I am suicidal. With that one little sentence, sent out onto the internet, I’ve already probably altered the opinion of (I’ll say) dozens of people who consistently read this blog. Many who agree with me will probably start to feel pity; people who disagree with me will take that phrase as carte blanche to twist anything I ever have to say about anything, probably especially my commitment to human life. I can already hear the clicks on the keyboards of people about to send me phone numbers and web pages about the “help” I should get. Others will feel themselves disgusted, or angry at me, perhaps looking to censure me for feeling like this. Others will be of the “I don’t care, stop whining” category. Most of all, people will probably not trust me, because as (the only redeeming line of Gothika says) “No one will believe you when you’re crazy”.
My friends and husband are abreast of this knowledge, having it not be a new development by a long shot. Their reactions run the gambit of the “see above”, with a higher push for the “get help” aspect (right now, Hubby and PE are keeping me on an exercise routine). But, for the most part, denial is the major coping strategy of being close to me.
First, flat out, I am suicidal: I am not sad, I am not psychopathic, and I don’t feel particularly sick. I don’t believe I have any problems with logic (or at least, not any more than any other layperson). It is not because I’m agnostic that I’m suicidal, as I was even more so when I thought heaven was on the other end (which should go to show you how far back this desire has gone).
There are probably two, interrelated reasons on why I want to kill myself. The first is narrow, the second is broad. The narrow one is I have no idea what to do with my life, or how to be happy. I have burned through so many different career options and hobbies it would make one’s head spin. I have not myself to be especially talented in any of them, nor have they filled my mind with the desire to pursue them with the single-minded determinedness that is necessary to even passingly good at them. I see my life stretching out before me as a boring as a mote of dust: a job that anyone else on the planet could do, effecting people in the exact same way than any other person on the planet could. Unremembered by anyone shortly after I died, unnoticed by most right now. More to the point, I have not found something to give me the desire to get through the boredom of the day. If I had to break down my life, I would say that about 75% of it is spent bored: the boredom of waiting for the bus, or in line, or for a friend, or for the car to warm up of traveling in a car or on a plane, my job of staring at a computer screen waiting for something to happen, barely listening to a lecture about some piece of ephemeral law knowledge. About 5% is spent in pleasant, but not great things in life: socializing with friends, watching television, listening to some nice music. About 5% of is spent with the truly great moments: making love (and the after glow), and the life altering moments where I can share in my friends and family’s joy, giving the absolute perfect gift for someone. (I always enjoy other people’s accomplishments more than my own: Hubby’s graduation fits into the “pleasant” category, my own graduation fit into the “boredom” one). 5% is the normal problems of life; from lost keys to fights with friends and families, homework due to final exams, from money worries to friends and families getting sick, and since I’m a political junky, dealing with people who I just cannot understand. And, finally, the last bit of my life is the massive frustration I feel about not knowing: not knowing what to do with my life, not knowing how to make the world a better place, not even know what the better place would look like, and not knowing what I’m here for. While I give it only a nice 10%, it probably is on my mind more than anything else in the world. Why I am here? What am I doing?
This frustration leads directly to reason number two: I don’t know what I’m doing in existence, and larger, why existence is preferable to non-existence. There seems to be some sort of inherent fear of death, something that I never seemed to suffer from. I fear pain, quite a lot, but I actually look forward to dying, and to the comfort of oblivion. But, I have never heard the logical reason for why existence is preferable to nonexistence; the closest I came is to an argument of potentiality: if I die, I have no more potential for happiness. But the problem with that is I will also have no more potential for unhappiness, so this drifts in to the Pascal Wager of potentiality.
There is another argument, that it is immoral to kill myself because all life is equally precious.
To me, this comes down to self-autonomy: I have the right to life, which means I also have the right to kill myself. If I must stay alive, that doesn’t mean that I have the right to live; I have the responsibility to live, which is a very different thing.
So, why haven’t I killed myself one might be asking at this point? As trite as it may sound, because I still care about my loved ones. I realize that they will get over it, but in the intern they will be upset. I know there are people out there who care about me, even love me. And I don’t know why, but for some reason their temporary unhappiness weighs on me more than my life of boredom and unhappiness.
I would very much like to not have to worry about these questions, but philosophy study hasn’t done it, nor has blogging. Before one suggests it, no, I’m not going to a counselor or taking pills. I’ve already gone twice before, and they started to irritate me so much that I finally just started lying so they’d sign the damn papers saying I was sane. Plus, how we treat people with mental illnesses in this society is not kind. On Shakesville yesterday there was a post on how someone was stripped searched against her will by police, under the auspice that she was a suicide risk. There are dozens of different jobs that I would not be allowed to do, and thousands more that I am functionally not allowed to do if they ever found out I wanted to kill myself. And, as I pointed out before, people treat you differently when they know you’re suicidal (see, friends above and the strategy of denial). If I was ever raped again, the odds of people believing me drops down to around 0% (not that it’s particularly high to begin with). So, if anyone has any new insights to the meaning of life in general, I would really like to know about them (since it’s unlikely that anyone knows my meaning of life). What gets you through the day?
