I'm still here

[JoeT]

In my last post I pretty much said my final goodbye. After posting posting, I turned off my phone and I tried to kill myself. As I fell asleep, I was completely at peace, because I knew that I wouldn’t have to be here anymore. I wouldnt have to deal with the pain and the hurt that being here causes. And I went into that good night finally happy and finally at peace. And then I woke up and my first words were, “fuck, I’m still here.” And every day since, I have woken up and said the same thing. I dont care that people say suicide is selfish, because I see as the exact opposite. Why is finding my peace selfish? If those who claim they love me truly did, then they would find peace through me finding mine. I think it’s more selfish for people to tell me to stay and continue my miserable existence so they can have peace.

I can’t describe how tired I am. I have no one to talk to. No one to call when I’m low, there is no happiness here for me. No respite, no reprieve, no rest. I am forced to carry this weight. Yes, I am taking my medications daily, but it doesn’t help. My psychiatrist does not give a shit. I pay $125 an hour, and she makes me pay before the session, and then we go back to her office and all she wants to talk about is my medication, she’s dismissive when I try and talk about whats going on and walks me to the front to leave. I pay for an hour, each time, and only get 5 fucking minutes. And I can’t stop seeing her, because then they’d cancel my meds; and if Im this bad now, I can only imagine how I’d be after I came off of them.

And no one knows how to help me. People can offer kind words and empathy, but there is no real tangible solution. All anyone has to offer is artificial light. I want a real cure, not idle sympathy. And those that do offer to help always leave once they see how dark it is. Everyone says it’s going to be alright, but they don’t know what it’s like in my mind. I have type 2 bipolar, persistent depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, and high functioning autism. There is absolutely no hope for me. I am beyond repair, and all I want is to be free. I cannot carry this anymore. I am hurting so much, and for reasons I dont even know. I dont know why I’m like this. I know things that have made it worse, but I cant tell you the core reason as to why I am the way I am. And yeah, the Christmas/ New Year season makes it so much worse. 2 years ago, a few days after christmas, in the same week, I lost my uncle, my house, and my dog. Everything that gave me a sense of security, gone.

I’m so tired of fighting. I’m physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. But every day, I wake and am forced to fight the good fight, even though there is no victory in sight. I’m tired of fighting a losing battle. I don’t know what to do anymore. So, if anyone has a real solution, please, tell me.

[Wings]

I won’t trigger you with the circumstances that caused me to be in a similar place, but that was in 2007.

I’m still here.

There is never any victory in sight, until one day, there is.

Why am I here, 24 years after the thought of living another day caused me to panic?

When life has knocked you on your back, and you can fall no further, take a moment to look at the stars.

I was removed from school at the age of 8, due to the apparent autism. The diagnosis was a mistake. My behavior was due to a really bad case of PTSD. I was finally put back in school, but pretty much failed in all of my classes.

I dropped out of school and left home when I was 15.

Years later, I graduated college with honors.

Anything is possible, as long as you’re here to experience it.

[nzkiwi442]

Hey there JoeT,

I’m going to go through this in pieces, but I want to start by saying I’m glad you’re still here to make this post!

I think when people say that suicide is selfish, it’s because of the kind of impact it has on others. It’s one persons decision, and it impacts so so many more people than I think sometimes they realize. I, personally, don’t really like this reason however, because I feel like it’s meant to guilt trip you out of it. Referencing something you said later, I do think there’s a path forward for you here, and I disagree that you are “beyond repair”, but I’ll get back to this in a bit.

I can understand and relate to the feeling of being alone, and left to deal with the stress of what you’re going through. I live alone myself, with the closest family member, friend, or relative, being over 1,000 miles away. It’s difficult to meet people, especially considering what the world is facing for the time being. I think it’s important to recognize that we have to take very conscious steps to spread our social circles, meet new people, and engage in conversations.

