Suicide Watch Thread
 

"anonymous" is a group-accessible sock puppet. It's anyone who has the password, which is well ... potentially everyone.

So......this thread is true.

Thank you

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?p=209210#post209210

sky:

I don't know about anon, but the posts by Deuce were mine own, and made in earnest, not as a prank.

I am seeking help. Some of that help is here, in the replies we've both read. Some of it is by phone with people close to me and knowledgeable about my situation. Some of it is in person with professionals and laymen.

Despite the appearance of so much help, I remain very much alone. It's not so dark today, suicide is less appealing than, say, dinner, but we sit at the same table.

Much much more distressing is my personal situation, which I am reluctant to describe in any useful detail. I am reluctant for a number of reasons, chief among then is that is just sounds so whiny. He hurt my feelings, she said something mean, he won't do this, she called me a name. She told a lie. Gah. It's all true of course. My feelings are hurt, grievously so. The mean things said cut me, to the bone. Sticks and stones not withstanding, that shit hurts. Slander hurts. I hurt.

I am universally regarded by those that know me as a very strong person. By those close to me, by those in conflict with me, that strength is characterized as stubbornness. Perhaps. I have strength. But this strength is no defense against these assaults. Why? Because I have given the people hurting me access to my heart.

That is my dilemma. I could easily close my heart against these painful, hurtful attacks, by closing my heart against the attacker. But at such a cost!! To be impervious to pain would mean to be immune to love. I have willingly made and maintain this choice. But I cannot continue long under the current conditions, receiving so much more pain than love, I just can't.

What comes then I don't know. Maybe that's the day I die. Maybe not. Maybe I brick over my heart out of self defense. I find scant difference between unloving and unliving. What is life without love? Better still, why bother?

Well thanks for responding.

It's important while that you want to retain love for the greater good it is important to look at the reasons why you might leave your heart open for more pain.

Really, you might be thinking you deserve pain. You might like suffering for the sake of principle.

I don't know.

I don't know you or your situation of course but thoughts of suicide require intervention.

I find anger to be a much better emotion. Tears have never done anything for me.

Deuce, it someone you love causes you pain repeatedly, assuming you've told them it does, they are not loving you back. You should reassess your relationship.

If you think your suicide will cut them to the quick, make them feel guilty for causing you pain for the rest of their lives, you're dreaming. First of all they won't connect your suicide to themselves at all... even if you leave a note or tell them ahead of time, they will say you were just nuts.

There is no possible way your suicide would hurt anyone but yourself.
I take that back, there is one. In rare cases someone might be affected traumatically, and will hate you, speak ill of you, forever... but that's not common.

So if someone's remarks are causing you pain you've got to learn to laugh it off, consider the source, or get the hell away from them.
No, suicide is not getting away from them, it's letting them get away with it.

sky, xoxoxobruec:

First, thank you for your kind replies.

I really do want the pain to stop. THAT'S what I want. I don't feel like killing myself. But I want the pain to stop. I don't think of suicide as punishing others, only as a way to make the pain stop. Ok. Today I'm kind of ok, so suicide it stupid today. (stupid all the time, so stipulated) But I am sometimes stupid. And it would be effective. Shit, I don't want to sound like I'm justifying it. I'm not.

I think a far far better use of my energy and time and effort would be to try to find an answer to the points discussed. The root causes of the pain. And not just my openness and not just my faults in the relationships.

Wow, Bruce, you're smart. Not kiddng, not mocking. Really, you're right. I need to laugh it off, consider the source, or get the hell away from them. Those are strategies that I use to great effect with all the other similar sources in my life. These sources are a lot harder to deal with using any of these strategies.

I can't laugh it off anymore. I can't. I've tried, but I'm done with that. Getting away has complications too. But it does have the useful aspect that it can be used immediately and repeatedly. Just walk away, walk away clean. Take a time out. For myself and the others. This has potential for acute problems, but for the chronic problems, it doesn't work for me. I'm not abandoning any of these people, and it doesn't look like they're going anywhere either.

Which leaves me with considering the source. This is good, really good. Especially for the younger ones, I can "consider the source" and be disappointed perhaps at the lack of maturity, but I'm the adult, and I have the responsibility and the ability to get over it. I can do that. I can do that some more. For the other adults in the same situation, this will be harder and it will have some unfortunate side effects. I will be asserting myself more and I can tell you right now, that's gonna be gas on the fire. I *do* know what's right and what's wrong. I *do* know what I'm thinking and what my motives are. When those truths are violated, I'll just have to consider that "they're doing their best, and to cut them some slack". On the interaction side. On the effects side, I will play those by ear too. Choose my battles, y'know.

