25-07-2011 20:37
So...it's one of those nights, and I'm back on this thread. First off, I've been reading the posts above, and I feel empathy for everyone in this thread. I've struggled with thoughts of suicide since I was in my late teens, with one serious attempt - now I'm 36, and in a mess, professionally, financially (which keeps me in a job I hate), and with benzo addiction. My tolerance reached the point where I started throwing in some seroquel to get to sleep, and modafinil or MPA to get moving in the morning - it's impossible to imagine living drug-free, and I feel I've fucked up so many opportunities that sometimes I can't forgive myself. A few weeks back, I had a dark experience with Methoxetamine and 4-meo-pcp that had me calculating LD50s and whether my 'scripts, combined, would do the job...but I was partly raised by a grandmother who killed herself, and even though she was 83, it's haunted and damaged me to the point that I know, while I have living relatives, I just don't have the option. Too many friends as well who'd lose months to grieving...and one who's told me she's not sure she could carry on herself if I don't. I score off the charts for major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety and have been an addict/alkie since I was 15...brief flashes of happiness in relationships that turned to shit, and now I wonder if I'm coming close to a point of no return...
I know that I may still be suffering PAWS, as well (three months clean), and my neurotransmitters just can't experience pleasure for very long. I don't know if I can do my job, pay my debts, deal with everything I have to deal with. But...fuck it. I'm going to try. I don't know if I can forgive the past, or face the future: but I won't do to others what my grandma did to me, leaving me wondering for 14 years about her last moments, about whether I could have done something to stop her if I hadn't been too busy with girlfriends and partying. I'm typing this at what used to be her desk, one of the few things she managed to get out of Romania during WWII - we're Jewish, and the Nazi puppet government was sweeping the area, her folks bribed the right people, they got out. I remind myself every day that whether you're an atheist or psychedelic mystic, a true believer in an organised religion or none of the above, on some level, don't we all sense, at least sometimes, that all things are connected, all is one? Maybe that's just down to raw physics: there are other ways of looking at it.
But if we give in to the urge to self-destruct, I do believe it's a loss that effects - and affects - everything. I haven't had 'a good day' this whole year, haven't felt pleasure or a sense of peace for so long that I don't remember what they're like: but still, even if for no reason that I can name, I know I must remain alive as long as I can. I had to write that, tonight, in a public forum, because I'm trapped in a job/apartment/life I hate...but fuck it. No. I'm not giving up. I don't really know why: but whatever pain may come, I won't be my grandmother (of blessed memory, as we say in Hebrew), because the damage done to the fabric of the universe that each and everyone of us contributes to was too great. Because when there's still breath, there's still hope: even if only as an abstract idea, and because there are places, such as this, where strangers can share our howls of pain.
Forgive the long and rambling posts: and, all of you, keep breathing. Things get better: things get worse, but let's not cross over to the void or whatever else subsists beyond this consciousness until we have to. After all, even the coldest of empiricists has to accept that alocal causality is a real possibility - and we do not know what might be torn apart by our own self-destruction.
So fuck it - keep breathing, even and especially when it hurts most. There is every reason, there is none, and that same alocal causin' might bring riches of happiness and hope that none of us can imagine. We are human beings, low and high, strong and weak, pointless and purposeful. Embrace the contradictions, blow a raspberry at the void, and gentile or Jew, raise a glass of something if you're drinking, and even - most of all, if it feels like a lie - toast 'L'Chaim'. 'To Life', because it hurts and hates and loves and gives and takes, and there's no way of knowing if the nothingness that lies beyond is nothingness at all, better, worse, or unimaginable. Let's make suicide our enemy and hold the line. There's reality beyond the pain, and pain beyond reality. Let's live with them both.
So goes this bird-brain's verdict on the universe and staying in it. Fuck it. Why not? David Foster Wallace should have listened to his own words: 'no single moment is in and of itself unendurable.' And anyone who has the nerve to post in this thread, to admit their own pain, is a whole lot stronger and more worthwhile than we think at our worst moments.
'Don't let them have their way/don't let them have their way/you're beautiful and so blase/so please don't let them have their way/don't fall back into the decay/there is no law we must obey/so please don't let them have their way/don't give in to yesterday/don't fall back into the decay/We can build a new tomorrow...today' - Placebo.
One foot in front of the other. Let's all keep breathing and dance until the music stops. Most of all when it hurts most.
Last edited by Where Wolf?; 25-07-2011 at 20:49.
