Venting I'd rather get better, but I don't think it's possible

[turnip]

Hi all — new here. Needed to get some stuff out. Apologies if this isn't allowed.

I think I've been mentally ill since the day I was born. I can't remember ever feeling truly happy. My last memory of really looking forward to a distant future was in a house I moved from when I was 8. And it's not like the outside world was causing it, if I'm honest. Sure, my dad left when I was 3 and visited so inconsistently that I'll have irreparable abandonment issues until the day I die, but there was no reason for me to be having a meltdown and a half every day of my life. My poor single mother probably didn't do all the right things, but I was a nightmare. It was just her and I. What was she supposed to do?

I got suspended from school for talking about my suicide plan at 11. I started antidepressants at 12. I started cutting at 13, and my first attempt was around that time too. This entire time I'm bouncing between incompetent child psychiatrists and the odd therapist for a few sessions at a time, as my mom's insurance could afford. I went to the ER many times through high school for help, but was sent home almost every time for not having a specific enough plan. The one time they didn't send me home, they sent me, on my own, to a room in a run-down nursing home in a part of the city I'd never been in solely for the benefit of having a nurse on site. I was 18 at the oldest and still in high school. This is also when I was diagnosed with BPD (surprise!!!) by the outpatient psychiatrist.

I haven't been able to find a psychiatrist since. I'm 30 now. My family doctor says she has no one to refer me to. I've been to the ER many times. In college, I tried to get help at Health Services and got told I was "lucky to not have the police called on me" after I admitted to having punched an emotionally and sexually abusive then-boyfriend — the thing I felt so bad about that it was the reason I sought help in the first place. When I finally got admitted to a hospital at 27 (only because I lived alone on a high floor at the time) the psychiatrists were rude and dismissive the second BPD came up. I had to self-advocate, in a psych ward, to be prescribed an antidepressant because "BPD doesn't need meds." As though emotional regulation skills are so easy when every emotion you're feeling is double what anyone else's are.

And I guess now, after a year of being evicted from my home, leaving a 9-year relationship and losing most of my friends, here I am again. In the place where the suicidal thoughts are all that's left. Don't get me wrong — I'm suicidal every day of my life. Even on my best days, I know without a doubt that my cause of death will be suicide. If I got better tomorrow, my cause of death would still be suicide, because 30 years of ideation has destroyed my ability to plan for the future to the point where I can never retire.

It's been a long time since I actually attempted. To be honest, I'm terrified. I feel like I'm just waiting for things to get bad enough that emotion takes over and I do it impulsively. In an ideal world, I'd love to get better. But all I know is how badly the supports I need aren't there. The doctors don't exist. More work accommodations will get me fired. Government disability is poverty. The stigma of BPD will always overshadow my ability to get care.

One anti-choice argument is that legalizing MAID for mental health will encourage people to end their lives because of lack of supports. I guess I just don't see what the problem is with that. If doctors and housing and disability assistance were in the works, sure. If we seemed like we were even making progress in that direction, maybe. But we're obviously not. Things are getting worse. I would love to stop suffering in a way that accommodates everyone. Just to function in society. But since that's not an option, please just let me die.

 

[Gangrel]

One anti-choice argument is that legalizing MAID for mental health will encourage people to end their lives because of lack of supports. I guess I just don't see what the problem is with that. If doctors and housing and disability assistance were in the works, sure. If we seemed like we were even making progress in that direction, maybe. But we're obviously not. Things are getting worse. I would love to stop suffering in a way that accommodates everyone. Just to function in society. But since that's not an option, please just let me die.

First of all, i'm so sorry you are feeling this way, i wish life was kinder to you.

About that criticism, i think it has more to do with the fact that government should just have better recovery support and not use suicide as an easy method to get rid of vulnerable groups.

 

[QueerMelancholy]

I think one of the problems is that both sides of the issue are looking for outcomes that rely on an ideal world.

I've read how people here think they're being forced to CTB and I think this is because of how hard it is to get help to recover. Cost IMO is one of the biggest issues when it comes to recovery. But also the people who seem to be more pro-seeking help tend to push that anyone who is physically able should be seeking all the help they can as if they're not doing every last possible thing they could be doing themselves to recover they are failing themselves instead of the system failing them.

Between the cost of help and the almost endless amount of options, I feel like both sides are seeking an answer that depends on an ideal society. Like people are pushing these current problems onto a world that doesn't exist outside our imagination of what an ideal society looks like.

I find it all so strange how we as humans say something so literally and yet communicate these literal statements using imaginary idealism of what the world should be versus what we have access to realistically. One side will think they have done what they could do and the other side will think that no one can ever do enough. As is life itself depends on self-deception and delusional thinking even when people want real answers to real questions.

My rambling aside I am sorry you're going through this. Lack of affordable support can be unnerving. And even when you have the money and the resources at your disposal the thought that one must continuously chase some positive outcome no matter the cost is also unsettling. This whole idea of a silver lining too I find so absurd because people feel death should be "natural" or it is abnormal. Human absurdity knows no bounds because it's as idealistic as it also demands rigid compliance. This pursuit for unrealistic perfection because one should hope for positive outcomes and not give in to realism. As if being realistic alone causes mental illness. Or as if being a realist means one is a pessimist because they accept that both positive and negative outcomes are possible no matter how much hard work or resources one expends for their cause.