Posts tagged with "suicide"

the last blogger

I only knew Dooce through her infamy as the first per­son to suf­fer real-life con­se­quences for things she wrote online. It’s hard for me to be inter­est­ed in the life of any­one I don’t know per­son­al­ly (excep­tions made for peo­ple I feel inspired by or am crush­ing on), and the hand­ful of times in twen­ty years that I was curi­ous enough to vis­it her web­site, I was met with some enter­tain­ing writ­ing about mar­riage and moth­er­hood that I could­n’t give a fuck about.

The last time would have been a few years ago; I tend to check up on a few blog­gers every so often when I’m won­der­ing how the land­scape has evolved1. As one of the few who were pop­u­lar enough to make a liv­ing off the wit­ty rev­e­la­tions of per­son­al details, she eas­i­ly made the list. That’s why it was so dis­con­cert­ing to find that some months there was a sin­gle post, and the post was a list of spon­sored links to things peo­ple could buy. It was espe­cial­ly strange to find her dis­cussing diges­tive issues while a giant ban­ner would fight for my atten­tion under­neath: “And for any­one who may be expe­ri­enc­ing what I am, ButcherBox is run­ning a spe­cial pro­mo­tion through the end of the month where new mem­bers receive ground beef in every box for the life­time of their sub­scrip­tion.”

How much of her writ­ing was gen­uine? How do I trust the words of a per­son who seems to be cap­i­tal­iz­ing on her mis­for­tune?

Perhaps that’s why I was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly moved when I found out she com­mit­ted sui­cide two months ago. It felt like I nev­er knew who she tru­ly was beneath the curse words and prod­ucts being hawked. I also have a hard time empathiz­ing with any­one who would describe preg­nan­cy as an “end­less trove of con­tent”. For me, that kind of mind­set reeked too much of melo­dra­ma, which I find dis­taste­ful enough to avoid in real life.

It glads my heart when I stum­ble across anoth­er online diary nowa­days. A gen­uine one, of course, not updates from a com­pa­ny or a cook­ing blog that’s stuffed with pho­tos to pad the time some­one stays on the page before the recipe is found. No one enter­tains same audi­ence as they used to, and I much pre­fer that to the kind of inter­ac­tive “con­fes­sion­al” Dooce had, or the social media influ­encers of today.

I’m remind­ed of how for­tu­nate I am to still have this lit­tle cor­ner of the web to express myself, a place where I’m not behold­en to an audi­ence for a source of income. So often I find myself too bro­ken to get out of bed, too strung out to pur­sue my projects, too busy to find 15 min­utes to work on a lick. And dur­ing the stretch­es of time when I’m recov­er­ing and there’s noth­ing note­wor­thy to talk about, I’m relieved I don’t have to man­u­fac­ture expe­ri­ences to keep any­one’s atten­tion. I still get mail ask­ing if there are any spots for adver­tis­ing or avail­abil­i­ty for spon­sored posts, and they all get prompt­ly get filed away in the trash.

  1. Also a good way for me to keep abreast on the lat­est web tech­nolo­gies. [↩]

dead man walking

My first year of uni­ver­si­ty was spent on the 15th floor of a res­i­dence on cam­pus, the same sum­mer Pearl Jam’s cov­er of Last Kiss became a radio sta­ple for over 35 con­sec­u­tive weeks. Unsurprisingly, it start­ed play­ing in the ele­va­tor when I was once mak­ing my way to the cafe­te­ria with a floor­mate, who winced upon hear­ing Vedder’s grave­ly voice and did her best to talk over it, explain­ing her dis­like of sad music.

I was tak­en aback. Depressing lyrics and minor chords were an enor­mous com­fort to me1. As the sole child of a dys­func­tion­al home, the only thing I could turn to when my par­ents start­ed rais­ing their voic­es at each oth­er was a set of head­phones and Discman, and I’d been hunt­ing for sad songs like a rav­en­ous stray ever since I was old enough to appre­ci­ate music.

The same became true of upset­ting movies with dif­fi­cult scenes. Moments of vio­lence, tragedy, and grief would leave me glued to the screen. I was fas­ci­nat­ed with the way peo­ple processed their pain (or did­n’t). War films were par­tic­u­lar­ly apt for this, as relent­less years of depres­sion caused me to relate to any sol­dier with a thou­sand yard stare. That glazed, expres­sion­less face spoke of a per­son who had long giv­en up on mak­ing sense of the count­less hor­rors and end­less suf­fer­ing they had gone through.

1000 yard stare

The lights are on, but nobody’s home.

Continue read­ing “dead man walk­ing”…

  1. I’ve come to under­stand how naive it is to think every­one enjoys that kind of mood. [↩]

aporia of faith

In recent years I’ve been rumi­nat­ing on the ques­tion of whether or not humans have inher­ent val­ue, per­haps because my sui­ci­dal ideation caus­es me to won­der whether life itself is worth­less. The sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of such a idea means I don’t ask any­one for an answer, but I do probe for opin­ions. My friends have all told me that they believe peo­ple are inher­ent­ly valu­able; or, at the very least, they know they’re valu­able because they val­ue them­selves, even if they can’t say the same about any­one else.

