[Doubt my relatives or friends will bother to read all this, and wanted to post it here so my goodbye might be read by someone.]
27/01/2025
I want it to be noted that I am of calm, sound, and rational mind at the time of writing this. I have been thinking of ending my life for several years, and have considered the below points throughly from as logical and dispassionate a perspective as I have been able to adopt with regard to them. This is not a decision I am making in haste, while tired, or in the grip of strong emotion, but one which I have weighed up and planned for meticulously, and have decided upon, clear-eyed and entirely uncoerced, as being the best course of action given my personal circumstances. Given that, below are the main reasons why I am choosing to end my life:
- Not getting the requisite grade in my degree, and so not being able to do a PhD. Academia is the only job I can see myself enjoying, or maintaining successfully, partly because it allows for flexibility throughout the week in terms of workload intensity and hours. I know for a fact I wouldn’t be able to manage a regular 9-5 without having a breakdown due to the monotony and daily pressure of a strict schedule. I do not want to live with the immense guilt and shame I feel at having failed at the only thing I’ve ever been any good at, or with the pain of being pushed out of the only place I feel like I belong, or at least am accepted.
- My hands. Not being able to do what I love in terms of creative writing and video games, or clean, or work, or masturbate, or otherwise do daily activities easily. I am in constant pain, and constantly frightened by, frustrated at, and deeply saddened by my lack of dexterity and the permanent damage I have done to my body through my own carelessness, stupidity, and arrogance. I can’t forgive myself for it, and can’t live with the constant guilt of having ruined my life and hopes for my future self in the process. I also feel ashamed and less than other people because I can no longer do things like cooking and cleaning in a way others take for granted, that society expects of me, or that allows me to feel a sense of self-respect and pride in my home and appearance and to maintain my health.
- Being trans. I know this is practically impossible for anyone who hasn’t experienced similar to understand, and everyone in my life who I’ve spoken to about it has expressed skepticism about the truth of it, which I can understand. But I wish, deeply and sincerely to a level that causes me consistent and deep emotional pain, that I had been born physically male. I will never be that; no matter what hormones I take or what surgeries I have, I’ll always be just a mutilated woman. I can’t see myself ever having a successful romantic relationship on account of feeling so immensely uncomfortable in my body as it is, and know that nobody would want to be with me if I transitioned. Even if transitioning would make me a lot happier and allow me to fully participate in life, the social discrimination and negative impact it would have on my existing relationships, as well as my future relational/employment/general life prospects is not something I am able to cope with. I no longer want to live as a shell of myself, playing a role all the time in a body and life which are not and will never be mine, and being unable to connect deeply or authentically with anyone — being unable to love and be loved — as a result.
- My physical health with respect to my heart health, blood pressure, and overall cognitive function is likely not good, due to a combination of bad diet, bad sleep, and very little exercise over a period of about 8-10 years. This will only get worse with age, and the difficulties I am experiencing with my hands as well as those which result from my ADHD, executive dysfunction/planning, and CPTSD make it extremely difficult for me to take the necessary steps to improve my health whilst also attending university and/or working full-time. I am resigned to having heart disease, diabetes, or brain damage from a stroke in later life as a result of this, and wish to avoid the extreme and acute misery those conditions would cause me while I can still make that choice. In addition, I have other, rather embarrassing health problems relating to the bowel of which I would rather not give details, but which are highly unpleasant and make daily existence both uncomfortable and a lot more challenging than it would be otherwise. These are unfixable and require constant management, and will only get worse and more difficult to cope with as I age; I would much rather be free of them by being freed from my body.
- I’m extremely lonely, and have been for as long as I can remember, to the point where it’s always felt like a fundamental part of me, like my hair or eye colour. I don’t see that loneliness ever changing, for the reasons listed above. There’s only ever been a couple of people in my life I’ve deeply connected with, and felt seen and unconditionally cherished and genuinely loved by, and both of them a) have partners, and b) have expressed that they would not have been interested in me romantically if they were single.
