So when is it permissable to check out?

Self | 03/01/2011 | PhilStone

[PhilosopherStone1000]

So I'm 50. I have a very smart, very beautiful daughter who is a junior in high school.

Every day, I wake up and say to myself "Crap. I'm still alive."

I feel like I've done my job. I have give birth to and raised an extraordinary human being. There's nothing I can do now to advance her career or life.

How much does God expect me to endure? When can I say "I've had enough?" At what point is it rational to jump off that bridge simply because one is tired of putting up with all the crap?

[ladyvet]

Thanks for the update. So he gets his attention and goes on his merry way without any follow up. The guy really is selfish.

[GOPJ]

I’m happy he’s posting to other threads... can I take it you’ve never been seriously depressed?

[RoseyT]

Thank you for taking the time to let us know.

I suppose this situation is an example of someone not giving a damn that there are human beings behind the replies on this thread. Whether the original post was a drunken ramble, a true plea for “help” or some kind of “experiment” the OP should have the integrity to reply.

I’m woman enough to admit that I cried for the OP because I was worried for her/him. I prayed for the OP because it was all I could do. If I was duped, so be it. At least I have integrity.

[OB1kNOb]

Sounds to me like the culprit needs to be called on the carpet by Jim Rob and asked to come clean as to why he started this thread. Any indication that this was his idea of a joke should be a zottable offense.

[TigersEye]

...can I take it you’ve never been seriously depressed?

Read it for yourself.

[FourtySeven]

Thanks for going back into the thread to get everyone’s name to ping. That must have been a lot of work!

I’m not entirely convinced it was a joke; to be blunt, the poster in question may have gotten really intoxicated that night and thus posted something he regretted later. OR, it may be as you described, some attention getting stunt.

I’m not sure which possibility is the truth, so I will refrain from judging anything, because after all, if possibility #1 is what occurred, then insults and condemnation are exactly the wrong thing to do. Could cause even worse “bad mojo” if something were to result from such criticism.

Either way though, I’d hope you, PhilosopherStone, are seeking help for whatever may be afflicting you because either possibility above does not show a healthy mental state. To be clear, the mental disorder in possibility #1 is obvious, but #2 shows a mental defect of a sort as well, specifically a lack of care for one’s fellow man’s feelings, i.e., a sociopathic tendency. I do not say that to insult; it’s out of genuine care and concern for you. Get help either way.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I will keep you in prayer. You should do the same for yourself. Also, if you are a philosopher of some sort and are struggling with the idea that God does exist, then I would recommend reading “The Religious Sense”, found here: http://www.amazon.com/Religious-Sense-Luigi-Giussani/dp/0773516263 A philosopher would probably be the best type of person to read that book by himself, but it is best read and discussed in the context of a School of Community, locations of which can be found here: http://www.clonline.us/contacts.cfm

[Darnright]

>Just think...if somebody *really* needs help in the future, this jackass just might cost that person their life because FReepers might remember being made sympathetic fools of.<

Let’s hope not. Until proven otherwise, threats of suicide need to be taken seriously.

[verity]

"...I have give birth to...

That is rather extraordinary for a male.

[444Flyer]

Thanks for the ping TigersEye. You care. It says a lot about your character. This thread also says a lot about the character of other FReepers. Some of the responses were so well thought out and well written. Not personally knowing this individual, there is NO way of contemplating whether they are a real risk to themself or not. The wall of the faceless internet unfortunately. Based on the fact that we don't know this individual personally, the great majority of FReepers gave this person the benefit of the doubt and took them for their word.

We can't behave or respond any other way. Decent people are like that.

Regardless of whatever the reason this person posted this thread. It should be taken into consideration that they obviously have some deep issues and do need prayer one way or another.

But duly noted, approach with caution.

[TigersEye]

Thanks. I still care and I’m sure that everyone else who posted does too. The main reason I pinged most everyone back is so they would know that he didn’t do himself in. But given his attitude when I called him on not coming back here himself I thought they deserved to know that too. His one reply on this thread at #10 was the first red flag that he has little respect for the rest of us here. I know I don’t appreciate that.

[RinaseaofDs]

Dude.

There’s a big difference between cowardly and tired. I’m a Bible believing Christian, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t ask God, “Are we there yet?”

Living here on Earth has been great, but if you actually believe in salvation through Christ, where there is no death, and no pain, where ever tear is wiped away, one asks, “OK, I’m in, when do we start?”

Fact is, people get depressed and ask for help. Sometimes you feel like you’re the only one going through it.

My advice might have been:

1. First, get a physical and make sure you are OK.
2. You’re doing God’s will, pushing back the evil, simply by living your life as a Christian. It may not feel like it, but you are.
3. God has a plan for you, even if the plan is waiting. Pray, and God doesn’t mind frustration, anger, and other very messy and flawed human reactions whilst addressing Him.
4. Look for something new. Anything that takes us out of the groove we seem to be in. For me, volunteering with the Boy Scouts and American Legion has saved my sanity.

One other thing I hope isn’t necessary in Heaven - courage. Is there not one place in God’s creation where anything is safe, where courage and eternal vigilance are not required?

[SonOfDarkSkies]

Speaking of karma, this fellow is in much deeper trouble than we all at first suspected.

It is one thing to be deeply depressed...that's bad enough. But to demonstrate, as this person has, a lack of conscience and remorse for basically abusing Freepers who were sincere in their efforts to help him.

Now that's a serious problem.

[RinaseaofDs]

Your taste in wine is outstanding. When I was about to leave for college on the East Coast, my Dad took me and a friend wine tasting in Napa, and BV was one of the first, fortunate stops we made.

