the world is not beautiful, not right now

hi, first post. Suicide’s been in the news for the first time in a while, it seems..

I’ve been thinking about suicide and how the idea that it is bad, conflicts with several messages society sends. the idea that it is acceptable conflicts with other societal messages, and the idea it’s good obviously conflicts with many messages.

but just sort of thinking about life, society, humanity as a whole…. for anyone who tends to think logically on a macro (to the point where it’s difficult to form emotional attachments to real people in your close surroundings), why do people send out black-and-white messages to people? Whether it’s parents to their kids, the government to its citizens, the media to its audience. Sending out too-simple-explanations and general attitudes for things, then getting angry when people don’t react to them well.

That just seems to be a theme everywhere lately. Also a theme: escapism. in movies, tv shows, everything, people are obsessing over past eras, future eras, historical fiction, dystopian romances, basically any time period other than the one we’re living in right now… I think people just know now that our current times beg for disrupted senses of communication, just weird ways of living, so nobody wants to document that way of life really when so much drama has gone from spoken line to text, and from text to facebook/twitter/tumblr drama, and to the point where an unbelievable amount of stakes hinge on a misunderstood snapchat message. Everyone’s turning inward, no one wants to accept the reality that’s ahead of them, which is…

Imminent doom. My mind is all over the place today, I’ll get back to that in a bit. But what I was originally going to discuss was why I feel like dying so often, but will probably never get around to killing myself. From a really young age I dealt with two types of parenting. One was authoritative and while I was never physically or verbally abused, apparently I suffered emotional abuse in being trapped in situations I wasn’t allowed to escape from even when asking nicely. These situations weren’t life-threatening but they felt like it at the time. The other parent (whom I live with now) has always been worrisome, too-much-help-giving, anti-freedom, anti-growing up, anti-giving your child independence eventually. Pretty much both my parents had troubled pasts. So why have a kid together, then, if you’re absolutely horrible for each other and disagree on literally everything? Because, OPPOSITES ATTRACT! Doesn’t mean you have to have a child together, though. right? Right?!

So… I never really decided which one of those two people to listened to, learned black and white thinking from a very young age. Been trying to get rid of it for a while, and I guess now I have some sort of mental illness that I “would’ve had my whole life despite the trauma I experienced”, which, as you can see me putting quotes around it, is somewhat difficult for me to believe. Either way I was born with good intellect but am continually wasting it by being extremely unhealthy, substance abusing, overeating, etc. I try to please everyone I meet and be exactly what I want them to be because that is what I’ve learned is my way to survive, I guess.. I try to convey the urgency of my situation to others that are helping me but no one really takes me seriously.

It’s just that when I’m alone, I feel completely lost in terms of what I should do next. There should be a person telling me every last step I need to make, because I can’t do it myself, I’ve learned now that all my efforts to try to do things right will never work. But I know if I actually came across a person in my life who I claim is my dream, I claim will help me live properly, take care of me and what have you, I would try too hard to please them and they would get bored of me eventually. Psychologically speaking, it’s beyond the idea of being “owned” by someone. It’s just I don’t have a sense of self, really, outside of my opinions on how to change the world. I have very few thoughts that go through my head when I’m alone, unless I’m trying to solve some societal problem in my head. I’m reluctant to read literature, or study very hard on things, though, because of that underlying fear – any decision I make will be wrong. Sometimes I freak out over really stupid shit, like whether or not to watch TV, or type of water to drink. (In my head, bottled is bad because it’s bad for the environment. But so is tap water because of the high amounts of bad chemicals. But so is filtered water because you don’t get enough minerals. So I just never drink water)

anyway, when I am around others I tend to instantly try to match all of their personality traits and make them unbelievably happy that i’m around. which lasts for… if they’re someone i could really be friends with, until they become bored with my passivity; if they’re someone who bothers me often, until the unspoken disagreements i have with them build up to a point where i avoid seeing them completely, so i don’t have to deal with disagreement or criticism, ever. Which means i might not ever be complete friends with someone… But it’s okay. I don’t get emotionally attached unless it’s fictional characters, because I don’t have to impress people who aren’t real..!

it’s whatever though. what i was saying earlier, though.. Why does society continue to send such overwhelmingly positive signals about the way of the world in the midst of everything that’s happening all the time? It’s pretty disturbing… On major news stations, one of the pretty reporter people will put on a dark face and report on a story involving the deaths of several people in another country. Then, as soon as they’re done, they turn to their co-reporter, say “Well, I’m gonna need some cheering up after that one, what have you got for us, happy-news reporter?” and then the whole mood lightens up and everyone’s fine and we all forget about it. If people have that attitude, how can anyone ever expect the world to change? I feel like if more people just sat down and acknowledged, to their audiences, to their citizens, to their children, that the state of the world right now is not a good one, and that it’s up to them to make a change in order to save it – with an undercurrent of hope – people would actually try. But no. Everywhere we get “Look how great things are! Woohoo! Let’s just forget that anything’s wrong!!” and then sit back when someone snaps and kills people, all like, “Huh? Why would someone EVER act like that? Don’t they know that the world and life is a beautiful thing?” No, you nimwits, the world has the CAPACITY to be a beautiful place, but it isn’t right now, look around you.

But still… I get really hung up thinking about how flawed humans are, and how this giant society we’ve built for ourselves is just an expanded version of the majority’s innate animalistic desires – power, access, instant gratification, winning, etc. I think the industrial revolution might have ultimately advanced humanity’s downfall – in that the time it took for us to become comfortable with each other and work together to achieve a common goal was, well, surpassed by our need to advance more and more into technology. We definitely don’t know or like each other well enough right now to need forms of communication that do us more harm than good (that’s my opinion anyway).

So… Okay. Humans are flawed. Especially so given that so many of us are privileged to survive at the moment when, if this were the wild, only the fittest to survive would make it out alive, and others wouldn’t get any help at all. But your gut is supposed to be the thing that helps you the most. But sometimes your gut does you more harm than good. So I would say, in this post-survival-in-the-wild world, listen to your gut until your gut isn’t helping you anymore, then go to the next step in seeking help, even if your gut’s being a little ***** about it. And if you’re oppressed in any way, do all you can to find others like yourself, and possibly live by/near/with them, because community is the most important thing, and so many freaking places lack it it’s ridiculous. I’ve been able to impede a lot of my suicidal thoughts by acknowledging just how messed up everything is, and trying to become okay with it. This might work for you, if you have a similar mindset as me, or it might not help at all. I dunno. Just my perspective! I’m sure someone else has given that idea to you before, but maybe it’ll help with different wording.

I don’t really know how to end this. The original version was a lot more about myself, this is kind of half and half. but I’m on medication now for the first time in a while – now that I’ve been correctly diagnosed, finally. I just wanted to put this out there as, i don’t know, contemplative material for people stuck inside themselves. I tend to falter between thinking only of myself and thinking completely outside me and my surroundings, so. Thanks for reading if you do!