I can’t email you, cause I couldn’t find your info on the contact page, but to pre-empt those who may start deluging you with bullshit right, left, and center…I wanted to say, I know how you feel, insomuch as *any* human being can ever really *know* what another feels. You’re not alone. Whether that helps or not…well.
And what gets me through the day? Guilt and small pleasures, just like you. Knowing that it would absolutely shatter my mother, that my father’s anger and alcoholism would eat him alive, that my boyfriends would never forgive themselves for not taking better care of me and not keeping me safe, that it would create a huge crack in the foundations of reality for my little brother, that my heart-sister would hate me forever for having to explain to my nieces why Auntie K is gone…
And the little pleasures. My crotchety old cat yelling from her perch on top of the TV to be picked up and brought down so she doesn’t have to jump, and then cuddling on my chest and purring hard enough to make my face vibrate. Looking forward to each next meal. My twice-a-week belly-dance classes and how graceful and sexy I feel when I dance. Playing video games. Looking at the pretty things I keep near me. Touching the necklace one boyfriend loaned me to hold on to while we’re apart, as a reminder and an anchor until I come home again, and letting myself fall into memories of our time together. Watching the intro to Family Guy with the other boyfriend, and shouting our competing versions of the lyrics at each other trying to be loudest and drown the other out, until it finishes and we collapse in laughter.
Yeah. A lot of my life is boredom, too. I compulsively refresh my feed reader, subscribed to 60 blogs, hoping someone has put something new up for me to read in the past five minutes. Same for my email. I play Flash games that don’t amuse me, and read books I’ve already read a thousand times before.
But when it comes to it, guilt and the little things keep me going.
I’ve tried twice to commit suicide, and wasn’t successful, so I think maybe that isn’t how I’m meant to leave this life. There are a lot of different things that get me through each day. I want to see what kind of adults my grandchildren become. I want to read all the new books coming out in the paranormal romance genre. I have a husband that I love and I don’t want to leave him alone. I want to see if our country really does go to hell in a handbasket or if we ever manage to overcome all the -isms with which we deal on a daily basis (and I want to be one of the voices working against those -isms, even if mine is a small voice). But the biggest thing that keeps me on this earth is that I refuse to give anyone the satisfaction they would reap if I offed myself (and I know one or two people who would be glad if I was gone). We each have to find our own reasons for living. I’ve found mine, and I sincerely hope you find yours.
Like vesta I’ve tried to commit suicide before and since I’m typing this we can agree it didn’t work. Now imagine feeling so down and incompetent that you want to just end it all…and then you fail at trying to do even that. That one still swims around the back of my head.
And as vesta said we each have to find out reason(s) for living. Like most people who feel lost I’m not extraordinary in any way. No skills or abilities that would make me stand out from the crowd. In fact I even call me self an easily forgettable presence, like a wind that you know was there but don’t care anything more about it beyond its mere existence. But then at some point that I no longer recall my curiosity kicked it. I began to wonder what certain things would be like.
What would it be like to vacation in a foreign land (I’ve never been out of the country)? What would it be like to retire and never have to worry about money again (I highly doubt I’ll experience this)? What would it be like to make love to someone in the middle of a forest during a light misty rain (Being a virgin sucks)? What would it be like to simply sit in front of a fireplace with a significant other and just enjoy being together (Being inexperienced in the ways of love sucks even more)? And list could go on an on.
While I admit I am curious about what death is like there is no way to come back from it so I figure I need to satisfy as many curiosities while I’m alive as I can before I try that one. Now that my curiosity has kicked in (and like the cat I’ve come to think that my curiosity will be the thing to kill me one day) I’ve decided that there is too much to do here before I punch my ticket.
I know it sounds like I’m saying, “You just need to occupy yourself until you die of circumstances beyond your control.” but that’s just how I feel about it.
Like Danny, I’ve come so far as to attempt and fail at suicide. Not give up or have a change of heart, but actually fail to end my life. It sucked.
I certainly don’t have the answers to what makes life worth living, even though I occasionally ask, only to have blank stares in return. But what I’m doing is learning. Nothing particularly useful or helpful to the greater world, just learning. I’ve begun to dabble in the study of religion and philosophy, if only to understand where people get their meaning from. I’ve yet to find anything myself, but it passes the time.
As for suicide, I believe it’s a right. The right to die is one of the few causes i legitimately care about and that stirs me to political activism. Unfortunately, carrying such beliefs does mark you as “crazy” or “in need of help” and so I tend to keep quiet. But it’s something to fight for. I fight for it so that other people who legitimately don’t want or need to live can free themselves and find oblivion without the messiness of the slit wrists and building jumping that is becoming the convention.