- I don’t hate being neurodivergent, but being so in a world in which most people are not, and which is hostile to people like me, is intensely and intractably painful. This is another reason for my loneliness, and also contributes to a strong feeling I’ve had recently that there is no rightful place or space for me in the world, and I am not wanted here; like something is actively pushing me out because I don’t deserve to live. I feel that the world would be better off without me, and that I would be far better off in another world if one exists. If it does, then I’ll be happier going there, and if it doesn’t then eternal non-existence would be preferable to staying in this world.
- Everything everywhere seems to be getting constantly and markedly worse, even outside of my own life. From employment to social decay to wars to political unrest, it feels like every part of the world is crumbling catastrophically in a way it won’t recover from, and that there’s no safety to be either found or created in any of it. I feel trapped and helpless to the point of existential panic, and don’t want to stay around to watch things get worse. I’d much rather choose my own exit, while I’m still young-ish and healthy enough to know my own mind and make the choice for myself, and am still reasonably happy. I can’t see my life going anywhere but downhill from here, and I don’t want to stay around to witness how bad it could get once that decline starts to happen.
- I’m going to die anyway. Whether it happens now at 30 or later at 80, it’s going to happen regardless. What difference does it make if I decide it for myself? At least this way I get to keep my agency and dignity, rather than eventually losing both and potentially having to live in isolation, humiliation, and terror for years when I’m old. If there is an afterlife then I’d rather hurry up and get there already, and if there’s nothing I’d rather get it over with now than suffer pointlessly for another 50 years.
- I feel tired and used up and like nothing I do to improve myself or my life is working anymore; no matter how hard I fight to stay afloat, I just keep sinking. It feels like everything in the world is screaming at me that my time is up and I should go already, and I feel ashamed for continuing to live on what feels like borrowed time. I’ve always felt like my life would end through suicide, and it feels like the right time now; continuing to live feels wrong when everything in my life seems to be encouraging me to end it. I feel like there’s nothing left for me on earth, and suicide seems like not just a rational option, but the only just and sensible course of action.
I know people will miss me, and I’m sorry for that. But we all die eventually, which logically means that nobody’s death really matters. Either we’ll see each other again someday, or we’re just bags of meat and chemicals hallucinating something that we call love and affection, which means those feelings end after we die and therefore never truly existed or mattered in the first place. Point being: if you miss me, you’ll see me again in the afterlife, so no worries. If you don’t see me again, you never truly missed me, because there was no-one to miss and no-one to do the missing apart from a pair of sentient meatbags having a shared hallucination, so also no worries.
Either way, this is the best course of action I can take now; I’m deeply sorry it has to hurt other people so much, but I’m not strong enough to keep bearing the pain I’m in for other people anymore. If it was just one or two things I could manage it, but it’s not, it’s every part of my life being affected by some intractable problem, with no hope of a remedy. On top of that, everything that gives existence meaning for me is being torn away as a result of those same problems. You can’t force yourself to find existential or spiritual meaning in something that doesn’t stir your soul, or to find that kind of meaning in or for another person. I believe we all have one thing at our core that we live for, and losing it snuffs out something vital in the soul, and breaks something fundamental within us. I’ve lost my core thing with no prospect of recovering it in this life, and all I want now is to either find it again in the afterlife or be relieved of an existence without it altogether.
I hope you can forgive me, not for me but for yourself, whoever of my loved ones is reading this. This isn’t your fault, and there’s nothing anyone could have said or done to have stopped it. I screwed up my one shot at life in multiple ways that nobody could fix, and I have to bear the consequences of that. I deserve death as much as I wish for it for not doing better in life, for making so many stupid mistakes, being arrogant, and for not making more of the opportunities I had when I was younger, and which are now passed and inaccessible to someone my age. I’ll probably have to come back here again for another incarnation having screwed up so much in this one, but at least if I leave this one now I can get a head-start on that. All I really want is to rest, and be with the people I love in my writing, and in all the books, movies, shows, and games I love so much. I want to go Home.
Thank you for reading all this, and I’m truly sorry for the pain I’ve caused you. If there was another way I’d have taken it, but there just isn’t. Everything has its time, and this is just mine. I hope I’ll see you on the other side; more than that, I really, really hope there’s another side to see you on.
Love,
R.
