I've been wanting to document this for a while. The reality is that, on this forum, most people are brought together by a desire to die because life is intolerable. But it's not like that in the real world. Beyond this forum, two people who say that they want to die will be treated very differently. There are the deserving and undeserving suffering. Those whose pain is believed and validated and addressed, and others who are insulted, humiliated and dismissed. I've experienced the latter first hand.
My friend decided one day that she wanted attention (she disclosed this to me afterwards, saying that that was her intention all along), and so she went to a bridge and made it look like she wanted to jump off. For context, she is one of those people who others always show concern for, and I don't mean this in a nasty way, but she loves it when people are concerned for her. She loves the attention. But anyway, she didn't jump, was taken to hospital and then sectioned. This is taking place in the UK, by the way, where the underfunded NHS system means that people who have just made a serious attempt to take their own life are sometimes not even found an available bed. The friend was later released after she was deemed to not need the bed. She then went back to her intensive therapy programme that she had been on all along anyway.
In contrast, when I expressed how I felt (this was well before my friend's 'incident') to professionals, I was told that it was 'an aggressive use of the issue'. In 'reaching out', like we're always told to do, they said I was doing it in an aggressive way, and they made jokes about it in my notes. When I went on to make a suicide attempt, the same people who accused me of using the issue 'aggressively', then told me people just wanted to 'get rid of' me and laughed in my face.
So when people tell you to reach out, what they neglect to mention is that if you don't fit their idea of what a suffering person should look like, don't bother. If you're angry at the world rather than sad and self pitying, they won't believe you. If you don't communicate pain or suffering the way they think you should, don't bother. What they don't say is that some people's lives matter and other people'a don't. Some people's distress will be viewed as a threat whilst other people's distress is seen as genuine. What they don't know is that they have it all wrong. The funny thing is that they still have the audacity to ask 'how are you?' They still expect you to tell them your most painful thoughts. Or maybe they don't eclectic that. They ask the question so that they can say they covered their bases. But knowing that they've essentially made sure you never speak your thoughts again, whatever happens next isn't their problem. The only thing to come out of the whole ordeal is that I know that everything I ever thought about my place on the world is true - I have no place. I don't belong here. My presence frustrates people. They don't say so because we're supposed to believe or at least outwardly project the idea that all human life matters. That can be true at the same time as it is true that if certain people died, few tears would be shed. I'm one of those people, and the realisation hurts but it's ok. I feel like the world's rag doll. And that's not because I think 'woe is me'. I'm fully aware how lucky I am, but it doesn't cancel out any of the hurt or pain, or any of the wrong done to me. But just like a rag doll, people think that I'm made to be battered, and because I don't instantly fall apart, they keep going and going and going. But everyone has their limits.
The only people I really care about are my family, and it's them that I cry for every day. All the other noise doesn't matter. People can say what they like. It only hurts because as a result of people not believing my pain, they never offer to help, I never get the chance to make my family proud and repay them for everything they've done for me. I love them so much, and I think they know me. They don't believe the paper version of me that professionals and all these other people create of me. Nobody knows my soul but I suppose my family comes closest. I'm not the manipulative, horrible person that they portrayed. I was scared, desperate, confused, hurt.
Why is it that when I'm hurting and I say so people make it about themsleves. It's a 'threat' against them, somehow. How self absorbed to people have to be to think that your pain is a dig at them? How fucked up does a service have to be to demonise someone for crying, expressing their pain. The pain is indescribable. I hope they find this. I hope they find all of these threads one day. Maybe after the fact they will view it differently. Maybe after I'm gone, quietly without a fuss, they'll realise it was never about them.
My friend decided one day that she wanted attention (she disclosed this to me afterwards, saying that that was her intention all along), and so she went to a bridge and made it look like she wanted to jump off. For context, she is one of those people who others always show concern for, and I don't mean this in a nasty way, but she loves it when people are concerned for her. She loves the attention. But anyway, she didn't jump, was taken to hospital and then sectioned. This is taking place in the UK, by the way, where the underfunded NHS system means that people who have just made a serious attempt to take their own life are sometimes not even found an available bed. The friend was later released after she was deemed to not need the bed. She then went back to her intensive therapy programme that she had been on all along anyway.
In contrast, when I expressed how I felt (this was well before my friend's 'incident') to professionals, I was told that it was 'an aggressive use of the issue'. In 'reaching out', like we're always told to do, they said I was doing it in an aggressive way, and they made jokes about it in my notes. When I went on to make a suicide attempt, the same people who accused me of using the issue 'aggressively', then told me people just wanted to 'get rid of' me and laughed in my face.
So when people tell you to reach out, what they neglect to mention is that if you don't fit their idea of what a suffering person should look like, don't bother. If you're angry at the world rather than sad and self pitying, they won't believe you. If you don't communicate pain or suffering the way they think you should, don't bother. What they don't say is that some people's lives matter and other people'a don't. Some people's distress will be viewed as a threat whilst other people's distress is seen as genuine. What they don't know is that they have it all wrong. The funny thing is that they still have the audacity to ask 'how are you?' They still expect you to tell them your most painful thoughts. Or maybe they don't eclectic that. They ask the question so that they can say they covered their bases. But knowing that they've essentially made sure you never speak your thoughts again, whatever happens next isn't their problem. The only thing to come out of the whole ordeal is that I know that everything I ever thought about my place on the world is true - I have no place. I don't belong here. My presence frustrates people. They don't say so because we're supposed to believe or at least outwardly project the idea that all human life matters. That can be true at the same time as it is true that if certain people died, few tears would be shed. I'm one of those people, and the realisation hurts but it's ok. I feel like the world's rag doll. And that's not because I think 'woe is me'. I'm fully aware how lucky I am, but it doesn't cancel out any of the hurt or pain, or any of the wrong done to me. But just like a rag doll, people think that I'm made to be battered, and because I don't instantly fall apart, they keep going and going and going. But everyone has their limits.
The only people I really care about are my family, and it's them that I cry for every day. All the other noise doesn't matter. People can say what they like. It only hurts because as a result of people not believing my pain, they never offer to help, I never get the chance to make my family proud and repay them for everything they've done for me. I love them so much, and I think they know me. They don't believe the paper version of me that professionals and all these other people create of me. Nobody knows my soul but I suppose my family comes closest. I'm not the manipulative, horrible person that they portrayed. I was scared, desperate, confused, hurt.
Why is it that when I'm hurting and I say so people make it about themsleves. It's a 'threat' against them, somehow. How self absorbed to people have to be to think that your pain is a dig at them? How fucked up does a service have to be to demonise someone for crying, expressing their pain. The pain is indescribable. I hope they find this. I hope they find all of these threads one day. Maybe after the fact they will view it differently. Maybe after I'm gone, quietly without a fuss, they'll realise it was never about them.