I’m not sure I got my point across, but as long as you know there are others who don’t just want to give you phone numbers or tell you God loves you, my work is done.
Well, I’m not recommending this as a fix…it’s kind of too permanent and affective of too many others for that. But popping out a kid at age 19 (then another at age 24) has kept me on the straight and narrow for my entire adult life, thus far. No matter how much I know that there is nobody else who couldn’t get over my demise without too much of a hiccup, I can’t ever escape the knowledge that said demise would screw up my kids real bad, big time. And it’s my fault they’re alive at all–I bear total responsibility for their existence, which is a level of responsibility that it’s hard to really communicate to anyone who isn’t responsible for the generation and caretaking of another human being him- or herself. So no matter what I do–no matter how I feel–no matter how useless or mind-numbingly boring life is–even no matter how many times I fuck up and it’s borne upon me yet again how MANY times I have fucked up, should anyone this consistently a loser really keep sucking up resources..? I have to keep plugging along. Talk about two people who really do not deserve to be deeply traumatized for life–my kids.
Intellectual satisfaction, sex and doing something relatively indispensable for others all help too–it sounds like you’re familiar with those palliatives. Try to gather up as many of them as possible! I’m really too lazy for number 3 except for the special case of the offspring–I do have as much sex as possible (probably TMI, sorry
) and, er, well. I read a lot. 
If I hadn’t had the kids, I would have done something much longer and more rigorous, almost certainly physics-related, with my schooling, which might have proven an adequate substitute for them in terms of intellectual satisfaction.
I wish I had more and better advice! I think you’re quite brave, to have written all of the above.
I felt exactly like this for many years, starting at about age 10. The hope of a better adulthood was all that kept me going. Growing up turned into a big disappointment, therapists and changes of school made no difference. Life was mostly boredom or misery punctuated with happy moments. I had all these same thoughts- the Pascal Wager, autonomy, and the utter meaninglessness of philosophy and religion in the face of a desire to Not Exist Anymore.
For me, it got better. I hope you find happiness (or at least, a greater percentage of happy moments to bored/miserable ones) but I don’t have any pat answers or cures for you. For me, I had to make some serious life changes, to try enough things and do enough things to feel passionate about something. And when you’re miserable, you have little to lose, and can make radical changes. Figuring this stuff out was not easy- all I wanted to do was wallow and/or kill myself- but somehow I went on an epic emotional quest to find a life that was worth living. I had to figure out that things can’t make me happy, but existence can. People can’t make me happy, but the moments with them can. Entertainment and work and hobbies can’t make me happy, but losing myself in an experience can be the best thing ever.
Not that trying these things will work for you, necessarily. But I hope things get better, and later you can look back and see life as a mix of boredom, bittersweet moments, moments of misery, but also good times and moments so perfect they made it all worthwhile. I hope you get to a place where the morass of life seems better than oblivion.
Antigone, interesting post. While I’ve never tried to commit suicide I have thought about it, albeit briefly. I’ve got many reasons for living
First, there are problems that need to be solved and I intend to help solve them. I feel that I’m qualified to do so, because I’ll at least admit that there are problems (speaking towards inequality in particular). I want to be in this plane of existence or whatever as long as I can so I can help solve them. In short I found my calling.
Second, I’ll use another one of my nerd analogies. In the Justice League series there is an omnipotent Android that poses the question “why do you keep living? you’ve got money, power, ect. why go on” to Lex Luthor. The android was searching for his own purpose. Luthor’s response was “to find out where it all ends.” I’ll keep living until I can predict the future with absolute certainty, until I know what is going on everywhere, everyday, and until I know the answer to every question or until I die, with death being the more likely case. I don’t want to die ignorant. That’s my reasoning.
Danny:
What would it be like to vacation in a foreign land (I’ve never been out of the country)?
I hope you get the opportunity to do so. I used to live overseas when I was little. My family moved around a lot so I don’t have my wonder is somewhat opposite yours. I’ve wondered what it would be like to have some stability instead of being nomadic.
Excellent. I like it when people cut through the bullshit and share true things.
I don’t really have any logical counter-argument for anything you’ve said about not seeing a purpose to continue living, possibly because there is none. I’ve not really ever seriously considered suicide, but I’ve certainly done my share of wondering whether I was getting enough out of all of this to make it “worthwhile”. So, I suppose I can’t really speak to suicide, other than to say that I don’t see anything intrinsically right or wrong about it. Though of course, each individual case may be right or wrong on its own merits.
As for depression more in general, I have much stronger opinions. Putting aside body chemistry issues for the moment, the best formula for overall happiness I’ve been able to come up with involves living and working in an environment with a lot of real interaction with living things (even non-human things!), and having the power to continually feel like you’re making small improvements in your relationship with them.