I'll tell you right now, there'll be more and bigger fights and instead of seeking consensus, I'll be deciding alone. There. The gauntlet will be thrown down. Then their gloves will come off too. Rummmmmmbbbble!

The stakes are too high on some of these issues for me to concede. I feel there are long term ill effects for some of the things that are happening here and I won't abide them any longer. That will not make me more popular with anyone. More fuel to the fire. But with a combination of getting away (temporarily) and considering the source, I believe I can succeed.

The "consider the source" angle does seem a little disappointing and condescending to me. But I have tried to exercise **every** opportunity to interact as adults. But that's not possible when I'm the only adult in the room. Act like a child, be treated like a child.

Hoo boy, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Just attach a dildo to your seat and enjoy the bumpy ride.

Good. Hell is a lot worse than death.

Suicide punishes the people who care about you the most.

Suicide is the coward's way out.

Honestly. I think about it a lot.
This is the only reason I don't.

For some, perhaps. But, every day it seems like I am less, like I am being eaten from the inside out.
It is making my family sick as well. No matter how much I try to keep from them my suffering harms them more every day. It makes them sick as well and I cannot help but feel like they would be FAR better off without me.
Yesterday was a bad pain day, the trip was very hard on me. It was the day after my son's birthday.
The more pain I am in and the less I can function the more it seems that my family gets sick also and I keep thinking that the cure would be for me to go.
I have no plans, but I want their pain to stop far more than my own... not that that is not part of it, I confess.
There are things they do not know about my condition now. I have never kept secrets from my wife.

Have fun Bruce.

Yeah, I am far better off without the people I know that did it. Probably didn't need to be around such self-absorbed people.

That's why I don't do it as well. This doesn't mean I'm not hoping someone else will do it for me... a car accident, a stroke, whatever... I'm not doing it myself, but every morning when I wake up and every evening when I lay down I pray the beloved ones who are not here anymore to come and take me... I trust them much more than the people I have around in this life, and when I wake up and find I'm alive, or lay down and see another day has passed, I can only hope they're taking care of me and they know it's better for me to stay, just a little bit more...

Deuce, rkzenrage, some of the things you say hit me so hard...

Honestly, I only think about it when I'm having extreme pain. It messes with my head.
Thinking in any rational way is very hard during those times and all I want is for it to stop and for my family's pain to stop because it harms them as well. I just want to hide from them.
It took my grandmother thirteen years to die of cancer and now I'm putting them through that all over again.
There is a lot of guilt involved with being this sick and having people who care about you.
Today is bad, lot of pain, lot of meds.

rage, I know it's a hollow comfort, but we're thinking of you.

@rkzenrage: had some family with cancer, some of the people I said I trust, and I hope are looking after me form somewhere... I know you see the pain they are feeling, but you're not guilty of that, and since your family and the people that love you can fight with you they of course have pain, but they CAN fight, they CAN be with you, they CAN help! I think it woul be much harder if you stop it committing suicide, they would feel like they have lost you twice, and one of these two is their fault, not the cancer's...

and, asDanaC said: rage, I know it's a hollow comfort, but we're thinking of you.

Not hollow at all, it helps to get it out. More than you can know. Thank you for your kind word and just being there.

I'd like to second what bani said about suicide - it's awful to think that the help you offered wasn't enough.

Not all suicide is bad
 

I have attended three suicides to date. All have been close friends. I held the hand of one all the way.

Two had cancers, one had AIDS.

All were within days of a natural death (debatable).

All went quietly and peacefully, in the presence of family and friends.

If I get a choice, THAT is how I want to go. Nothing left unsaid, goodbyes tendered ETC.


It's the wrist-slashing, hanging by a lamp cord, shotgun in the mouth kind that give me Willies!

Brian

RK- I understand you are in a lot of pain at times......
My fiance was in a lot of pain once and killed himself while I was at work. See how that sounds?
Please remember to be patient and to keep looking for a different method. Suicide only compounds problems and pain- this is one thing I can be sure of. Keep fighting. Besides-you seem like you still have a lot of spirit and fight left in you. (as evidenced by the mohawk poll)
Well there's "too much information" for you- but hopefully it's useful to someone out there.

It's not just the pain, it feels like the pain is stealing "me".

Your pain hasn't stolen "you" from us. You still give us laughs and points to ponder and insight into things we may never have dealt with.

Being purely selfish myself, I'd request that you stick around for a long, long time.

We've had our disagreements rk, but I have always enjoyed your perspective and you have expanded my outlook on many issues - you have a unique ability to share a perspective that very very few of us would otherwise have. You have experiences and knowledge that would otherwise be lost. That is a great gift my friend - please keep on giving.

