I cope with situations through humour, usually in the form of offensive jokes about that which is too painful to truly think about. As a result, I make a lot of suicide jokes, partly because doing so slightly lightens the heaviness of the past darkness that almost took me and partly because it’s a way to talk about it without really talking about it, you know? Sort of gets my past and sometimes also present thoughts out of my system sometimes, turning the thoughts into laughter with my closest sort-of friend, who also likes to joke about the worst things in the world. Laughing about terrible things make them feel less oppressive in my opinion, sometimes all you can do is laugh and sometimes laughing is the best possible thing you can do.
Laughter is a weapon and a shield and it protects us and it can also bring us together and jokes are the perfect way of saying it all without saying anything obviously real at all. Only I know that I nearly killed myself and only I saved myself and only I am proud of my strength, I want to talk out loud about how I no longer want to kill myself and I want people to tell me they’re glad I didn’t, but nobody in my life knows suicide was ever something I seriously considered for over a year and I can’t imagine ever finding the words to really ever tell anybody. So jokes are the way forward, jokes are the only way to say what can’t really be said. The thing that bothers me, though, is the fact that for all I know, the friend I made up the suicide methods dance routine with might feel the same, maybe she feels comfortable making these jokes because she knows it’s the best way to overcome all of it as well, maybe she’s been on the fence about whether she wants to carry on either, maybe like me, her bitter cold bitchy cruelness is nothing but an act, a way to protect herself from people seeing her for real and breaking her again. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Nobody knows.
It’s terrifying how we don’t know even the closest of our friends sometimes (although I’ll admit none of my friendships are all that close) and how those friends don’t know us either. Are we all terrified to show others who we really are? Or are we afraid to look too carefully at others in case we do know them? Feelings are fucking terrifying, no matter what the feeling is and no matter if it’s our own feelings or other people’s feelings. We’re all so complicated and I think we maybe all live inside our heads and feel alone in that but maybe we sometimes fail to think that everybody else probably lives mostly inside their heads too, that everyone’s just acting and nobody is who they say they are and nobody’s talking because we’re all scared and unsure and have these layers and layers of secrets. It’s scary how for all we know, no one knows anyone and most of us don’t even know ourselves. Who are we? Do we need to know who we are, if so how do we know and who tells us and what do we do with this information? We’re all so blind and so human and so ignorant and loud and silent and it could be that we never say what we really think and maybe the answers to everything are somewhere trapped inside of our horrendously caged minds, maybe we’re so afraid of ever knowing or being known that we live almost entirely in our own worlds in our own minds and we never see anything or anyone else clearly at all. Maybe we’re both as alone as we think and not alone at all as we’re all thinking it, I suppose if we feel like we are alone, then in a way we are alone. Our feelings are real and our feelings are valid and our feelings matter and I wish it was easier to show everyone what and who we really are, I wish it was easier to know who and what we really are, and to know that of others as well.
I suppose that’s maybe the point of this often terrible life, maybe the point is that we need to learn ourselves and learn the world and learn everyone else and learn about interconnectedness and to form bonds that make us less alone, maybe all we need to do is to hope and to speculate and to trust that everyone, underneath all that we see and know is remarkable, including ourselves. I don’t know, nobody does, but I am glad I’m still alive and that I can think and feel and try and hope. I have so much hope now it’s pretty pathetic and I keep rolling my eyes at myself because I know how silly and dangerous hope is. But maybe it isn’t. It’s hard to tell, but I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s the hope and almost conviction that there are great things ahead that’s keeping me going through a whole lot of the horrible shit now, I believe in a future that is filled with a beautiful mess of light and dark and happy and sad and loads and loads of colour and people I hope to maybe learn about, people who might somehow open up in a way I never have except for in these posts and in my diary, maybe one day I’ll find the words and know what to say for real as well. I hope and I joke and I laugh and I can’t help but think. All the time. Far too much, as always. It’s just that my overactive and unsleeping mind no longer focuses on the terrible things that make me want to die and instead it thinks about unanswerable questions and things I’ll never know, people I’ll never get a chance to know if I give up too early. Right now, in my drunk with tiredness state, believe that I can do this and that we all can do this and that people are complex and scary but also usually so so good and fascinating and that it is worth it, or at least will be worth it.
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“What is the meaning of life?” So many people have been trying to figure out the answer to that. But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is your interpretation of what you want out of this life and perhaps what you think humanity should be aiming to achieve.
For me, I do not believe in God. And I do not believe we have some sort of “set” or “higher” purpose in this world that is so important. We’ve been given a life, and I think our purpose is to live (as stupid as that sounds). Just to live and experience the world.
Essentially, humans are destroyers.. perhaps we can build and create things, find cures diseases, etc. But at what cost? To make our lives “better” we are harming the Earth. To save people, we are making our species weak – survival of the fittest. To save other animals, we are intervening and perhaps stopping evolution. Even just by looking at something, we are destroying the very system we are looking at.
But the majority of us don’t think about these things in this sort of light because its too complicated and you end up with that sort of purposelessness feeling. If you believe you are the driver of this life, of your fate, then that’s all that matters. You should focus on what you want to achieve and what you want humanity to achieve. Everyone else will have their own agenda and in truth, it probably goes against yours.
Personally you can ever really know a person or know yourself. But I guess its because the mindset and position you’re in now is not the same as it was three years ago, or maybe even yesterday. It’s just too much to process. And while we all like to think that we’re completely different, unique individuals, we aren’t. There are so many similarities we share between another: the way we feel in response to certain events, the way react, etc – just perhaps in conjunction with different experiences and different combinations of these things are what make us “unique” and “different”.
Your friend you mentioned may not be so light with your jokes because suicide is that serious of a topic for her. Personally I find it offensive when people make jokes about suicide.. and just talk about people who commit or even think of suicide, like we’re so dumb and worthless (I had my whole class take on the “suicide is dumb” view” and it disgusted me).