The internet has its good sides. But one thing that’s very dangerous is the way it removes people from actual personal contact– the positive inputs that come from doing action/reaction social dances with real people giving you instant and rich visual, aural, and tactile feedback. I think this ends up hurting and isolating many, many people. Successful bloggers do great– because they end up building real-life relationships due directly to spillover from their higher virtual status. But for most casual internet addicts, who spend a few hours a day looking at a computer screen without that kind of payback, I think it’s kind of like eating candy bars for lunch. You’ll sort of feel like you get what you need at the time you do it, but do it too much and you’ll slowly waste away.
I am struggling to find a way of life that involves doing real things with real people more. I’ll be moving to a new, smaller city soon, and my new place even has a garden. We’ll see what happens.
Yep, I identify with this post. Very much so, though I’ve never been able to admit this to anyone in person. Like K, the hope of a better adulthood also kept me going and was also a source of disappointment and pain. At my worst it’s my parents and my cat that keep my going today…. my parents, because it would be too horrible for them to see me die first, and my cat, because he is dependent on me and I love him too much to trust him to anyone else.
I don’t always feel this way, though. I’m conflicted. Part of me doesn’t see the point in living my life, really, and part of me wants to live forever out of sheer curiosity. I want to know what happens to the world over time.
Lately, I’ve found that listing things I want to do in my life helps me to be able to look forward to a future. Most of it revolves around travel (back to curiosity – there’s little I love more than exploring a new place). Some of it involves things like taking part in a bike tour or watching movies I haven’t seen yet or learning new things.
Why do you feel like you have to have a specific purpose to your life? I know we are told that we are supposed to from when we are small, but it doesn’t seem like it’s working for you. Can you let it go? I don’t get anything out of thinking about what I’m here for; I’m here to do whatever I fucking want to do and to me, *that’s* why it’s better to be alive than not. Existence is pretty much the only thing a person has and it is the source of their power. Yes, power. In my mind I am the supreme ruler of my tiny kingdom of one and I enjoy lording over myself.
Other people have suggested living or at least visiting a foreign place and I did this and it was amazing. I realized that the way that I do things is but one of many, many options for life. I took so many assumptions for granted and it was mind blowing to see that I could review every tiny part of my life and change it if I wanted to and it was incredibly empowering. I can explain it to you on a blog post on the internet, but it’s not the same thing as going somewhere different and seeing for yourself.
I sort of view my life as a work of art that is always in progress; it gives me the strength to make severe changes because I want to see what a better life looks like. If something is always bother you (like wondering about what you are doing with your life), maybe you should just make that thing less important. And if someone questions you, politely tell them to go fuck themselves. Because by your own admission life isn’t working for you right now, so must be putting your energies in things that are bring your no return on your investment. But don’t tell me that there’s nothing in all of the world worth living for because that *is* crazy. I mean, have you ever seen Planet Earth?? The world is filled with tons of mind blowing stuff and some of it is going to resonate with you deep down. You just have to find it. And until you do, you have to believe that there is something out there. What are the chances that in all the world there is nothing that makes you feel fulfilled?
Also have you tried drugs? No, I’m not being silly. I smoke pot pretty often because it makes everything more fun and it’s fairly safe (aside from the illegal part) and certainly helps with boredom. Just throwing that out there.
(I’m sorry for being ranty. It might not be helpful for you. But it’s just what I wish someone had told me ten years ago. Back then, I thought about life and all I saw was a never ending stream of bullshit that I had to endure for fleeting moments of happiness and I didn’t see the appeal, but now I only do the bullshit if I think it’s going to help me get where I want to go. Oh, and I found somewhere that I actually want to go, but it ended up being different than I was expecting.)
I’ve seriously considered killing myself precisely once, six years ago now; fuck wrist-slitting, I was going to set fire to my bedroom. I was under far too much stress and life was an endless series of impossible, unrewarding tasks, and it seemed like dying would be preferable to having to get out of bed the next morning. So I know I’m in a different place to you here; the grind that once made me want to kill myself was not boring, just devoid of any emotional upside.
But what really makes life un-boring, to me, is seeing it all knit together. Picking over the weave of life and words and finding all the crazy ways different things resonate, flow into each other, make sense of each other. Keep writing, and you’ll see it happen, I promise. (‘Keep writing’ is a good one in general, though not always possible; I quit for a couple of years then took it up again right before Christmas, and it puts such a spring in your step sometimes).
Wow, I have never seen anyone write so eloquently about this before. I think you’re far from being the only person who feels this way, just most people are scared to talk about it.
I have at times wondered about suicide, wondered how I would do it, if it would hurt, etc. Like you, I was always stopped by the thought that it would hurt the people I loved if I did that. But realistically, I have never had a sincere urge to kill myself. I mean, I basically like life. I enjoy the feeling of being alive most of the time, I guess. I have to be entertained, of course. I find my entertainment in other people, in writing, in finding challenges for myself like losing weight or improving my blog or … anything I’m not sure I can do. I take those things on, and as long as I’m focused on that task, I feel OK. I don’t know if that’s a cop out. I wonder if I would feel differently about life if I didn’t sink my attention into doing *stuff* all the time. I wonder if there is any right or wrong about it at all.