This sur­prised me at first; I can remem­ber believ­ing that each per­son is a bur­den on soci­ety who has to earn their place, as soon as I was old enough to under­stand such a con­cept1. But a few years ago when I told this to Jesse, he expressed dis­be­lief based on the way he’s observed my treat­ment of oth­ers.

Being chal­lenged about my views by a per­son I so high­ly respect­ed cer­tain­ly gave me pause to recon­sid­er. When I thought about a stranger I might meet on the street, I felt that that life would be a ben­e­fit to the world, that that per­son deserves to be loved, hap­py, safe, and healthy as much as any­one else sim­ply because they exist. Suddenly, I real­ized that it was myself whom I believed to be worth­less, and I extend­ed this belief to oth­ers to soothe any pains I had over such a thought. I did­n’t despair about my worth­less­ness if every­one else had just as lit­tle val­ue.

I can trace this warped world­view to my child­hood, when my par­ents treat­ed me sim­ply as an exten­sion of their lives. They made it clear that their love was pure­ly con­di­tion­al, based on my obe­di­ence, achieve­ments at school/work, friends, roman­tic part­ners, and how those all com­pared to oth­ers. I was always work­ing from a deficit of love, try­ing to earn their approval and affec­tion by doing the “right” thing, which was defined as what they want­ed2.

This is no more appar­ent than when try­ing to show myself com­pas­sion (or per­haps mag­na­nim­i­ty would be the bet­ter word). Imagining myself as anoth­er per­son before me, every time I say to him “You deserve to be hap­py”, my mind can’t help but fin­ish the sen­tence with “…as long as you…” as if that hap­pi­ness is con­tin­gent upon some lev­el of per­for­mance at a work­place or achieve­ment in a career.

Unfortunately, aware­ness does­n’t resolve the issue. Even though I had an epiphany that helped me under­stand the fal­la­cy of my world­view, try­ing to sud­den­ly believe that I have an inher­ent val­ue seems as implau­si­ble as find­ing a ran­dom peb­ble on the ground and believ­ing that it’s worth the same as a pol­ished gem­stone. No won­der the opin­ion I have of myself has been so great­ly influ­enced by oth­ers; I’ve been rely­ing on the approval of my peers to give me the val­ue I so des­per­ate­ly desire3.

So if the worth of a per­son is sub­jec­tive and there are no absolute truths, how is it pos­si­ble for me to gen­uine­ly believe that I have val­ue after a life­time of believ­ing that I don’t?

  1. I’m sure that grow­ing up in a cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety that views any­one who does­n’t work (includ­ing seniors) as lazy and worth­less con­tributed to this belief. [↩]
  2. Not only would this cause me to feel like I had to con­stant­ly earn my hap­pi­ness, this would also cause me to believe any dif­fi­cul­ties I faced were my fault — that I must be to blame if some­one did­n’t find me attrac­tive, or I must have deserved any­thing I suf­fered. [↩]
  3. I even­tu­al­ly learn that exter­nal forms of val­i­da­tion like this are unre­li­able and gen­er­al­ly unhealthy. [↩]

in the absence of light

It’s been weeks since I left the house for any­thing but a doctor’s appoint­ment, maybe three times since November. I miss the win­ter, even though it’s right out­side my door. I miss my friends, even though they’re rarely more than a short trip away. It’s espe­cial­ly hard not being able to explain the dis­tance. All I can do is hope they trust me when I don’t feel com­fort­able explain­ing, and try not to feel inse­cure about being so out of touch.

Sometimes, the thought of being away from my safe­ty zone fills me with dread. Other times it’s just eas­i­er to not do any­thing. I bare­ly man­age the effort to wash my hair once a week, and the only rea­son I shave is to more eas­i­ly wipe off the vis­cid sad­ness that so often vis­its my face. I sus­pect I would­n’t even be eat­ing if it weren’t for the fact that Heather enjoys tak­ing care of peo­ple to ful­fill her own need for secu­ri­ty. She’s lived here a few months, and she’s already mak­ing sure the cats have their teeth brushed every day and all the bills are paid. I’ve bare­ly known her for twice that time, and I’ve nev­er been more depen­dent on any­one in my life.

It feels like I’ve tak­en two steps back, but I’m at this point cause it means I’m safe enough to start pro­cess­ing and under­stand­ing the things that led to me try­ing to hang myself from the rail­ing of my stair­case a year ago. I haven’t fig­ured out what it means to keep going, when for so long I believed my life was lead­ing up to that moment, and stick­ing around was­n’t a choice I made for myself. Just fig­ur­ing out how to write about such a large and com­plex expe­ri­ence is often too much. I’m left bro­ken when I sim­ply want to under­stand.

I’m learn­ing that recov­ery isn’t a bina­ry process, but a jour­ney with strug­gles and tri­umphs. I still suf­fer the trau­ma of being moments away from dying. I’m still haunt­ed by the guilt of sur­vival. With so many hair-trig­gers that lead to whol­ly con­sum­ing break­downs, I can’t deny I’m not the per­son I used to be. Right now, it’s hard enough just try­ing to be okay with that.