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I have a really hard time understanding suicidal people Believe me, you don't want to understand. The only way you can, is if you've been there. Imagine for a

by jmts 9y ago

I have a really hard time understanding suicidal people Believe me, you don't want to understand. The only way you can, is if you've been there. Imagine for a moment that you are in a hostage situation. Someone wants to kill you. They have the gun to your head, and you have no control over it. Maybe it's today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe you'll get out okay? Nobody knows. Inside you're scared as hell. You don't like this one single bit. But you're bound, and you can only struggle so much. They have their foot on your back, standing over you. You're powerless. They're screaming at other people. Yelling at you. Acting irrationally. It only takes the smallest thing to set them off, and there's only so much you can do to stop them pulling the trigger. Sometimes they'll go away for long enough for you to get a rest. Maybe get some sleep. But don't kick your toe or drop something. You'll wake them up and you'll be right in the thick of it again. But the person holding you hostage, is yourself. It's a part of your mind. And it will sap every bit of your energy to try to fight it. The healthy part of you doesn't want any of it. The healthy you doesn't want to hurt anybody. But sometimes you just can't fight it any longer. It's daily, monthly, yearly, conscious waking nightmare.

samplatt 9y ago
As someone that's been there, that's an excellent metaphor, and as close to a description of the freezing, sweating, spiraling manic terror that polite society will allow.
mercer 9y ago
Reminds me of how David Foster Wallace described it: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

by jmts 9y ago

samplatt 9y ago

As someone that's been there, that's an excellent metaphor, and as close to a description of the freezing, sweating, spiraling manic terror that polite society will allow.

mercer 9y ago

Reminds me of how David Foster Wallace described it: “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”