TheBanyanTree: Understanding suicide.

[TLW]

Yeah, I get it. I totally get it.

I thought, the other day, how does a person, even a dumb 16 year old boy,
kill a girl he reportedly loves and admires? How does he do that with no
one seeing any "signs"?

Which made me think of the Craig's List killer, years ago.  How could he
function, day-to-day, keeping up appearances to others, then act out so
suddenly and strangely and violently?

I think it was depression. The Bell Jar, where you feel you are just
watching the world go by, with no real affect on you, you don't really feel
anything. Things you used to love have no affect. Things that should
repulse you sort of bounce off with a flat thud.

And you want to do something to conquer the numbness. Something desperate,
like suicide. Only not as physically painful to your own person. So you
come up with inflicting pain on others as a remedy. Just to see if, you
know, you really do exist. Since it feels like you don't.

Either that, or they are just terrible people.

I flirting dangerously with depression last week. Like,
hard-to-catch-my-breath depression. I couldn't see the point of it. Life.
Money. Writing. Creativity. None of it. It seemed like a disgusting insipid
hamster wheel. I know how it all ends, so what's the point, after all?

I felt better when the temperatures dropped. Because temps over 80 really
do a number on my brain. It takes me back to my terrible Texas childhood,
and nothing will ever be that bad again.

Surgery does a number on your whole system. Anesthesia has always
precipitated a few months of depression in me afterwards. They don't really
tell you that. I don't know why. They don't tell you about pain meds
constipating you, either. Why do they keep this important information from
us? It happens to EVERYONE.

Galway Kinnell wrote the poem that I think of every time I teeter on the
precipice. "Wait," it is called. He wrote it for a student suffering a
broken heart, who confided his own despair to him. It goes:

" Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again. . ."

It goes on. Google it. It will give you something productive and good to
do.  :->

xoxoxoSidda