WillOxyWork
Student
- Jul 4, 2020
- 126
I was adopted at birth into a very well-off family who have always financially supported me, and it feels wrong to plan to ctb when they still support me and I don't have financial problems.
I think my issues started when I was bullied as a child. I've always been very kind and quiet, and some people identified it as a weakness, and I was bullied relentlessly over several summers. I believe that's when my social anxiety started.
My parents sent me to an exceptional private school which was very demanding. My social anxiety combined with the stress of the school drove me into depression, and one day when I was 17 years old, I just couldn't get myself out of bed to go to school anymore. I wasn't suicidal, just completely demotivated. My parents didn't know what to do, so, on the recommendation of my therapist (whom I had been forced to see for a couple years because my parents thought I played too many video games), I was sent to one of the best psychiatric wards for teens in the area.
In this ward, I was exposed to and learned about maladaptive coping mechanisms, such as self-harm and suicidal ideation. I wasn't in the psychiatric ward very long - they figured out an antidepressant regimen for me and found me a psychiatrist, and sent me on my way. Once I was out of the ward, I started having thoughts of self-harm for the first time, as I had just learned about it and the possibility that it could help alleviate my existential anguish. I shallowly harmed myself a couple times, once with a knife, once with my own fingernails, but it did nothing for me. I started having more and more thoughts of suicide, but never formed a plan. These thoughts of suicide had me in-and-out of the psychiatric ward for the next several weeks. I tried going back to school again, but I still couldn't handle it, as I was still very depressed and wished to end my existence.
Since I failed at my first and only attempt to go back to school since the onset of my depression, my parents did not know what to do, and they were very worried about my safety because I had expressed that I did not want to live. My psychiatrist recommended a wilderness therapy program, and so that's where I went. Throughout issues with my mental illness, my parents would pretty much unquestioningly do whatever the "professional" recommended. Wilderness "therapy" was an absolute nightmare. Stripped of my belongings, I lived in the Blue Ridge mountains in Georgia for six weeks, hiking all day long, exposed to the elements, sheltering under a small blue tarp at night. This was not conducive to the mental health of a 17-year-old who suffered from depression. Every day I cried and just wanted to go home. I was able to write letters to my parents, and begged them to let me come home, but they wouldn't budge. My wilderness therapist told them I would try to convince them of this and not to give in. Eventually the six weeks were up, and I thought I would be able to come home finally, but my wilderness therapist recommended after care in the form of a "therapeutic" boarding school.
This boarding school was the single worst experience of my life. I was essentially imprisoned there for 18 months, until I was almost 19 years old. I legally could have left when I turned 18, but my parents would not have allowed me to return home, and I would have had nowhere to go.
The rules at the boarding school were bewildering. There were around 100 students there of both genders, but we were expressly forbidden from having any sort of romantic relationship. There was also this concept of bans, that any advisor could decide to put you on. These bans had dubious therapeutic value. Usually one was banned from talking to a specific group of students, such as new students, or the opposite sex, or the same sex. However, one could be banned from literally anything, such as looking in the mirror or even speaking. Students were forbidden from saying any sort of curse word. We were not allowed to own any personal electronics, except for a low-end laptop expressly for school work. These laptops had no internet access and were periodically seized for inspection, to ensure students did not have any other applications besides MS Paint and a word processing application. Since no students had cell phones, we had minimal contact with friends from the outside, although we were permitted to write them pre-approved letters. There was no internet access of any kind (even supervised), and we could only call our parents once a week using a landline in a phone room provided by the school. We were never allowed to leave the school grounds except on very rare trips for bowling or to the movies, or when our parents visited. Students only got to travel home for a single, few-day home visit near the end of their stays. We were also subjected to drug tests at any time.
Consistent disregard to the rules would get a student sent to suspension, where you were basically locked in single room of desks with other students, outside of attending classes and one hour of exercise. You were disallowed from talking to anyone besides staff. Advisors could also arbitrarily decide to send you to suspension for therapeutic reasons. Disregard to a major rule, such as romance or leaving campus, would cause a student to be immediately sent back to wilderness therapy.
We attended normal classes during the weekdays, but consistently had group therapy three times a week and workshops about once every two months. Therapy at the boarding school was terrifying. I don't think anyone should have to feel terror when about to go into a group therapy session, but that was a consistent feeling for all students. The school's style of therapy was "tough love." Advisors would yell at and criticize students for anything and everything, in an effort to break them down so they could build them back up again. Students were encouraged to join in on this criticism as well, especially during workshops.
