Maybe this is just my beef ...

[Yuri Yurovich]

So I often feel desperate to talk to someone about my problems or my desire to end it all. Unfortunately, friends and family don't work. When I meet with a friend, I would rather just enjoy the conversation and presence of someone friendly. I've resolved myself to talk to them time after time, only to chicken out in their presence. With family ... well, that's fucked up. I grew up in a family where no one could talk about anything important, and my sister has kind of freaked out when I tried to raise touchy subjects before, so I am reluctant to go that route.

Which brings me to therapists. Can't speak for anyone else but there have only be a couple of therapists that I could really talk to about things. Maybe that is my fault, but I have found some just have no fucking rapport with a patient. I imagine that just happens from time to time, but then that is what therapists are paid for, aren't they? At present, much as I would like someone to talk to I can't bring myself to seek out a therapist, since I don't want to go through the disappointment and sense of futility having another lame stilted conversation would bring.

Sometimes I want to sew my lips shut and never say a word again. I despair of the worth of attempting to communicate with any other human being.

In a way, I think hope is the fucking worst. I have pretty much concluded that my life is over for all intents and purposes. I don't even want to try again. But then I get some stupid fucking glimmer of hope that there might be some way of achieving greater fulfillment in the years I might have left (please let them be few). I wonder if I could kill whatever part of me that gives rise to hope, if I could just live without too much misery. If I could turn myself into an automaton. But it seems likely the only thing that can kill hope is death.

 

[FuneralCry]

I personally believe that any kind of conversation about suicide would only make things worse, as others cannot understand what we go through as they don't experience life the same way. Any kind of conversation could likely just lead to invalidation and after all, we live in a world where suicide is so stigmatised, and other people are more focused on preventing suicide rather than respecting the person's decision. In this world so many people are against the right to die.

But having any hope does often just lead to more suffering, as if someone has hope it's just something for them to lose once they are forced to confront the reality of this existence.

 

[Yuri Yurovich]

Thanks for your response FuneralCry!

I was wondering who you mean when you speak of 'we'---those who are suicidal, I suppose, but would you extend that to the depressed, the mentally ill, and others like this? I guess I mean, would you identify the group of 'we' by specific causes of suicidality?

Doubtlessly, you are correct that (I suppose this incorporates my assumptions of what you are saying) depression is misunderstood and poorly understood and stigmatized as well. And this goes double for being suicidal. The conversations I don't want to have anymore are the ones that just adopt the received wisdom about these things and repeat generic slogans that are meant to be helpful, encouraging, or supportive, or whatever.

On the other hand, reacting myself to my own post, I know I don't want to assign all the blame for poor communication to others. I know why I struggle so hard to communicate---I haven't been honest myself about what my problems are, and done my best to avoid realizing the truth too clearly. A self-protective measure, that doesn't really help to protect anything but maybe even exposes me to more harm.

Throughout my life, I have looked for the right way to express what I am going through, to find what is actually authentic for me, but progressively realizing my own self-dishonesty, I have come to distrust my own 'insights'. The self seems like a Hall of Mirrors where you can't distinguish the distorting ones from the clear ones. If that is true, as well as the previous doubts about communication, then maybe small talk and idle conversation are as good as it ever gets. If so, I just want out.

So that's where I have ended up. Desperate for conversation that I don't believe will do any good, hungry for human connection but despairing of my own fitness for it, wondering if I should really just shut up and never express myself but unable to stop thinking about what to say to people to explain myself. Stymied by myself at every turn.

If I really can't do anything differently, if I can't change, I wish I knew for certain. I think it would be much easier to resolve to end it all.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

Yuri, it really is hard to talk about these darker topics outside of spaces where others have been through similar struggles. It's always a risk to open up to others because we can never truly know how they will respond.

A good litmus test, I think, is observing how they respond to other people's vunerability. Are they compassionate, do they try to understand? Do they have judgement towards those in worse circumstances than them?

Communication is really difficult when there's a risk of being misunderstood. Therapy was useless for me too, and many others will share your feelings about the matter. If peer support groups exist where you live, these sorts of things may likely be a lot more useful to you than therapy.

Not only do you have the pressure of one on one conversation lifted in this setting, but there's a lot more voices in the room and a higher chance of finding someone you can connect with, compared to therapists who usually can't personally relate to the topics their patients want to discuss.

Hope can be a cruel mistress like many other things in life. I hope that you'll be able to find anything that comforts you or gives you some peace of mind.

 

[RUPA]

Hope is an interesting thing. It could be very dangerous.
If you have it too close, you will suffer greatly. If you let it die, then you will begin to wither and die.
So, I decided to have "a little" hope that one day in the near future, I succeed in leaving this human physical form.

 

[Rounded Agony]

Just wanna echo the note about hope, with the set of quotations I've got as my signature below ↓↓

 

[Yuri Yurovich]

Just wanna echo the note about hope, with the set of quotations I've got as my signature below ↓↓

Ouch!

 

[theboy]

Sometimes we feel that our mouths are padlocked shut.