Anyway, I really appreciate everything you’ve written here. I think you’re right that if you have the right to life you also have the right to death. Nonetheless, I’m glad you’ve chosen to continue living, if only for the selfish reason that I really enjoy your writing. But also for the sake of the people who love you. Their world is richer because you choose to remain in it.
Antigone, I don’t think any less of you, because I’ve been there and tried that. Maybe I think a little more warmly of you, in a “one of us!” way. To properly establish my crazy cred: several years ago I spent a lovely month in a locked unit and got a lot of electroconvulsive therapy. I’ve been on every class of drug in the modern psych arsenal. I’ve seen drugs and counseling (and ECT) help people, but they were a pretty mixed success with me, so if you’ve already tried them I’m not going to advocate for them. I think some combination of doing cognitive behavioral shit to myself, and the passage of time, eventually made things better.
Things that helped: as you and others have said, knowing it would fuck up other people helped me decide to stay alive when I most wanted not to be. Knowing intellectually that I’d felt different in the past and might feel different in the future is one argument. Reading Camus’s “Myth of Sisyphus” was helpful to me, though existentialists aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Now that things are mostly better, simple distraction usually works for getting me through the still-scary down periods when they happen. Also, knowing that they have lifted in the past and will likely lift again.
Increasing complexity in myself and the world. Friends, booze, books.
But what really makes life un-boring, to me, is seeing it all knit together. Picking over the weave of life and words and finding all the crazy ways different things resonate, flow into each other, make sense of each other. Keep writing, and you’ll see it happen, I promise.
I don’t doubt the value of your wisdom as good advice in general, but as a suicide prevention tool I think there’s quite a few cemeteries worth of successfully suicidal writers who would probably beg to differ.
I wasn’t originally going to respond to this because of complicated reasons I have about you having your own path and your own mind and your own decisions, and how much I think not listening to anybody else at all ever is crucial to a healthy-for-you life, because people give some whacked-out, overpersonalized, touchy advice when it comes to topics that are uncomfortable. And I probably will, too. I also feel weird about giving advice to strangers on the internet, or to anybody. Sometimes I feel like advice and help — well-meaning and intentioned and loving and all — just creates this obligation to try and see it from the advice-giver’s point of view, to try and live up to them. And for people who are down in a dark place, I feel like it can just be this extra blow over the head, like, ha ha, look at these people who are like you and better and you’re not so I guess you must really be messed up, huh?
But I’m responding anyway because, well, I’m not entirely sure. But here’s what gets me through the day: Spite.
Not just “oh god ffffffuuuucccck you” spite — that’s helpful in a time and place but after awhile can just be one big negative crush.
But I also mean the overwhelming realization of “I don’t owe anybody anything” spite. Maybe spite isn’t the word for that, but that’s how it feels to me. When I realized I’d been living in a way that was most fitting for the people around me instead of the way that was fitting for me, I got really spiteful. And every time I start to slide back into, “Well, I shouldn’t say or do this or that because that’ll really affect so-and-so” I let myself swim around in a deep pit of spite. Spite that I feel like I owe anybody anything. Spite that people encourage me to live or think that way. Spite that I am expected to deal with a lot of painful bullshit because, well, that’s how people do things, I guess. Spite that I wasted a long time trying my best to live obligated and connected to others in ways that never brought me joy.
This all hit me in a big way after a bad divorce from a bad abusive marriage. That was easier, in some ways, because after that marriage ended, my vision sort of cleared and I realized I was surrounded with people who were tolerant of me being abused. So spite was kind of a natural reaction, you know, “fuck you, I’m not going to live in a way that makes you comfortable anymore.” I can see how this would be harder if you were surrounded by people who really do love and care about you, though I wager some of these people thought they really loved and cared about me, too, and I just had to come to the very selfish but enormously helpful conclusion that that wasn’t enough. Anyway, I had been stuck way deep down in all these ideas of who I should be and what I should do and what kind of daily activities I needed to participate and believe in so I could be identified as a normal human creature. And then I walked around all surprised that I was so freakin’ miserable. How unhuman I had to be, that I was doing all the stuff everybody else did and just felt a yawning pit of despair instead of perky and excited.
I realized I don’t need to do any of that. Which, I guess, some people realize that and don’t engage in a whole lot of spite. But that wasn’t me. I realized there was all sorts of stuff I did daily, little and big things, that I didn’t need to do. That I only did because that is what I assumed normal sane people did, and I had to be identified as one of those types, because, well, because. And when I realized how unhappy that was making me, BOOM, I got spiteful. All these years wasted, doping along the same old track, because other people expected this was the way I should be or act. All those years wasted, because I had internalized some ideal that never felt right. All those years wasted out of fear and a brain that had been so understimulated it didn’t know how to think up new stuff to do anymore.