For example, HeartSupport itself has drastically increased the number of people I talk to! I have friends all over the world now that I talk to and play games with, and I never had that before! I’ve also taken some drawing classes remotely and found that to be a wonderful way to interact with people more local to me, even if the focus is on drawing.

Loneliness is a cycle, it tells us that the world is out to get us, and we have to put our guard up, and when we put our guard up, we don’t let anyone else in. We have to put our guard down, and ALLOW people into our lives. There as a WONDERFUL video by Kurzgesagt on this topic that you can find on Youtube, just search for “Kurzgesagt lonliness” and you’ll find it .

Branch out, meet new people, and I guarantee you that you’ll find the right people that you really click with, and there will be someone to talk to, and someone to call. If you use Discord, HeartSupport has a Discord as well where I met most of the wonderful people I’m friends with now! I’d love to see you there, and if you are, feel free to ping me and I’m sure we can find something to chat about

Moving forward in your post, your situation with your psychiatrist is very troubling. It’s my understanding that a psychiatrist is ethically obligated to help you find another psychiatrist/therapist in case you aren’t clicking with them. Remember, YOU are paying THEM, and if you aren’t receiving the care you want, I highly recommend telling her that, and making steps to move find another one together. Maybe you can continue to see her for occasional checkups and prescriptions, but see a therapist on the side for the week to week situations that really need attention. A resource I highly recommend is DrMickLive, both on twitch or Discord. He is a therapist himself and can answer your questions about therapy and how it works, he recently posted a great video on youtube about how to find a new therapist. If your psychiatrist attempts to pull your medication because you want to see a new psychiatrist, I’d report her to the local licensing authority, as she should have her license revoked for sure.

Something I wanted to touch on in your next paragraph is your journey for “a real cure”. Something I’ve found in my own journey with mental health is that sometimes there isn’t a “cure”. While on the surface that doesn’t sound very inspiring, what there IS instead is a series of skills or mechanisms that help lessen the effect of what you’re going through. In my own case, I had pretty awful social anxiety when I was younger, to the point where I would sweat and shake for a small class presentation, and feel INCREDIBLY anxious all the way up to it.

Nowadays, I still feel that anxiety, it hasn’t been “cured”. However, it’s significantly lessened because of the therapy I went through, and the understanding of my mental state that I gained. I now know how to recognize it, and how to work through it. And when it does happen, I can look at myself and say “Hey, I know why this is happening, and that’s okay” which does wonders for my anxiety and prevents it from spiraling out of control. I can now comfortably (and even sometimes enjoy) giving presentations to 40 or 50 people without an issue.

I say that to show that even though a cure might not exist, there are methods that can be used to make what you’re feeling SIGNIFICANTLY easier to manage. Look at it like hunger, or sleep. It’s not like there’s a “cure” for our need for any of those, but we’ve all grown to a point where managing a lack of any of them is easy. We know when we’re hungry or tired, and we know how to fix the problem. Imagine how stressful it would be to feel hunger if you didn’t know what hunger was, and you didn’t know what food was or how to fix it!

This is why I don’t think you’re “beyond repair”. I think that if there aren’t cures out there, there ARE mechanisms that you can learn, and insight that you can find into your own innerworkings. This will help you learn how to manage, and take a lot of the stress away from what you’re dealing with. In our hunger analogy, imagine taking time to figure out what hunger was, why it happened, why it makes you feel the way you do, and finally how to fix it and resolve it!

This is why suicide isn’t the answer, because no matter who you are, I truly believe there is a way, somewhere in the universe, to manage what you’re dealing with now, and once you have those things down, there’s so much joy in the world! We ignore hunger 99% of the time we’re alive because we feel it, we eat, and then we’re full and can move on to enjoy other things

As to your last paragraph, every day you fight is actually also a day of progress IMO. Sometimes just making it through a day is a sign of progress. Sometimes slowing a fall is progress. I know it’s tiring, I know it’s exhausting, but I really do believe that the world, and some of the amazing people that inhabit it are very much worth it.