The workshops had some of the most screwed-up exercises which could in no way be conducive to mental health. Two exercises I will never forgot: Harshest Judgment and Lifeboat. Harshest Judgment consisted of sitting in a circle with all of your peers. One student would be chosen as the target, and every single peer would tell that student what their harshest judgment of that person was. These judgments were completely unfiltered, such as "You think you're better than everyone else and I don't like you at all" and "You are a selfish piece of shit and are incapable of love." Most of my peers resented me, because I had the highest GPA and I felt like I did not belong at the school because I had never done drugs before (most students were there for drug-related issues). Imagine having every single one of your peers at school telling you their worst possible thoughts about you. How is that supposed to be therapeutic? The school's argument was that these thoughts were just projections of the criticizer's own issues, but there is no way that subjecting a student to receive these projections is beneficial to their psyche or self-esteem.
Lifeboat was a hypothetical situation where all peers where on a sinking ship together, and there were only three seats in the lifeboat to escape death. Everyone but three students had to die, and we had to choose amongst ourselves who would live and who would die. We were forced to individually speak to one another, telling others exactly why you chose for them to live or die. Since most of my peers resented me for my academic success and no glaring issues outside of depression, they all chose for me to die. Every single one of my peers told me why I deserved to die. Again, how is that therapeutic? Thankfully this school has since closed its doors for good as bad word spread about it.
I finally graduated from the boarding school and prepared to attend college. Being free of the chains of that boarding school was the biggest relief I had ever felt. I could finally play video games again, listen to music, and see my friends. However, the school left me in no way prepared for the real world, especially in terms of personal relationships. I hugged people way more than was necessary, and I was sometimes brutally honest with people, as that was how the boarding school had taught me to interact with others. I had no idea how to pursue someone of the opposite sex in romance, as I never had the opportunity to do so beforehand. My college only had about 1800 students attending, and everyone pretty much knew of all the other students, even if they didn't know them by name. Because I was so socially unprepared for college and the college was small, I felt like I was painted as one of the weird kids and felt alienated. My lack of social success, especially in finding a romantic partner, brought me into a deep depression, and I eventually dropped out of school and returned home.
I found a job working at a gym, as fitness had become a great outlet for my depression. Around this time, I became aware of how socially maladjusted my boarding school had left me, and learned how to interact better with others, especially those of the opposite sex. My job was fine until I got a new manager, who was incompetent and heartless. I again sank into a deep depression, wished for death, and quit that job. This bout of depression lasted about 10 months, until my father told me he was going to kick me to the curb unless I got a new job or went back to school. So I hastily decided to go back to school and applied to a solid nearby college without fully considering my options.
It took me five additional years to finish my undergraduate degree, as I fought with bouts of depression and anxiety and had to change majors because my original major was too stressful. However, I eventually pulled myself together academically in fall 2017 and graduated near the top of my class in spring 2019. I was accepted to a master's program at my school with a scholarship. For the first time in my life, I was succeeding and felt great about myself.
I was almost halfway through my master's program in November 2019 when I came down with a nasty, persistent infection that required surgery. I had a 4.0 GPA in the program, but had to take a leave of absence and wait to continue the program 12 months later. It was a major blow to my life and was so disheartening. I tried to find a job after I recovered from surgery, but my recovery was long, and by the time I was better, COVID was on the horizon. I was about to be officially hired for an awesome job doing something I love, when the hiring company enacted a hiring freeze because of the pandemic. That's when I really started feeling depressed again, but I was still hanging in there, just quarantining with my girlfriend, weed, and video games.
However, near the end of May, I stupidly exposed myself to a power tool without protecting my hearing. My ear had already suffered a major acoustic trauma two years previously, but I thought I had recovered, and I didn't think the power tool could be dangerously loud. The power tool really screwed up my ear this time, and I have now had incessant ringing in my right ear for almost two months. Not only that, but the ear injury triggered some sort of vestibular disorder, and now I have more trouble focusing my eyes, I see more floaters, and I see flashes of light that aren't there. These new ailments destroyed me mentally, and I was so absorbed in my own misery that my girlfriend left me, because I wasn't being attentive to her needs.
Now I'm all alone, with two new ailments – tinnitus and vestibular disorder. There is no cure for either of these illnesses and I'm just supposed to learn to live with this. I don't think I can learn to live with this. Life was already hard enough, and now I'm supposed to endure 24/7 ringing in my ears and vision changes? I can't enjoy my main hobby anymore – competitive video games like Valorant, because I need headphones for directional sound, and I can't wear headphones because my ears are so damaged. When I play other games, I have to keep the volume quite low, too low to fully enjoy any game. Gaming and my girlfriend were my only sources of happiness during the isolation of quarantine, and they are both gone. I haven't been this suicidal in ages.
I should have everything I need for SN suicide in a few days. However, I can't help but thinking I don't have the right to end my own life. My parents see the agony I am in and are trying so hard to help me, and they continue to support me financially. But I can't endure the isolation of COVID along with my new lifelong ailments. It's just too much.