Realizing I had no obligation to anybody or anything felt really freeing. I got kind of impulsive, just to try to re-learn how to try new things instead of the obvious normal way. Small example: I was sitting around smashed one day thinking I should get a haircut. So I started to plan out how to do that. Tomorrow I would have to leave work early, and plan out a bus route. I would have to call in advance. I would have to go to an ATM and get cash, and calculate a tip in my head, and make small talk with the barber. Not big stuff, really, but it seemed so fucking overwhelming and banal, and the brief joy I’d had thinking about fun new hair was utterly destroyed in all the details of how I was supposed to get this thing done. So instead I got spiteful. Why do I have to do things that way? Why can’t I just cut my own hair, drunkenly, tonight? Well, because I might do a bad job and then people will think I have lost my mind and my job might frown upon me and… (here is where spite kicks in). Oh god fuck that! Fuck everybody! So, I cut my hair super drunkenly, and it looked pretty wacky but I loved it to death, and instead of thinking I was insane, most people I spoke to about it commented on how they wished they were that free and uninhibited. Which made me sad for other people, which was a novelty — that is, not feeling sad for myself and my pent-up life.
On the outside, I think, my life didn’t change much overall. I am in a job I do not like, and a living situation that isn’t optimal. There are some things I don’t have right now that I wish I did. Lots of people who aren’t spiteful as hell live that way. But I am more clear about my reasons for being in these places that bore and irritate the hell out of me, and I no longer feel stuck by unseen outside forces. I reviewed all my options, including selling all my possessions and wandering the world, or suicide, or Peace Corps, or being a waitress because it’s so much less pretentious work. And I decided this was the option I liked best, even though it wasn’t perfect. I am stuck because this is the best thing at the moment, which sucks, but, being as I don’t owe anybody anything and am generally spiteful as hell, I am under no obligation to pretend it doesn’t suck. And that gets a lot of trapped hopeless feelings out in the open, where I am consistently surprised to find everybody else is having them, too. And, also, everywhere feels “stuck” if you’re not happy, and external things weren’t going to make me happy. There are lots of things that make me happy, and some of them are kind of impermeable and random. But one thing that always consistently makes me feel *better*, if not happy, is stating all my true spiteful and angry feelings out loud, constantly and without cease. Makes me a bummer sometimes, but I feel better being a bummer. And the only people who stick around now are people who can deal with me being a bummer, so everything in my life is generally more compatible these days.
I also think you are under no obligation to not feel suicidal. I think it would be very sad if you killed yourself, and I hope you don’t, but nobody can really know or understand how you feel or why you do it. Your life is all your own. But, for me at least, many of my bad feelings in the past became overwhelming bad feelings because I knew I was not supposed to have or show them. So it was bad feelings I am a non-functional being hide this all extra well = extra bad feelings. I decided, out of spite, that I was going to stop hiding my feelings, that I was entitled to them and they were all my own, including any decisions I made to act upon those feelings. And that the people in my life who could not handle that were not people I could handle having in my life, because those were people who needed me to be obligated to their feelings, to their legitimate fear and worry for me. And I was just too vulnerable to deal with that. I had to admit that, and give myself a free pass: I get to be too vulnerable and fucked-up to deal with people who want their version of “better” for me. I don’t hold that against them or hate them for it, but I do get to be intolerant of dealing with them. That’s the only way I’m going to be happier, or feel like *me* without compromise. Right now my life is full of people who have to understand that to be in my life, they have to put up with me occasionally saying, “Go away, I am feeling sorry for myself for the next week.” And understand that I mean it and don’t need or want them to come make me feel better. I just need to feel what I feel, and act on it in ways I need to, and I am not tolerant or together or whatever enough to deal with any obstacles to my doing that.
It’s slightly more trite, but I also sometimes think of a line from “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.” A therapist asks her patient to think of all the pain and misery she’s in, to measure the depth of it, and tells her that depth is also her depth for happiness and joy. That doesn’t always pull me out of a spiral, and it did absolutely positively nothing before I had actually experienced anything joyful in my life. But once I had, I could remember what good things felt like, and keep going to spite the bad. There are times when “keep going” means barely hanging on, and times when “keep going” means taking an active plunge into my psyche to fix whatever’s all amuss. And there are times when “keep going” just means “wait it out.” But I try not to feel obligated to any one way of fixing myself, or feeling better, even if I end up hitting upon a way that I know isn’t considered healthy or helpful. If it’s what I need, it’s what I need, and I’m too spiteful to let anybody stop me. In another time and place, that might have led me to kill myself, but instead it led me to live, because I’m too spiteful to let go.
For me it’s curiosity (for what I can do, for the future, for other people) and the people I love. Not in the sense of guilt that you and posters above mention (though I know that one from other contexts) but for the sheer overwhelming joy of being with a person I love and feeling them love me.
