Give me a valid reason to live and I wont go, simple as that. Please don’t give me that “You’re family and friends will miss you” bullshit. All my family is dead, all my friends left me, there is no one who loves me or cares  about me. Do you understand why I’m so bitter? Fuck living, I’ve had enough of this shit! All my life has been pain! My parents beating the shit out of me and molesting me, all my ” friends” making fun of me, I’m glad my family is dead! I’m glad I have no friends, all people do is hurt me! I’m in tears right now, why did it come to this?! Why couldn’t my family be like the ones on TV? What did I do wrong? What the fuck did I do wrong?!?!? God dammit please give me a good reason to live! Please I’m begging you from the bottom of heart.
The trip is tomorrow at Six in the morning, we’re going to an island that one of the people going owns, and we’re jumping off and falling to the ocean in the style of Welcome to the NHK.
21 comments
Coz if you realize that you do matter to people out there, like us, and that you can have a better future if you really want it. Not going to promise it being free of pain and suffering, but I had already taken 30 Ambien and went face down in the ocean in the middle of the night. Theoretically I should be dead, but now realize God had something (and someone) better for me that I had no idea even possible at the time.
And the same will happen to you, but not if you end it.
@Pbsmurderer: would you be willing to discuss this a bit via email?
@Wifeisgone: Please don’t take this as an aggressive challenge, Wifeisgone. It’s meant as a sincere question. How can a total stranger matter to a community, other than in the abstract sense our culture upholds about the value of a human life?
It doesn’t have to be abstract to know that a stranger experiences the world the same way you do, and has the same kind of pain (even if not necessarily from the same source). Life circumstances can equally change the same way.
There is always reasons to live, something you want to achieve, someone you’d like to met or make happy, somewhere you’d want to be, i think the question is, do you still have things you want to do in life, despite of your reasons to die? and do you really want to die? or just want the pain to go away? also… jumping into the ocean doesn’t seem like a nice way to die… if you are already in pain, if you choose either to live or to die, why not look for an alternative that will give you peace instead of more suffering?
@Lorax: I appreciate the sincerity of your words, and I’m not challenging your belief, but I do question whether that kind of awareness is meaningful to most. I’m not trying to be argumentative, but knowing that someone has shared experiences with you doesn’t of necessity fill the chronic need for connection. I agree shared experience may be part of what is meaningful connection, but I just don’t know that of itself it constitutes “caring about” an individual. Again, I don’t mean any disrespect, and I appreciate these are just my thoughts.
Knowing someone is human, and thus shares human experiences is the foundation for any connection. I think caring about people on that basis, or making the connection that one can care about anyone on that basis, is just acknowledging the humanity in someone else. Especially if you can relate to what they say in some capacity – we’re all here for similar reasons, and maybe have the same inklings of cynicism about whether someone else can understand how we feel, but that’s also the blessing of a place like this. Most here probably can understand, and it’s not too presumptive to assume that may be the case. At least I don’t think it is.
@keief: Aren’t “reasons” personal? Even if everyone else believes a given thing is justification for acting a certain way, mustn’t the one making the decision (and having the ability) to act hold that the common reason is in fact justification? To the one seriously contemplating suicide, whether or not the professionals ascribe her reasoning to mental illness, the reasons others have for living may not be hers, or if they are, she may not be able to realize them in a way that’s satisfactory to her. In your final line, you asked why someone suicidal wouldn’t look for an alternative that would give her/him peace instead of more suffering. If this alternative is a possible reason to live, couldn’t it be that the individual has, given the emotional (not to mention financial, medical, social…) resources available to her/him, already exhausted the pool of probable alternatives?
@EK2020: That’s why i said there is always reasons to live, but it is up to the person who is living the situation to see if those reasons are good enough for him/her to cope with the reasons to do the contrary. I might be on the verge of suicide but i find that painting my house is reason enough to hold on for a couple more months, that’s my decision even if it might be stupid for most people. That’s why i was so general in saying “there is always something”, because honestly… there always is, even if it won’t hold value for the person considering suicide (and that’s the person that makes the call on the end anyway).
And with my final line i was being really ambiguous to be honest… i was practicly saying “if you find reasons to live do so, if you don’t and really want to go through with it, at least find a peacefull method to go”… because i did consider all the possibilities might have been exhausted, but then again… maybe not. Or maybe i just suck at trying to give advice, i don’t know really, but i can say i was just trying to help in someway.
@Lorax: I hope you’re not taking my comments as an offense. Lorax, I cannot understand that knowing someone is human is the foundation for any connection. For one thing, we humans form very deep bonds with non-humans–and not just the domesticated obvious (cats, dogs, other pets). Wildlife experts and scholars have written extensively about the deeply meaningful connections they’ve forged with other primates, other mammals, and even non-mammals. We can care about non-human things. And because we all know that humans can be apathetic or cruel to each other, shared humanity doesn’t seem to be causing “caring about,” either. Too, we form connections with humans who lack many of the core experiences I think we assume are part of being human. The absence of higher brain function among both adults (post-accident or neurological trauma) and infants (congenital abnormalities) does not preclude other humans caring about particular patients whom they’re close to (children, family). So shared experiences don’t appear to be causing caring about.