To put this into perspective, my father doesn’t drink. I grew up in Martinez, likely not far from you if you are a NorCal person. I took an interest in wine because of an interest in science. My Dad knew he was saying goodbye for good, since it was a military academy. The drinking age was an easy thing for him to rationalize. If you are old enough to be a sanctioned killer, you’re old enough to drink.

I fell in love with the idea of a winemaker putting five years into something before somebody can consume it. I looked at it as a form of sculpting, with all the hard labor involved in creating something so marvelous and subtle.

I, as you, got nothing out of anything therapeutic, including chemicals.

What pulled me out were two things. Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’, which I had studied in HS, but had crossed my path again while working as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts. The second was some advice:

“Put yourself in the way of fate”

or if you’re Christian

“Put yourself in God’s way”

You have to force God’s hand - make him put you to work, and if you’re lucky, you’ll die in the end and get what you prayed for.

Sounds stupid, but there’s a million metaphors you can use to illustrate it. Essentially, no tool ever fixed anything whilst still in the box. You can extend that to painting, “No art was every created with a clean brush”, etc.

Leave the house. Walk the earth a bit.

Place yourself in the trajectory of events. Build up with worn tools a lifetimes work destroyed capriciously in seconds. It may be a different thing you are building, but there are other things to be built.

One thing beautiful about this advice - it is a very honest way of coming to what many Christians of conscience seek, which of course is an early death with the side benefit of it possibly helping somebody else.

Volunteer in a foreign country. I have one friend who is educating nurses on how to be OB/GYN’s in Afghanistan with the USPHS as his main job. He was in the same hole, and he’s not there anymore.

Isolation is a workshop for demons. It’s a patient place for them to come and pick the flesh from your bones a little at a time. You have to take your mind off of you somehow, and there’s no manual for that except the one you can’t seem to find around the house, and nobody else can write except you.

Jonah, from the Bible, is a pretty good role model. He hated the Ninevites, and God wanted to spare them. He told Jonah to tell them to repent, and Jonah knew they would, and would thus be spared God’s wrath.

Jonah ran. God found him on the boat, and so he told the captain to throw him overboard (he was too chicken to jump). Then the whale came and spat him on the beach.

You want to find out what God’s will is for you? Make him tell you. Force His hand.

If you aren’t a Christian, or a Deist, none of this is going to mean anything, because outside of believing in a Next Act, it is VERY EASY to build an airtight case for suicide.

[Salamander]

Oh, I know myself well enough to be able state that, God forbid, somebody posts a similar “plea”, I’d be one of the first to worry.

I’m stupid that way.

[Vendome]

Bottom line:

The jerk never responded to his thread and left most of us, including myself, wondering if he had followed through.

If you see his response to Tgereye, on the other thread, he is completely dismissive.

He posted that thread either as a joke or as a source of material for some book he might write.

His response is just unacceptable and I hope he gets ZOT.

[Vendome]

Dear Admin Mod:
I’d like to ask you to look into the original poster of thi thread.

A good many feared and worried for this poster and now the whole thing appears to have been a joke.

I don’t understand his dismissive tone to Tigerseye, except that he is a self serving jerk.

Who, for his own amusement posted a suicide opus.

There must have been 100 People, including myself, who reached out to him and gave words of encouragement and I’ll bet I wasn’t the only one who prayed for him and his daughter.

I don’t care for being taken advantage of and having it compounded with a dismisive and get over it tone.
The OP has been here some time but that kind of judgement, using his daughter as a prop and his callowness are not acceptable.

Respectfully, I urge you to consider ZOing him

[KrisKrinkle]

Thanks. I wondered about him.

[webstersII]

“Just thought you all might like to know he is alive and why he didn’t respond to anyone.”

Thanks for the update.

[oldvike]

You need a shrink. You’ve got some majore mental health issues.

[PhilosopherStone1000]

To those FReepers who expressed their sincere concern, thank you. Your words meant more than you know. If I didn't respond individually to all of you, it was only because

a) there were so many of you and
b) I wasn't really in the right frame of mind to express my sincere gratitude.

For those of you who have gone through what I have gone through, there is nothing I need to say. For those of you who haven't, there is nothing that I can say.

For those of you who are confident that God has a plan for you and that regardless of the burdens you may have to bear you will, one day, be able to gaze in rapture upon His perfection, I envy you.

I, for various reasons, was raised to question all total certainties, including the certainty that “truth is beauty and beauty truth”. I know that wanting something to be true doesn't make it true. And wanting something to be false doesn't make it false.

Was I an “attention whore”? Depends on your definition. Did I (and do I) continue to awake every morning asking God and the fates why I still have to go through another day? Yes.

Should I have kept that primal scream of anguish and pain to myself? Probably. But when one is completely alone in a very large universe, one seeks whatever traveling companions one can find.

Again, for those of you who made a sincere effort to reach out to someone who was hurting, your efforts succeeded. For those of you (whom my roommate at Thomas Aquinas College used to call “the Pharisees”!) who simply wished to show others how “compassionate” you were without actually understanding, I will wish on you (not the full penance which I wouldn't wish on anyone) five minutes of feeling like your whole life has been worthless, that there is someone who needs you and depends on you but there's nothing you can do for her because you are chained to a rock (imagine, if you prefer a more visual mental image, that she is being kidnapped by leftie forces while you are chained to a cavern wall while gagged).

Is it unfair of me to throw this out there to people I don't know simply on the basis of the fact that we share (for the most part) a political, cultural and religious point of view? Again, perhaps. But then, if I can't share it with you, I certainly can't share it with the stupid Marxists in Portlandia.