Last few days the "urge" seems to have passed. Oddly, I feel a lot more depressed. It is really strange now, all the colors of the world seem, somehow, dim.
I feel like I'm slipping into a hole.
I know I'm not making sense, I'm sorry about that.

You're making sense. If the 'urge' has passed, then hopefully the depression will too. *smiles*

Here's hoping.
Pretending for my wife and son feels like swimming through concrete.

It sounds like a bad time, but you are holding up well here and I bet you're getting by at home as well.

I will when you give me something to have fun with.
Your medical condition is no more fun for me than it is for you.

Pretending and putting up a front is exhausting. But i really feel like i have no other choice. The last thing I want to do is hurt others, to burden them. Knowing that they know that I will be leaving them is the most sorrowful part of this cancer thing. I have already decided that once my quality of life deteriates too much, I will end it. So that means, deciding to make that decision a few steps early while I am still able to do it.

Sorry for this morbidness.

Deciding how you're going to handle your life, and other people, says you've already determined the outcome. Isn't that a little premature, and creating a self fulfilling prophecy? :eyebrow:

Yeah, but my thoughts are running the gamut, in and out, over and under. I'm viewing all sides. I just know I don't want to suffer needlessy. Its the control freak in me.

I'm torn. I think planning ahead is smart and pragmatic. You may get to the point where you are physically incapable of doing it and strongly desire to do it with nobody willing to help you. But Bruce is right. If you plan for defeat, then that's self fulfilling.

I don't dwell on the dying. I don't feel close to being sick yet (just still recovering from abdominal surgery) and I have a lot of plans to keep me going. Mostly, I'm still the happy, optomistic (even if with a fatalistic bent) gal I usually am. The less I talk about it the better I am. I was just sorta under the influence yesterday.

Also, all these warnings about self-fulfilling prophecies are sweet of you all, but kinda irritating. I'm not going to live like I'm gonna die...except for maybe taking some bucket list trips, but I would like to have some foreknowledge so that I can take those trips in good health, or not blow my stash taking them, and then surviving for 20 more years with no retirement money. However, its info Im not gonna get.

Its nerve-wracking. You have no effin idea how nerve-wracking it is.

Have the time of your life right now. Always.

OK, but one thing has become clear over the years, is that surviving serious illness is at least 50% mental.

OK, Bruce....:o.

So I have gotten my self trapped in a lot of negative self talk.

What do you all do to get unstuck?

:)

Exactly, stop thinking and start doing, so you're to busy for maudlin thoughts. Keep looking forward to fun things and the time will pass quickly.

When you realize it's happening, reduce your focus to the immediate present moment. pay attention to your breathing, your fingertips, your surrounding view. try NOT to think. just be. it's not easy...

be a cat waiting at the mousehole for the mouse to come out. empty your mind. do it for 5 minutes. stay out of the past... and for you, especially, the future. Be where you are and when you are right in that moment. Be as present in the moment as you are able to be, so your attention leaves the dread you feel about the future.

You will need to plan for your future, but DO NOT try to live there in your mind. Stay in your body. Your body is the thinker. not the thoughts.

I've found it helpful to realize that the thoughts that I don't like, like the ones you're describing aren't wrong or bad or immoral or signs of weakness or any shit like that. I can't prove it, but I can say with complete confidence that every single person here has on more than one occasion had thoughts that were completely awful, about themselves or about someone else. Thoughts, *thoughts* mind you, that had they been turned into actions would be crimes, atrocities, horrors. But sitting there buzzing around your head (and my head, etc.), they're just thoughts.

They might stink. They might be scary, or heavy, or shocking. They're just thoughts and remember, *everyone* has had similar experiences. Jim's absolutely onto something when he says you're the thinker, not the thoughts. They might be shit, but like shit, they'll pass.

Then you have different thoughts. Things feel better, your head and heart feel better. But please don't make the mistake of compounding the awfulness of terrible thoughts by believing they somehow reflect on you as a person, or your ability, or your future.

Uh, perhaps not the best choice of words in this situation.

:lol2:

Yeah, she should move to Lewiston, ME where I grew up, because every day there is like a freakin' eternity.

You guys are funny....:rolleyes:

:lol:

Thanks for the suggestions LJ and V. Both are excellent...and will take some practice.

I think I will also pull out my Nordic track and set it up. Do a few minutes now and then. Tomorrow, I promise, Ill set it up tomorrow...:right:.

Glatt, didn't Maine make weed legal? My state still hasn't OK'd medical yet, or if ever.

They may have. Don't know.

I was joking though. Lewiston is a fine little town.

He spent a month there one night.:lol2:

In Lewiston years, Glatt is 247.

What LJ says about mindfulness is great advice.