4 comments
And I was just in time to see this…
If opinions are allowed on this, to any degree, well, I am of Wolfram’s (controversial guy, yes, but I’ve gotten acquainted with him not from NKS but his work on Mathematica alongside his quite well written blog posts/papers, he claims that industry is actually better for him getting the same sort of things done which I feel applies to people that, yes, aren’t the CEOs of their own CAS providing company, but are just normal R&D workers) approach and opinion that academia at least in terms of the modern day schools and institutions is actually holding a heck ton of it’s personnel back. Like, a lot, not just because of the years required to graduate with these degrees and an inability to deviate from a schedule based class taking and credit earning system (when we already have competency based models for online degrees that arguably teach the same content *without* having classroom sizes that fill up fast or something), but generally because of the bureaucracy and all other non-personalized approaches in the schooling system, at least here in the United States, from the moment you start kindergarten even up until you finish your PhD, learning is (in my eyes) inherently personal and driven by the will of the individual, and yet even for your PhD it really depends on the program and advisor as to how seriously they will take you early on when it comes to your actual research topic and agency outside of taking prerequisite classes. Am I the only one to think this? Probably not, and I also think that our society having research be barred to this extent by credentials isn’t really doing anyone much favors when the time put into obtaining said credentials is ultimately suboptimal usage of it in the modern day, amongst of course our workforce having many capable people with arguably more interest in relevant topics than PhD holders and yet their papers, published works or findings would be kept out of the “right” places due to either that or not having the connections, whatever it may be. It’s outdated, I wouldn’t rely on it.
Besides that though, yeah, any physical condition or disability certainly makes life harder, same goes for the mental ones, but if you are missing something like proper usage of your hands, that in my eyes is much more of a concern than the ability to get a PhD (in which nowadays, definitely no corporate role R&D wise is going to require one, sometimes not even that much relevant work experience to make up for it, but nonetheless getting into those kinds of positions without advanced degrees is once again common in nearly all sciences and adjacent topics such as biotechnology and healthcare related spaces, this will only become more regular as time goes by I’d argue).
For being trans in terms of your reasoning for this… yeah, hard disagree, although I’d say that it depends on what you are happy with. In some people’s cases, even a slight amount towards what they want to be more than what they were before makes them plenty happy, but obviously that’s not always enough for others, and you can still get closer to the other side if needed due to that. Some may even argue that you *are* the other side at that rate, but that is once again opinionated. Thing is, ultimately, saying that “you are what your sex is/biology entails” and taking a “science based approach” that ultimately turns out nearly all of the time to be a biased one that doesn’t actually incorporate much findings at all, is pretty inaccurate. Or imprecise, I should say, to boil it down to an either/or when it’s potentially not just a spectrum on the gender side but on the biological kind of side as well. That “either/or” rationale is not necessarily based upon the science but still, nonetheless, the societal constructs that pretty much kind of came before the science, and what society “had room for” at the time. I don’t necessarily think it reflects how the findings are now, for instance, although that requires looking.
Once again referring to the physical stuff though, that’s quite realistic, I can see your point here. We have peeps here as well in conditions of health that aren’t so good, but still are around for their own reasons regardless if that means much. I will address the physical things more potentially later on, but generally yes, that alongside preexisting trauma as well is hard to account for, at least everyone would find it to be so.
The loneliness part I may not fully address here at the moment, but if you see my posts I potentially revel in that. It’s truly kind of circumstantial as to how we people feel about it I’d guess, although that’s only a guess and certainly does not apply to the internal states of everyone. Regardless, situationally it depends, and the existence of bad company (such as people who won’t accept you for being different pretty much in the next bullet point) makes having people around not always have a clear answer. Even if everyone were good, for a bunch of things it’s not the most efficient to have them around ALL the time, we sometimes do stuff individually for a reason but that’s willingly of course. Your case may not be at the moment, and that’s quite the okay concern to have but probably not an ending point should you will it to be otherwise.
