Just woke up, again.
For a change, I was “in bed” at a reasonable hour last night. As a result, I woke up at the crack of dawn, wide eyed and mind swimming laps.
Some might say it’s progress, deliberate intent to normalize my routine. Or as they would put it, “treatment is showing signs of improvement”
From the perspective of the most recently enlisted psychiatric team it would seem so. They treat me as if I have never been down this road, as if this is my first step towards addressing the issues that bind me.
In reality, as it is known, it was chance, I rolled over as a result of exhaustion. I was exhausted to sleep as usual, after a period spanning days of relentless unrest spent trying to imagine solutions and outcomes to insurmountable obstacles which burden me, some of which decades old and ever present. I don’t know why I still acknowledge them, of all the things I leave behind, I hold onto defeat. Only in hindsight can I remind myself that I conspire against futility. And hindsight is a pretty rare blessing these days.
It would be enough to say, sleep, dependencies, regret, rage, and despair leave me incapacitated and in a state of distress most of the time, though it would read hardly as deliberate or conscientious. I think I am writing here to articulate my thoughts to myself, more so than to be acknowledged. If you are looking for desperate pleas or romanticized suicide notes you can probably look elsewhere. Sometimes it just feels good to write. That being said, feel free to comment your thoughts.
So what am I thinking, what brought me to this site and what does this submission mean?. Short answer, nothing. From word to word, my mind is blank. For me, this is welcomed. I simply found the site during internet research on topics related to suicide. Yes, it was on my mind. It usually is during the first and final hours of my waking. Common thoughts I suppose. Something I have accepted as a part of my “day” and not something which causes me worry. In fact, the thought of it has thrilled me somewhat since I was a child. It will inevitably be the final chapter in my tale, one I look forward to and find solace in.
When I found this page, I read for a couple of hours posts from different members. After a while I realized there was a strong difference between them and I. The majority of people seem desperate and confused. They fear death. At best it seems to be regarded as bittersweet. Me? I welcome death as a part of life.
There is a shared delusion in this world which causes people to believe that reaching a ripe old age is the fruit of a life well spent. It’s what makes people confused and afraid. I believe a life well spent is just that, spent. I acknowledge that my purse is emptying quickly, and being the person I am, my last coin will likely be flipped to a stranger in need.
I am not desperate to die. When the time is right I will be eagerly ready, but not desperate. If I was, I wouldn’t be writing here, and if you were, you wouldn’t be reading.
In the past I had thought myself ready. Done the usual, cranked up the solemn tunes, locked the doors, sent the texts, dramatically cried myself to a submissive state of self deliverance and later frustratedly woke up in ICU having a catheter rammed up my doodle. By all accounts, I had tried to kill myself a few times here and there. I realize now that I wasn’t ready. Albeit that I was certainly welcoming of it. I still remember feeling relief as the cold hard bathroom tiles soothed the skin on my face as I fell against the floor, and as my vision faded, I remember whispering to myself that it was the end, finally. I even smiled. But I was not ready. Here I sit today as testament to that fact. Even in those final moments I was hanging on to myself, and pleasures of the living. I am also grateful for the fact that had I died, my family would likely have played placebo at my funeral. Have changed a lot since then..
So now I understand what it is to be ready, what it really means to me to be spent. There are things I can’t deal with, a lot of them, they stress me out and make me sad. I can’t change them no matter how much of myself I invest. So I try not to waste the life I have left. Unfortunately they are always knocking on my door, things like utility company, landlord and more recently family reaching to me for emotional support.
They push me to a state of helpless despair. I mean, I have no money and I am emotionally void. I can only pretend to help them while trying to cope with being a fraud.
Things took a pretty grim turn for me in 09. My beloved girlfriend took her life. I was young then, and I guess the people around me thought it was less significant to me because of that. I cried for a year straight. I used to feel back then. After I stopped crying I was met by exhaustion. Pure lack of will. I dreaded company. I dreaded daylight, and I dreaded happiness. Eventually I isolated myself. I moved to the desert and have lived here by myself for years. I still avoid interaction at all costs.