I think my issues started when I was bullied as a child. I've always been very kind and quiet, and some people identified it as a weakness, and I was bullied relentlessly over several summers. I believe that's when my social anxiety started.
My parents sent me to an exceptional private school which was very demanding. My social anxiety combined with the stress of the school drove me into depression, and one day when I was 17 years old, I just couldn't get myself out of bed to go to school anymore. I wasn't suicidal, just completely demotivated. My parents didn't know what to do, so, on the recommendation of my therapist (whom I had been forced to see for a couple years because my parents thought I played too many video games), I was sent to one of the best psychiatric wards for teens in the area.
In this ward, I was exposed to and learned about maladaptive coping mechanisms, such as self-harm and suicidal ideation. I wasn't in the psychiatric ward very long - they figured out an antidepressant regimen for me and found me a psychiatrist, and sent me on my way. Once I was out of the ward, I started having thoughts of self-harm for the first time, as I had just learned about it and the possibility that it could help alleviate my existential anguish. I shallowly harmed myself a couple times, once with a knife, once with my own fingernails, but it did nothing for me. I started having more and more thoughts of suicide, but never formed a plan. These thoughts of suicide had me in-and-out of the psychiatric ward for the next several weeks. I tried going back to school again, but I still couldn't handle it, as I was still very depressed and wished to end my existence.
Since I failed at my first and only attempt to go back to school since the onset of my depression, my parents did not know what to do, and they were very worried about my safety because I had expressed that I did not want to live. My psychiatrist recommended a wilderness therapy program, and so that's where I went. Throughout issues with my mental illness, my parents would pretty much unquestioningly do whatever the "professional" recommended. Wilderness "therapy" was an absolute nightmare. Stripped of my belongings, I lived in the Blue Ridge mountains in Georgia for six weeks, hiking all day long, exposed to the elements, sheltering under a small blue tarp at night. This was not conducive to the mental health of a 17-year-old who suffered from depression. Every day I cried and just wanted to go home. I was able to write letters to my parents, and begged them to let me come home, but they wouldn't budge. My wilderness therapist told them I would try to convince them of this and not to give in. Eventually the six weeks were up, and I thought I would be able to come home finally, but my wilderness therapist recommended after care in the form of a "therapeutic" boarding school.
This boarding school was the single worst experience of my life. I was essentially imprisoned there for 18 months, until I was almost 19 years old. I legally could have left when I turned 18, but my parents would not have allowed me to return home, and I would have had nowhere to go.
The rules at the boarding school were bewildering. There were around 100 students there of both genders, but we were expressly forbidden from having any sort of romantic relationship. There was also this concept of bans, that any advisor could decide to put you on. These bans had dubious therapeutic value. Usually one was banned from talking to a specific group of students, such as new students, or the opposite sex, or the same sex. However, one could be banned from literally anything, such as looking in the mirror or even speaking. Students were forbidden from saying any sort of curse word. We were not allowed to own any personal electronics, except for a low-end laptop expressly for school work. These laptops had no internet access and were periodically seized for inspection, to ensure students did not have any other applications besides MS Paint and a word processing application. Since no students had cell phones, we had minimal contact with friends from the outside, although we were permitted to write them pre-approved letters. There was no internet access of any kind (even supervised), and we could only call our parents once a week using a landline in a phone room provided by the school. We were never allowed to leave the school grounds except on very rare trips for bowling or to the movies, or when our parents visited. Students only got to travel home for a single, few-day home visit near the end of their stays. We were also subjected to drug tests at any time.
Consistent disregard to the rules would get a student sent to suspension, where you were basically locked in single room of desks with other students, outside of attending classes and one hour of exercise. You were disallowed from talking to anyone besides staff. Advisors could also arbitrarily decide to send you to suspension for therapeutic reasons. Disregard to a major rule, such as romance or leaving campus, would cause a student to be immediately sent back to wilderness therapy.
We attended normal classes during the weekdays, but consistently had group therapy three times a week and workshops about once every two months. Therapy at the boarding school was terrifying. I don't think anyone should have to feel terror when about to go into a group therapy session, but that was a consistent feeling for all students. The school's style of therapy was "tough love." Advisors would yell at and criticize students for anything and everything, in an effort to break them down so they could build them back up again. Students were encouraged to join in on this criticism as well, especially during workshops.
