I’ve outlived my old man by 5 years now, and like him have now fallen into a pit, with thaqt difference that he did it for professional reasons, which I’ll never understand, and I for personal reasons.
Yeah, like you, I have heard the cliches the accusations of selfishness, of liberalism (yeah sure, we must both be Trotskyites!), the help line numbers and prayers.
Last year i was betrayed in the worst possible way at a worst possible time in one’s life, long after one becomes transparent to other potential partners of the opposite sex, and here I am this evening, drinking BV North Coast Riesling, like I did last night and the night before.
I went to clinics, to groups of ridiculous, embarrassing confession sessions which helped me none.
Isolation is my life, hopelessness, nothingness before I am dead. Nothing written above has appealed to me, persuaded me, and I sincerely hope that something does help you.
Good Lord, yo u need more help than the OP. Talking about your suicide IN THE PAST TENSE is not a good sign. The death of one person diminishes everyone.
RC - you’re an FR institution! Maybe an institution in need of institutionalization, and one I can disagree with, but you add to my life, man!
Faith - it is often what keeps me going. Faith is the drive to plod forward when it looks like there’s not any reason to plod forward. It will pay off in the end - and even if you think it won’t pay off for YOU, it will pay off for others who are in your life, WHETHER OR NOT YOU REALIZE YOU’RE IN THEIR LIFE!
I attended a funeral this fall for a very talented engineer who committed suicide in the most public of ways (jumping off a building). I never, ever, want to go through that again, nor put anyone else through that. The sense of unfathomable, inconsolable loss and damage to other people still haunts me 4 months later.
You are a good man, and deserve better. Call me.
I am sad that you also feel life is worthless. I am sorry you were betrayed. But you lived through it, and you are someone of value. Please get omega 3 oils prominently into your diet, salmon will go well with wine, and see a change of your mood. Prayer is being sent to heaven for you as well.
Please read post 215. Many have been where you are now.
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.