So how did I come to the attention of the psychiatric unit? Well. I stopped caring about people and obligations, but have remained deeply connected to my cats. Deeply. They are one of my last coins. There was one in particular whom I loved more than any, I delivered him at birth. He was my true soulmate. We never left each other’s side, no joke. On January 1st this year, I woke to find him in a terrible state, putting my inhibitions aside, I sought help from a veterinarian. They treated him until the 8th. I was missing him with every breath. (Cried for a moment just now) they rang me to say they could not help him. He needed to be euthanized. I was beside myself with anguish, mostly driven by the fact he spent his last week afraid in a cage. I smashed all of my things and in the process opened some large wounds on my neck and other limbs (accidental). Being half catatonic by the end of the outburst, I barely managed to rinse off the blood from my face, let alone dress the wounds or mop my floors. Needless to say, by the time I arrived at the vet i was covered in dripping blood and hardly able to stand or talk. It was all swaying and sobbing. I Eventually left with my cat, and buried him in broad daylight at the local cemetery. Somewhere along the journey somebody must have contacted authorities and I received a visit in my bloodied abode by the psychiatric team. The rest is history.
I still have the remaining family of my deceased cat. They miss him also. I hate to admit it, but with him gone I just want to be alone again. The others get no love from me. I plan to give them to my family, who recently contacted me to let me know that my brother is terminally ill. Its all a bit sad and stressful. But that’s how it goes sometimes.
I have since thrown out all my belongings. I have only my phone, fridge, animals, washing machine, a blanket and two changes of clothes. I have let go of my earthly possessions.
When the time comes, I know I will be ready, I hope my brother lets go aswell. There is no use in worrying or trying to hold on to something that is no longer there.
3 comments
Marcus Aurelius might be a worthy read for you, given his views on death. He said “Do not fear death, but welcome it, since it too comes from nature. For just as we are young and grow old, and flourish and reach maturity, have teeth and a beard and grey hairs, conceive, become pregnant, and bring forth new life, and all the other natural processes that follow the seasons of our existence, so also do we have death. A thoughtful person will never take death lightly, impatiently, or scornfully, but will wait for it as one of life’s natural processes.”.
It is true what you say about age. It seems the older we get, the more desperate we become to retroactively apply meaning to our pasts even as our future and present lack meaning also. The very old are also very wise in their own eyes because they have to believe they found the answers they sought, to satisfy this unconscious need.
I cannot comment on the dismal state of your life. I have not been impoverished or underskilled, only perpetually lost, so I do not know why I can relate to your thought processes despite such disparate formative experiences. If you decide to actually die, I wish you luck and courage. I hope to isolate myself as you did in the desert one day. You probably wrote this just for the catharsis but you have talent.
That Marcus Aurelius quote is elegant, but I’m not sure I agree with it. To “wait for it as one of life’s natural processes” is to effectively wait until the body is failing which forces the mind to die.
But that seems very asymmetric. Why is it “thoughtful” to let the body kill the mind but not vice-versa?
That said, it’s pretty much how society regards death. There’s nothing taboo about the body killing the mind, but the reverse is not true.
Probably, but it is in concert with my interpretation of the OP’s worldview (what I could gather from his post). Disregarding any element of emotion in regards to death, when deciding whether to invest in one’s survival, be consumed by inertia or to end one’s own life, one is always either taking an arbitrary premise or premises to attain certainty or dealing with an unsolvable “logic bomb” (in this case, a loop involving the question of inherent meaning that could only be broken by attaining effective omniscience). Marcus Aurelius took premises, the most related a respect for the biological imperatives (inherent nature), that in most cases would preclude voluntary death (some readers would argue all cases, but I don’t think that’s the deal with him).
As for the question itself, it’s based on circular reasoning and probably futile to ponder. I think the problem can be solved using math, but I’m probably delusional after such prolonged isolation. I’ve been partial to “death by inertia” as the final logical resolution, and have been “investing in survival” in order to find out more, but if I turn out to be right I’ll just spare myself the suffering that’d come with waiting.
Most of all though, I thought I’d recommend an author that had been down that road to the OP. I’m not qualified to “help” or otherwise communicate with anyone here, but maybe those greater than me are. I don’t know, when it comes to life and death all I can give is a list of books I’ve read.