A friend once told me that even when you think you’re alone, you’re not because there’s just such a vast number of people on Earth there’s bound to be someone experiencing the same thing as you. Perhaps not everything, but different people around the world experience different things you do as well. Thus, I know the following probably doesn’t happen to just me, but sometimes it seems that way, especially after reading all the stories on here.
It seems everyone wants to die because of a problem in their life. Debt, marriage, parents, school, friends, you name it. And I understand that, I’m not here to discount those problems because goddamn those problems can cause your life to collapse around you and make life worthless. But I suppose then it makes sense that anti-suicide presentations and general knowledge is that suicide is a permanent solution to temporary problems. You know, how every person who survived the fall from the Golden Gate Bridge reportedly realized every problem they were killing themselves for could be fixed (which sounds like bullshit I mean I’d be enjoying the feeling of flying but I guess that’s just me… or is it?). Anyway, the point is, what if there is no problem?
My life is perfectly fine. Sure, not perfect, but nothing that makes me want to kill myself. My family was a hell-hole but I solved that problem by moving out. School was awful but hey I graduated high school then quit university. I have a job to support myself, I have great friends who care, I have an amazing husband who I would die for, I’m doing just peachy in life and all my problems thus far I’ve been able to solve. Well, I suppose except for one. The fact that none of this means anything.
My problem (although in my opinion it’s not mine, it’s everyone’s whether it affects them or they realize it or not) is that life is simply pointless. So cliché, right? But for real, everything we do amounts to nothing in the end. It doesn’t matter how many animals we foster, how many lives we save, or how many mouths we feed. Conversely it doesn’t matter how many people die, how many people have no food, or how many people lie. Insert anything in those statements and you get the same result – it just doesn’t matter. Our lives amount to nothing, we go to school for years then work for years then die. We work then come home (if we’re lucky, to someone), then eat and sleep and work some more. It all just flabbergasts me how many people ignore this or don’t seem to understand this cycle of such utter meaninglessness that it’s almost hilarious.
It’s not like I’ve never opened up about this to anyone. I’ve tried. And “help” did come. Doctors sent me to mental institutions and shoved pills down my throat (mind control if you ask me, I stopped taking them), friends tried to guilt trip me into staying (but see, it doesn’t matter if you’ll be sad or miss me), and my loving husband agrees but just thinks if you make your own purpose you’ll be OK (so it doesn’t affect him). The truth is there really is no help to this problem, no one can magically make life have some kind of meaning. It’s not like I want a grand purpose in life or that I just feel like a useless member of society, and I like my job and I love my husband. It’s just that life amounts to nothing and I simply don’t want to be a part of the weird game. Plus it doesn’t hurt that it all makes me pretty miserable. Younger me thought foolishly that once I moved out and was out of school and had a man and had a nice job that I would be happy. But I believe happiness isn’t achievable. Not because I haven’t experienced it – there are moments – but I think just because of who we are as humans true happiness just isn’t attainable. We just get into a dull content-like state from going through the motions of life.
So I guess that’s the end of what nobody asked for but what I wrote anyway.
Oh, why haven’t I killed myself yet, you ask? I wanted to give the job and the marriage and life I guess some time and some final chance of not being a complete joke. And I’ve promised my husband I’ll wait till after Christmas at least, so I mean, we’ll see after that I suppose.
5 comments
Any time this topic of pointlessness is brought up, I get it, but I fail to see how dying provides any more of a point. This human experience is akin to waking up in the back seat of a car and finding out that you’re being taken on a road trip. Nobody asked to be here. We just opened our eyes and found ourselves here. On that road trip, you could look out the window and enjoy the sights going by, you could look forward to the destination, or you could close your eyes the entire time and refuse to get out of the car when you get there. Your response might be again that either way, it doesn’t matter. But if we’re going to rate things on a scale of pointlessness or meaninglessness, I don’t see how refusing to participate in the journey that you’re being taken on provides and more of a point than just taking it for what it is and making the most of it.
In essence, I can’t successfully argue that there is a point to any of this, only that dying any sooner would be equally as pointless. So in a roundabout way, we arrive at the same conclusion: it’s all pointless. But you use that to justify dying, whereas I think it can equally be used to justify living. You’re already here, you married someone who cares about you, and you’re a mortal creature who will surely die some day without needing to cause it by your own hand. Pointless would be killing yourself when you’re already mortal. Pointless would be linking yourself to another mortal being in marriage in a ceremony that’s based around the idea of being there for each other forever and then killing yourself and leaving that person behind. Pointless would be keeping the promise that you won’t do it until after Christmas when you’re breaking 10 other promises by considering it in the first place.
So, attempting to intellectualize this idea of pointlessness really doesn’t wrap everything up in a neat package. If everything is pointless, everything is pointless, and nothing is more pointless than a human being killing themselves before their time has arrived.
If anything, it was a flaw in nature for any creature to ever become this self aware. As far as we know, no other species can sit around and feel like their existence is lacking any meaning. They just do what they do, eat, sleep, and reproduce without having the extra gray matter to sit around and question it.
I agree with you, it all seems pointless. But even suicide doesn’t escape being pointless. And in the end I’d say making the most of the experience of being here, for however long your heart continues to beat, and trying to make the other souls you encounter on this involuntary trip happy, probably has more point to it than an early exit, even if it only wins by a fraction of a percent. You’re on a one way trip that already has a final destination of death that you will arrive at without making any special effort, as far as we know this is the only go around we have of this experience, once you’re dead you won’t remember how much it hurt or how much it seemed pointless or how long it lasted, so leaving early seems most pointless of all. You already got a ticket on this ride. Might as well let it coast back to the station instead of jumping out at the top.
There might be some way to justify suicide, but a competition of pointlessness isn’t it.
I agree with what Specter said. I don’t think pointlessness alone is logical reason for suicide. BUT pointlessness coupled with a restless personality is.
For example, I’ve seen a lot of posts from people saying they are so bored they want to kill themselves. But boredom is simply the state of feeling useless or not used to their potential. Wouldn’t sleep be defined the same way? And yet we have no problem with sleep, as pointless and boring as sleep is. This points to the fact that there is something about our conscious mind that finds boredom painful or intolerable.
I hope some of that made sense; what I’m getting at is the idea that pointlessness must not be your whole problem. Your personality must be driving you’re suicidal thoughts, and I would guess that your personality is more ambitious than the average persons. That’s why you are not content with a seemingly good life.
This has been a topic I’ve talked about a lot, and there are some members here to know exactly what I’m talking about. Maybe they’ll chime in here as well. But the idea is that you don’t have to be miserable, lonely, broke, bullied, unattractive, etc to be suicidal. Sometimes people with seemingly good lives waste themselves, and the masses don’t know how to explain it, but since when with the masses know what the fuck we’re feeling.
I think meaningfulness is emotional, hence it is meaningless to discuss it intellectually.
I have recently woken up to the fact that I have been living my life from a place of reason, but that a lot of the time, my feelings are actually a superior guide.
To draw on something Salt said, I think the recognition of pointlessness is deeply painful and intolerable for some. It’s not that the fact of pointlessness in itself justifies suicide – it’s that the experience of it feels unbearable.
We’re raised on narratives of religion, or personal heroism and achievement, or romantic fulfillment. But if we realize that nothing will ever satisfy us…what then?
What is pointless? What is a life with a point? can you give an example? Not being cheeky here; i’m trying to understand.