Previous to the latter weeks of February I did not completely understand why it was that mentioning suicide and even attempting suicide was such a big deal. I didn’t understand why it would hurt someone when I said “choose me or yourself” or why it worried people when I mentioned suicide when it didn’t hurt me or worry me. In thinking about those circumstances I realized that I don’t value my life as much as others value my life.
How did I come to the conclusion that my life isn’t worth anything?
What I learned in my pre-college years was that all of my feelings are wrong and that they should be put aside to care for others’ feelings. In essence I learned that because my feelings are wrong, I am wrong; because my feelings don’t matter as much as everyone else’s then I don’t matter.
After over a decade of thinking this, of having it ingrained in my thought process for fear of going to jail or being committed in some hellhole, after watching someone I care so much about “look at me” then walk away(and knowing I had to walk away just to not hurt her — to let her go even though it would hurt me), why would I think my life mattered at all? Why would I think she would care if I lived or died?
Why would I think anything about myself when I’m constantly told I don’t matter. And even if I’m not “constantly told” this, it was beaten into me so much so when I was younger that it’s all I can think no matter what anyone says; it was as if I was forced to tell myself “I don’t matter” or I would go to jail or be committed with the people screaming and hitting and biting.
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I so hear ya. As an only child whose biological parents attempted suicide, my father was ‘successful’ mother was not because I found her in time and she screamed at me in the hospital that I was the reason she wanted to die. I was 10 years old. She’d always told me I was fine until I learned to talk. I have physcial scares from her abuse. I was molested by her friend and then raped by someone in the neighborhood because she was drunk and left the door unlocked. Then foster ‘care’ : Juvenile hall cause no homes available then a home where we were kept in the basement…anyway you get the point: I saw myself and other children being treated like total shit…disposable, irrelevant at best and scapegoats at worse.
Later I learned that in physics there is some law that an object in motion stays in motion until and object of equal and opposite force is applied.
I think they understand that intuitively in religion…making up mythical characters who can be that equal and opposite force. However, we are still so bad at taking care of ourselves and one another as a species.
Sorry for your pain. May the equal and opposite force be with you including some you find here among others who understand or at least we are searching for understanding rather than giving up.
Thanks for replying. I’m sorry to hear about your childhood. It seems that when we are children, adults don’t seem to understand the impact they have on such a young mind; it’s totally irresponsible. There isn’t a word that can qualify that irresponsibility. And now we as “adults” have to deal with the ramifications of all that we had to endure when we were younger; and then some people say don’t complain because there are others on the opposite side of the world suffering.
I feel for those others, but I am suffering as well. Even though we aren’t in a third-world country, don’t we matter?
I also feel that my life doesn’t have value… mostly it’s a personal choice, I choose not to value it. Unfortunately, people, humanity etc etc are not so singular, everythign is interconnected, so it’s impossible to repect others if you don’t respect your own life, because it’s THE SAME THING if you get me.
So by you not valuing your own life is incredible disrespectful to the people who DO care and value your life. Western mentality can be so singular and oversimplistic in this regard. It’s not a one way street.
It’s not a one way street, but who appreciates — or at least respects — the pain that I am going through. Or does it not matter. If it doesn’t matter then I’ll reject that pain and continue forward. But, if that pain does matter what does that mean?
People in third world countries or in the us in poverty or who are missing limbs etc…..if they are well loved are more well off than folks who have never had their social immune system inocculated with love.
Complaining is a key variable in ending slavery and other atrocities as well as more subtle distructive forces.
Taking action vital too. Broadening the menus choices are made from.
As children I believe we also learn to respect and love ourselves by loving others and being loved.
So canaries in coal mine .. Sing
I’m sure your ex appreciates the pain you are going through. But do you appreciate the pain you are putting her through, whether intentionally or unintentionally?
The pain does matter. It is the means by which you can learn something (if there were no pain, people would not be motivated to learn. Humans are stupid, but sadly hardwired this way). Pain is how you learn and grow.
I’m sure she’s not in any kind of pain from anything I’m doing. I can pretty much guarantee that…
Second all that One-Day.
I suppose I had a similar experience, I had a “normal” childhood, whatever that is, but around when I was ten my parents had a divorce. At first I stayed with my mom, but as time went on she grew more and more irrational. I found out later that my mom was a paranoid schizophrenic and had been given a prescription for it several times when she began showing symptoms, but every time she would stop taking the medication because she thought she was better. Well, it became quite clear that she was not and the condition was worsening fast. My dad, after a full year and a half of going through the court system, finally got full custody of of us (Me and my two older brothers and one older sister) and the house. She got a large sum of money that could last her for years and went and found an apartment. Everything seemed to be looking up for a while, for about a year or so at least.
Then I woke up to a loud wheezing sound in the bathroom. The shower was on and water was building up and pouring out of it. I hesitantly shouted to see who was in there. There was no answer. I shouted louder and still no sound other than the water pouring down from the faucet. I quickly stumbled around for something to open the door with and used a coin to open the door. I found my dad slumped over in the bottom of the shower blocking the drain. I called for my brother to wake up, he quickly did and helped me pull him out of the shower. I called 911 while my brother tried CPR on him, the ambulance was there soon and tried to revive him, but they could not. He was dead.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this, I cried like a fucking baby, me and my dad had become very close over the past year or so. I couldn’t stand being at the house so I went to my Aunts place for a while.
I was there trying to work over things inside my head. I soon just opted for the easy way out and started watching whatever was on the TV to distract myself. As I watched though, I found that none of the things they said, nothing they did mattered. It just didn’t. The things that in the past might have staved off boredom now was just white noise on a screen.
Soon after I went back to school and people were telling me how sorry they were for me and trying to reassure me. I don’t remember much of the things they said or my reactions to them, but it seemed to pass just like any other day.
I’m sixteen now. Not much has changed, my mom still is living elsewhere, I don’t normally see her (over the past two years I might have seen her three, maybe four times), my oldest brother has taken custody of me, and I’m now in high school. I like to think that these things in my past haven’t affected me very much, but if I think about things honestly, they rule over most everything I do.
I have lost all motive, all drive that a normal person would have. School seems meaningless, money seems meaningless, life seems meaningless. I would kill myself, but I know it would change absolutely nothing. I would simply find myself in the same situation. I feel as if I have died so many times already, I know I have.
I can’t remember being happy. I find comfort in the kind of things that would give any sane person nightmares. The only joy I find is sick and twisted into something grotesque. Death doesn’t scare me, what scares me is life, or more accurately, eternal life.
I think I’ve lost my sanity. Who needs it. I haven’t thought about these things for a while.
I hate reality.