Advice I can not resist giving.
Do something drastic.
Your state (it’s sad, tragic, worrying, blah, blah) is also an opportunity. You’re not scared of dying. You’re bored as hell. “I might kill myself otherwise” aught to get the people who love you off your back in terms of opposition. Do something drastic. Seriously drastic. Amazing. Freaking CNN worthy incredible. Why not? Go to the middle east, or camp out in a desert or pick a problem you’ve always been annoyed by in your neighborhood and fix it (I can’t give actually constructive suggestions because I have no idea what interests you or would work for you). Do nothing but write for five years. Become a cat lady. I’ve no idea.
You might end your life and all possible futures at any time, why not explore what you’ve got while you’ve got it. What you have now certainly isn’t doing it for you. I wouldn’t give this advice to someone who was temporarily depressed, but you are not. You are chronically unfulfilled and dissatisfied. I figure you’re better off truly finding out if there’s something out there that can do it for you before you run out of time due to suicide or health.
You might have to overcome the fear of pain and inertia but wouldn’t the potential pay off be worth it? There’s nothing stopping you.
I believe everyone deserves to feel fulfilled, to have the deep pleasure come sufficiently often to keep one wanting to live. Maybe you’re just in the wrong country, wrong milieu, wrong time.
It sounds like you want to make an impact. People who make an impact are those who take crazy risks more then those who are crazy talented. If you’ve got nothing to live for you might as well take the risks.
So, to sum up: Travel, pretend like I can make a difference in the world, learn new stuff, distract myself, and do drugs.
Okay, I can do some of that.
Eh, I think dwelling too much on Making A Difference In The World is a way to increase thoughts of suicide, not decrease them. I’m mostly resigned to, at best, having a small positive impact in a limited sphere.
Also, I forgot to mention that you seem to be in law school with some real douchebags, both peers and faculty. I’ve met some non-douchey folks in the profession who do interesting stuff, some of which is socially useful. Also, law school, especially first year, sucks. School in general can be a good way to feel useless and stuck in a holding pattern. So maybe don’t give up hope of finding something professionally fulfilling in this area just yet?
LadyGrey, good advice. Unless one happens to find themselves the leader of a whole world-difference-making movement, which is its own form of suicidal, casting the net that wide will only lead to feelings of frustration and disempowerment. Differences in the lives of people around you, on the other hand, is a much more manageable goal. Though perhaps similarly quixotic in the scheme of things, who knows.
Myth of Sisyphus, good call, though I think existentialism only half-imbibed can be kind of dangerous. The term “existential crisis” was coined for a reason.
LadyGrey:
Eh, I think dwelling too much on Making A Difference In The World is a way to increase thoughts of suicide, not decrease them.
Maybe so. I don’t know where I would be if I thought I couldn’t honestly affect some kind of change however. I guess it depends on how difference is quantified or qualified. For example, since I’ve been reading this blog, I’ve felt that the people here have made a difference in my own life.
I wanted to clarify that I’m not trying to say that making a difference is the important thing in life or is easily possible. It’s just that going on a fairly brief and shallow glance at your thought processes that seemed something that might be important to you. I don’t think it’s debatable that some people do make a huge difference, no matter how you define it. Of course, many more fail and others like to pretend that the small and debatable impact they have is significant. Personally I think there are three paths to making direct differences, being extreme, which most people are unwilling to do because of personal cost (me included), accumulating enough money and power like someone like Gates, and going one on one and practically dedicating your life in an every day sense to a very limited number of people which means the difference you make will be limited in size.
I’m sorry for the tangent because I didn’t really mean to or want to argue about the possibility of ‘making a difference’. I just wanted to say that from the tiny tiny glance at the picture that you gave above, the current and past situation sounds – unacceptable. You don’t seem to have much hope or logical reason to believe that the situation will improve enough to become acceptable (where you want to live and are happy to be doing so). When the situation is unacceptable I think most anything is worth trying.
The idea of going through life without enough joy to make it worth living kind of breaks my heart. The idea of people around you mostly ignoring this because they can not deal hurts me both for you and for them.
Hey, my friends do the best they can. It’s really not something that most people are equipped to deal with.
I don’t have any advice, since I am just now coming out of a long period in my life when I was too depressed to even consider suicide. It would have been way too much work, and taken too much initiative. Besides, I’m such a chicken shit, and I hate feeling pain or being sick.
It’s not as if I have no satisfactions in my life, or that I have terrible money worries, or any more problems than many people. In fact, I think I have less. I have children who are the best thing I have ever produced, and they worry about my health enough as it is without wondering if I’m going to make it through another day. And they are smart, and funny, and I love them and being around them. I have some volunteer work that gives me a great deal of satisfaction, and the people I help think I’m a genius. As long as I can help them, they don’t care what angst hides in my closet.
