but justify to yourselves that you can stick them anywhere anyway -- and then get offended and defensive for any consequence or calling to account. As far as my reasons go, no matter what I say, you won't understand, and you will assume I am somehow blameworthy, as is your way. You relinquished any consideration for being told, and I'm done with both explaining and defending myself to you.
I struggled with the decision to not leave you a note, and chose not to because you just don't hear what I say. If there's even the slightest chance that what I say will get through, you had to go looking for it yourselves.
If there is such a thing as a soul or a spirit, I promise you that I will neither haunt you nor try to guide or protect you. I've made a firm decision to permanently go no contact with the world, and I have no desire to be a hovering saint; I tried enough of that in life, and I often would have done better to focus on other things.
Thank you for the great gifts of humor and laughter, which served my enjoyment of life as well as my resilience, and for instilling in me to strive to be ethical and seek to act with integrity.
I deeply and sincerely wish for your well-being, but it's your responsibilities to make happen for yourselves. I love you, I am deeply angry with you and sometimes hate you, and have always experienced all of this. For better or worse, it is at last done between us, although, really, except for the feelings, it has been for a while. Again, my leaving is nothing to do with you, nor is it something I'm doing to you.
I'm exiting life with my spine straight and my head high, and with self-worth, love and courage. I overcame much, I strove hard, and I earned my self-respect. Not a bad ending.
Rest well GPE.