The workshops had some of the most screwed-up exercises which could in no way be conducive to mental health. Two exercises I will never forgot: Harshest Judgment and Lifeboat. Harshest Judgment consisted of sitting in a circle with all of your peers. One student would be chosen as the target, and every single peer would tell that student what their harshest judgment of that person was. These judgments were completely unfiltered, such as "You think you're better than everyone else and I don't like you at all" and "You are a selfish piece of shit and are incapable of love." Most of my peers resented me, because I had the highest GPA and I felt like I did not belong at the school because I had never done drugs before (most students were there for drug-related issues). Imagine having every single one of your peers at school telling you their worst possible thoughts about you. How is that supposed to be therapeutic? The school's argument was that these thoughts were just projections of the criticizer's own issues, but there is no way that subjecting a student to receive these projections is beneficial to their psyche or self-esteem.
Lifeboat was a hypothetical situation where all peers where on a sinking ship together, and there were only three seats in the lifeboat to escape death. Everyone but three students had to die, and we had to choose amongst ourselves who would live and who would die. We were forced to individually speak to one another, telling others exactly why you chose for them to live or die. Since most of my peers resented me for my academic success and no glaring issues outside of depression, they all chose for me to die. Every single one of my peers told me why I deserved to die. Again, how is that therapeutic? Thankfully this school has since closed its doors for good as bad word spread about it.
I finally graduated from the boarding school and prepared to attend college. Being free of the chains of that boarding school was the biggest relief I had ever felt. I could finally play video games again, listen to music, and see my friends. However, the school left me in no way prepared for the real world, especially in terms of personal relationships. I hugged people way more than was necessary, and I was sometimes brutally honest with people, as that was how the boarding school had taught me to interact with others. I had no idea how to pursue someone of the opposite sex in romance, as I never had the opportunity to do so beforehand. My college only had about 1800 students attending, and everyone pretty much knew of all the other students, even if they didn't know them by name. Because I was so socially unprepared for college and the college was small, I felt like I was painted as one of the weird kids and felt alienated. My lack of social success, especially in finding a romantic partner, brought me into a deep depression, and I eventually dropped out of school and returned home.
I found a job working at a gym, as fitness had become a great outlet for my depression. Around this time, I became aware of how socially maladjusted my boarding school had left me, and learned how to interact better with others, especially those of the opposite sex. My job was fine until I got a new manager, who was incompetent and heartless. I again sank into a deep depression, wished for death, and quit that job. This bout of depression lasted about 10 months, until my father told me he was going to kick me to the curb unless I got a new job or went back to school. So I hastily decided to go back to school and applied to a solid nearby college without fully considering my options.
It took me five additional years to finish my undergraduate degree, as I fought with bouts of depression and anxiety and had to change majors because my original major was too stressful. However, I eventually pulled myself together academically in fall 2017 and graduated near the top of my class in spring 2019. I was accepted to a master's program at my school with a scholarship. For the first time in my life, I was succeeding and felt great about myself.
I was almost halfway through my master's program in November 2019 when I came down with a nasty, persistent infection that required surgery. I had a 4.0 GPA in the program, but had to take a leave of absence and wait to continue the program 12 months later. It was a major blow to my life and was so disheartening. I tried to find a job after I recovered from surgery, but my recovery was long, and by the time I was better, COVID was on the horizon. I was about to be officially hired for an awesome job doing something I love, when the hiring company enacted a hiring freeze because of the pandemic. That's when I really started feeling depressed again, but I was still hanging in there, just quarantining with my girlfriend, weed, and video games.
However, near the end of May, I stupidly exposed myself to a power tool without protecting my hearing. My ear had already suffered a major acoustic trauma two years previously, but I thought I had recovered, and I didn't think the power tool could be dangerously loud. The power tool really screwed up my ear this time, and I have now had incessant ringing in my right ear for almost two months. Not only that, but the ear injury triggered some sort of vestibular disorder, and now I have more trouble focusing my eyes, I see more floaters, and I see flashes of light that aren't there. These new ailments destroyed me mentally, and I was so absorbed in my own misery that my girlfriend left me, because I wasn't being attentive to her needs.
Now I'm all alone, with two new ailments – tinnitus and vestibular disorder. There is no cure for either of these illnesses and I'm just supposed to learn to live with this. I don't think I can learn to live with this. Life was already hard enough, and now I'm supposed to endure 24/7 ringing in my ears and vision changes? I can't enjoy my main hobby anymore – competitive video games like Valorant, because I need headphones for directional sound, and I can't wear headphones because my ears are so damaged. When I play other games, I have to keep the volume quite low, too low to fully enjoy any game. Gaming and my girlfriend were my only sources of happiness during the isolation of quarantine, and they are both gone. I haven't been this suicidal in ages.
I should have everything I need for SN suicide in a few days. However, I can't help but thinking I don't have the right to end my own life. My parents see the agony I am in and are trying so hard to help me, and they continue to support me financially. But I can't endure the isolation of COVID along with my new lifelong ailments. It's just too much.
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