Now, I’d put out another opinion (but not really in terms of my views) in that “this world” is not consisting or reminiscent of “the people”, “this world” is “this world”, but of course that either means the physicality of it without the organisms, or everything including said organisms, in which for at least the latter, the living things around you don’t define you as a living thing obviously but rather yourself. I’ve written comments based on said neurodivergent stuff before that I’d link to (like on Gloom’s post here: https://suicideproject.org/2024/11/love-me-kiss-me-hug-me-make-me-whole/) but besides that, it furthermore statistically does not make sense if even despite these so called conditions we see people vary drastically and wildly all the time, what does yet another difference matter? Is it as apparent as others? No, certainly not, and the crazy thing is that said other differences that ultimately have no grounding or practical influences asides from cosmetics really (like race obviously) were used as means to discriminate, for eons and whichever historical numerical unit thingy comes after that. This isn’t new, although it should be out of fashion by now, but obviously due to how that’s entrenched in our history despite our advancement as a society, inertia potentially takes it’s hold…? Either way the question isn’t whether or not you were assigned this or that, but rather whether or not you have an actual problem. And many of the people who couldn’t be assigned “markers” of any sort throughout history had actual problems, which caused them to be a harm to themselves and others, that they arguably needed to fix, but you know… they aren’t diagnosed, they don’t need to do anything apparently. Yeah right.
In terms of general unrest in today’s climate? Ever since the starting up of globalization to any extent before the internet, yes, that’s kind of how it’s been I’d say, even if I didn’t live back in those periods my very elementary accounts of history detail that all the countries of the world learning the existence of each other certainly brought about a fair share of scrambling and musical chairs, and that such a thing was also done over time of course instead of at once, it’s still being done now. But before that, were things any better really? That’s a question most people can be pretty split on even though the advancements available to most of the world today have given us the ability to tackle way worse problems than we could before, I’m pretty biased here in that I’d go on to say the problems that we’re facing ultimately cannot be worse than the solutions we have at our disposal at this rate, otherwise we’d be wiped out by bombs at this point or something before that, but people have ways of going about diplomacy to start with, and that notion has been spread around a lot, a ton. Besides that, if this is also in relation to AI stuff, all I can say is that due to how things work on a fundamental level nowadays I’m dubious of any immediate concerns regarding it. Long term concerns, maybe, but immediate concerns are nonexistent.
When it comes to there not being a difference between dying now or dying later, yeah, my viewpoint may be a bit disagreeable on this one, but isn’t what you think now informed by generally what you’ve experienced and lived through, once again up until now? If you didn’t expect any of that from the start, how likely or probable would it be to anticipate the next 50 years in comparison? People generally have trajectories and wants regardless, I get it, but the formative years of your life are not necessarily spent with exposure to begin with, and for some people the years in which they have a more absolute form of agency only begin until they are around two decades in… there are counterarguments to this sort of stance, yeah, but that’s something I’d start with.
For the last part, I’d just say that the times looking back in which I felt hopeless, and not only that but there realistically not being much helping it should my assumptions prove to be true, were not actually so hopeless, primarily because the latter was not the case despite my efforts at the time. But I don’t know your individual circumstances fully, that’s not so possible, so take that as you will.
If you’ve got to go, this is how to do it; thought out, with clear rational reason. I can hardly argue with most of your points. You started with multiple difficulties, and made some progress, and despite that still cannot find satisfaction.
If life requires satisfaction, then you are right in having no reason to continue.
I sympathize on the desire to work in academia, it would be my preference as well. Well, depending on the institution, there are still bad jobs in academia.
The thing about death being now or later is that I still want to try and wait it out. People aren’t nearly as worked up when an old person dies, and it seems to me that an old person can almost choose to die, no additional equipment required.
It’s also a curse I was given after working with elderly people for so long, wanting to become one. I’m fascinated how a large amount of people ignore them, meanwhile they have this depth of knowledge and wisdom. It’s a real life Gandalf effect.
In my mind it’s the only thing making it worth putting up with being young, that someday you get to not be, if you’re lucky. I’ve hated being young, most of it sucked. “So much potential”….. well I can’t actualize most of it.
Which I guess IS the only argument I have for you sticking around, if you are still around. I’m 37 now, and 30 sucked by comparison. Being young is not any good at all.
However, I don’t expect it to be persuasive. It’s just the closer you get to your natural end, the less pressure there is to end it.
My heart breaks for you, and I shed tears for you
I’m here for you