Again, I’m not trying to be argumentative. I’m sincerely trying to understand. Expressions like “caring about” and “acknowledging the humanity in [others]” elude me. There is something objective to the idea of caring about others. It is an evolutionarily conserved empathic mechanism. Before our conscious mind can register the particulars of another human’s experience, we viscerally, if mutedly, may experience emotions we anticipate the other would ourselves. This research corroborated association from cognitive biology sheds some light on how others experiences impinge on us, and in that sense I concede humans have the capacity to anticipate others’ emotions, especially given we, as you’ve said, share many experiences.
This begs the question why any of this would matter to someone else (the person we claim to care about). Why do so many humans fail to feel that others care about us, given most of us have the capacity to “care” and we do share some important experiences? I think the bulk of what comprises feeling cared about is beyond the neurological processes of recognizing shared experiences, and sharing similar emotional responses to one another’s pain (or joy). I know it’s just my opinion, but there’s a very active body of research substantiating the assertion that to be effective (from the standpoint of measurable physiological effects), “caring about” has to be perceived by those cared about. I’d guess the perception depends on authenticity and intimacy, together rare from total strangers. It’s at least plausible that another person would doubt the sincerity of a stranger’s claim to care about him/her, or wonder just how a stranger’s care would meaningfully affect his/her life.
It’s pretty easy for you guys/girls to say you care about me, but you just hate the fact that I’m going kill myself and are just trying to stop me. If we met each other in real life, I doubt any of you would even speak to a lowlife, hideous, waste of life such as myself.
I’m tired, and I’ve gotta get up early tomorrow. So goodnight, and if I don’t comment again, have a nice life.
@keief: Keief, it appears, and correct me if I’m wrong, you’re saying not that there are always reasons to live, but that there are many things that may serve as reasons for an individual who has the ability to leave life to choose, nevertheless, to stay. Is that so? If so, I agree there are many, many, many possibilities. And as you’ve pointed it, only the individual herself or himself can decide if any of them constitute reasons for her or him to continue living.
And I think you do help a lot. You’re helping me understand some confusing ideas. And if I were the person who’d posted this question I’d feel better knowing someone else felt prompted to try to help me. I hope I haven’t offended you.
@Pbsmurderer: There you are wrong. I didn’t say i cared about you (maybe you weren’t referring to me tho, but well), and i don’t hate the fact that you are going to kill yourself, i wasn’t even trying to stop you, just saying look at your options, if you can’t find any it is your choice in the end.
What i was saying is that if you are going to do it, maybe you should consider doing it in a better and more peaceful way (and that is also, your choice). I consider myself a failure, hideous waste of life, so who knows? maybe i would talk to you, maybe not, but that doesn’t really matter. I did get curious at why you answered like you did (a bit angry and condescendent) if you were the one asking for a valid reason not to go… but well, good luck in whatever you decide doing 🙂
@PBS: I’d really, really like to chat more about this. If it matters to you, in my gut I feel you’re right. I respect that you might not want to revisit this conversation, but I hope you’ll reconsider…
@EK2020: That was precisely what i was trying to say but my english isn’t as good as i’d wish, so sometimes i don’t write as clear as i should, sorry about that. And no problem, you didn’t offend me, actually i was worried i might have offended you first, lol.
So you’re saying you have friends out there?
You may have just for a reason to keep living!
The truth is this. You have to keep living for yourself. There are a lot of fake people in this world who would love to see you go down in flames. These people should not concern you at all. Ignore those who wish to see you dead and start focusing on only the things that makes YOU happy. You have to start believing in yourself before you can accomplish some thing great.
“Believe you can and you are halfway there” Theodore Roosevelt
@Fatuglyguy: What if someone doesn’t want to keep living for himself or herself? And what if the people who would love to see someone go down in flames do matter to that person? What if nothing makes someone happy anymore? Why shouldn’t someone be free to assess his or her own life–seeing as it’s only that person who lives every single second of that life, no outside observer–and judge the life not worth living?
I don’t mean to be a Negative Norm, but Roosevelt’s quote, and I know it’s meant to be inspiring, I don’t find to be true even the majority of the time. Some things are possible for some of us–like rebuilding an engine. I agree there belief can motivate action and perseverance which somehow may translate into success. Others things just aren’t statistically possible–like a parent of a child with a life-threatening disease believing it will go away. Without effective technology the disease is likely to worsen independent of belief. The tests designed to judge therapeutic efficacy are even designed to demonstrate interventions’ effectiveness independent of feelings or belief. So if in other matters of health “effective” means producing an outcome independent of what is anticipated or believed to be true, why in the assessment of our own lives must belief suddenly always have the power to radically transform outcome?
And that’s one other issue with evaluation of life. A car can be fixed because it’s real and there’s an operational protocol. A disease can in principle be cured, even if we don’t know how yet, because diseases are clinically, biologically divergent from the operational protocol of a healthy human body. But what’s the operational protocol for the evaluation of life? Just that most living things “want” to keep living? Surely the wants of the majority can’t dictate the appropriateness of the wants of the individual.
It’s possible for someone no longer to find joy in life. If that can be fixed, great. But it’s possible it cannot be fixed. Shouldn’t we at least have the humility to admit that just as we cannot cure every patient of a terminal disease, we cannot reinstate everyone’s sense of contentedness with life? And if we cannot do this, then why should we oblige others to continue living lives that bring them pain?
@Keief: No offense taken at all. Thanks for the courtesy, though.
Pbsmurderer? Does your name mean “Peanutbutter murderer”?
@66.44: And here I thought the poster just didn’t like the Public Broadcasting Service.
lol