Looking back at my life, I begin to see that I have spent many years punishing myself for not being someone else. I wonder where that spontaneous, endlessly curious, energetic, cheerful, interested person went, the one I used to be before I had to grow up and conform to get along. Before I had to pretend that someone else’s insanity was sane. Before I had to stifle my natural reactions for so long that I had none. I was a great ten year old. Sometimes I wonder what went wrong there.
Part of the problem is my distractability. I could change things in my life if I could just remember what was so urgent yesterday, and follow through. If I could just remember what my husband and I decided about anything, like taking the car in for an oil change, or changing the furnace filter, or having a “date night”. The mistakes I have made with my kids through being so distractible seem just inexcusable in retrospect. I wasn’t in charge, and forgot what I was doing. I was so absent minded, and lacking focus. Sometimes it was depression, and a lot of the time I think it was the ADD that girls aren’t supposed to have, especially when they are smart, and good in school.
This was supposed to be a comment, not my own blog entry, and when I kept reading “bored”, how everything is boring, I thought of myself. Something I read awhile ago said to find something that I could tolerate, and go do it. Just make myself do it. Believe me, that’s hard to do. A one point just getting up out of my chair to go do the laundry in the basement seemed like making a trip to Antartica. But I have had some fun with doing things that I thought I could just barely tolerate, that turned out to be enjoyable. Or, at the very least, I had done SOMETHING. It really didn’t matter what. Now that I am actually looking forward to getting up in the morning most days, there’s no way I would give up my life. I sure plan to change it, but I don’t plan to give it up. Damned if I will, just because I’m unhappy and I want my life to be different.
Life is fascinating, people are endlessly interesting, and there is so much to learn about everything that it boggles the mind. When I’m depressed, life is mostly just depressing, grinding, and exhausting, even if I’m not doing anything. Right now, I refuse to lie down in my depression, and continue to watch the days flip by like a calendar on the wall in an old black and white movie. Last year I was wallowing in it pretty good. That’s not to say it won’t happen again, because I don’t even know exactly why I feel better.
Depression is an awful thing, and while there are many awful things happening in the world today, depression makes even the good things seem awful. The congitive skewing is just relentless. So just say “screw it”, and don’t believe yourself that everything is terrible, and you’re failing to do your part to redeem the whole universe. Who died and made you God? You’re just a person trying to get along.
So I’ll be with someone…the boyfriend, friends, family, whatever and they’ll tell me a story about something that happened recently. I’ll know the story because I was there to experience it too. But nobody remembers when I’m there. It’s so depressing being reminded on a regular basis that I am totally irrelevant.
To me, real life is just a bunch of forgettable bullshit. If it wasn’t for naps and weed, frankly, I don’t know if I could even pretend to tolerate my existence.
I work at a hospital. I see people suffering through really horrible shit every day. It’s awful. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. Certainly doesn’t make me grateful about at least having my health. Because if it wasn’t for the cancer or what ever disease is currently destroying them, these people would be just like all of us. Bored. Lost. Pissed. Unhappy. Unfulfilled. Forgotten. Untalented. All of it.
At the end of the day, you just have to try your best to suck it up and take it. Everyone’s life is horrible in its own twisted way, it’s just some people can hide it better then others.
Plan a trip. Get the hell out of Dodge as often as you can. Read books. Try something new. Work out. Drink.
I just re-read this and I feel sorta like a dick. I do have empathy…
Comedian Doug Stanhope compares suicide to leaving a movie theater halfway through-if you’ve sat through half of a movie, and it sucks, what makes you think it’s going to get better in the second half?
Like most people said, I know what you mean-at least, as far as any person knows what any other person means. My wife has been through some psychiatric care-it was being honest when asked if she thought about suicide that started her on this road. If asked the same question, I would answer it the same way. Have I thought about suicide? Sure.
I also understand what you mean about work. We all know that every job has its little alleyways and quirks and routines that make you want to tear your hair out by the roots. Even something as seemingly glorious as professional athlete-you can’t eat what you want, because your body is your business, you can’t go out on the town because everyone wants to start a fight with you, and if you get just a little bit worse at it, you’re gone.
I have a job that pays me pretty well and is relatively secure. I got into this field because of its security, and it has provided me with that.
But Lord, do I hate it.
I can understand your percentage breakdown, too-I see the same road of sleeping, pooping, showering, working, and sleeping again, with very very occasional breaks for a quick burst of enjoyment. Then back to misery.
So why? Why keep going?
I don’t know.
I think it’s a combination of things. I am stubborn-I don’t want to be defeated. I have this small, stupid, almost certainly misguided faith that it is going to improve or that I have a role to play in the future. I want to see this baseball season, and the next one, and the next one, and U2′s new album, and Billy Joel might record again, and Nick Hornby will probably write another book someday, and so on, and so on. Like most people, I have family who depend on me both literally (ie financially) and emotionally, who would be disappointed and saddened if I were gone. I hope.
But mostly it’s the stubbornness.