RE: Fighting Depression and Suicidal Thoughts
March 11, 2019 at 7:44 pm
(This post was last modified: March 11, 2019 at 8:05 pm by bennyboy.)
I'm kind of in a similar place. It feels like I had a personal relationship with the Universe, that I was serving that relationship in good faith, and the Universe turned its back on me. Sometimes, even birds singing or flowers in the field seem to be telling me that I don't belong. Or my wife will give me a birthday present and look me in the eyes, and I'm just thinking how lonely I feel; I have to sit there and blow out candles, and listen to my co-workers clap for me and pretend to give a shit because I pay their salaries, and I know that if I ever actually needed anything from any them, they'd beg off with some excuse.
Key for me is one point-- I think depression isn't sadness. It's a recognition of unrecoverable dysfunction in the narrative of life, and a feeling of missing power over my own outcome: why get out of bed in the morning if nothing I do will change anything? But nothing is stopping me from walking out the door and buying a ticket to the Bahamas. I DO still have some control over my outcome, and that matters. I could do charity work, or go to Thailand and do strange sex stuff, or train to bench 300 lbs. Nothing else in life can really stop me from doing those things if I choose to.
Here's what I currently do when I'm sitting in the bathtub and my razor catches my eye, or I wonder how long it would take to black out if I put my head underwater and breathed in. I go for a walk. A long, hard walk-- like 6 hours, far past the point at which I can feel my feet; I talk to myself, fantasize about all the crazy and irresponsible things I can do if I just don't give a shit about living any more-- try motorbike parachuting, maybe, or blindfold myself and run across 4 lanes of traffic just to see how people react. Usually, that makes me laugh a little. Eventually, I'm physically and mentally exhausted, and I just start thinking-- "Man. . . some wife-made soup and a soft warm bed would feel really good right now! I can focus on my hatred for life tomorrow." That helps a lot.
Key for me is one point-- I think depression isn't sadness. It's a recognition of unrecoverable dysfunction in the narrative of life, and a feeling of missing power over my own outcome: why get out of bed in the morning if nothing I do will change anything? But nothing is stopping me from walking out the door and buying a ticket to the Bahamas. I DO still have some control over my outcome, and that matters. I could do charity work, or go to Thailand and do strange sex stuff, or train to bench 300 lbs. Nothing else in life can really stop me from doing those things if I choose to.
Here's what I currently do when I'm sitting in the bathtub and my razor catches my eye, or I wonder how long it would take to black out if I put my head underwater and breathed in. I go for a walk. A long, hard walk-- like 6 hours, far past the point at which I can feel my feet; I talk to myself, fantasize about all the crazy and irresponsible things I can do if I just don't give a shit about living any more-- try motorbike parachuting, maybe, or blindfold myself and run across 4 lanes of traffic just to see how people react. Usually, that makes me laugh a little. Eventually, I'm physically and mentally exhausted, and I just start thinking-- "Man. . . some wife-made soup and a soft warm bed would feel really good right now! I can focus on my hatred for life tomorrow." That helps a lot.