Feel free to reach out if you need to friend, I’ll warn that I don’t post incredibly frequently on the forum, but I’m trying to change that now, and if you do find yourself in the HeartSupport discord, give me a ping and let me know how you’re doing

Cheers friend

[Micro]

Dear @JoeT,

I hope this won’t sound selfish, because it only comes from a place of love and care, but I am grateful for you for being here today. My heart breaks knowing the pain you’re enduring and I wish I had more to offer than words right now. Though I can assure you, the amount of care we have for you here is genuine, and with no other motive than your well-being, your peace.

People who say that suicide is selfish often have their own reasons and logic, but they don’t necessarily understand the amount of pain and sacrifices that being in a constant battle for peace can imply. You have all the right to desire this peace. And man you deserve it so much. But that peace shouldn’t be confused with a matter of life and death. It’s a desire to live that’s screaming inside of you, and to live the life you deserve, not something that feels like an endless fight for what others seem to have without having to try. This desire is valid, justified, understandable.

I hear you my friend. I feel your pain. And I understand, in my core, how it is to feel broken and beyond hope. When life can’t seem to give you a break, when it gets hard to catch your breath, it’s also incredibly hard to envision a future for ourselves. I surely can’t pretend to be in your shoes and knowing what you’re going through exactly, but I can tell that I could have posted what you just shared, a year ago.

I was in your situation. Literally drowning in despair and feeling inherently broken. Some events made me dive into the thought that I was only made to be used and I just couldn’t fit in this world. Too much violence, too much pain everywhere - around me but even more within myself. I didn’t share about it with anyone. After a short time at an emergency room, I felt even more disappointed by myself. I felt stuck in this nothingness, between the shame and disappointment for what I did, but also the pain of socializing again and getting out of my shell. It felt like renouncing to my only exit door, and I was mad after everything and everyone.

Until then, a lot of shit happened again, but a lot of bright lights also appeared in my life, and I couldn’t have imagined it at the moment. Yet I’m still dealing with anxiety, depression and past traumas. I’m not “cured” nor “fixed”. But I’m here. I’m breathing. And so are you. This is our most powerful strength, friend. It doesn’t tell that everything is going to be okay quickly, but it means that there is still an opportunity to try. To try differently, maybe with the things we missed before but couldn’t identify yet. And we don’t have to do this alone. “Together we’re stronger” is not just a cheesy statement - it’s a truth that we can underestimate when we feel lost and alienated by our pain.

Regarding your therapist, I’d like to encourage you to consider the possibility of finding another one. They are not helping you at all. Even worse: their own behavior is amplifying this feeling that people can’t really care or understand, and you really don’t need that right now. There are good therapists out there who are not just prescription-givers. It’s worth to try to reach out to a different one, because YOU are worth it. You deserve to receive the right support, not to pay someone to not really care about you or your well-being. If being without medications is a concern for you, you can still make this transition very smooth. You can try meeting a new therapist while being with this one and explain everything, so they’ll help you to not be without any medication. A good therapist will truly listen and hear your concern. They’ll make decisions with you and with only one interest in mind: yours.

I hear your exhaustion, friend. And I know it’s hard to think about the next step after an attempt. Right now, you need to rest. There is a part of grief that you’ll have to allow yourself to feel. And I truly want to thank you for sharing this with us. It’s actually a first and strong step: breaking the isolation and pushing away the thoughts that we’re beyond help. You are not broken, Joe. You are struggling. And as much as those struggles are impacting your life in many ways, it is possible to find your way through all of this. A way that wouldn’t be synonym to constant pain, nor a way that would imply to disappear.

You are loved. Genuinely.

[JoeT]

@Micro, @Wings, @nzkiwi442

I appreciate the sentiments. I really do. Things are just really hard. All, I really want is for everything to stop, even if only for a few seconds, just so I can breathe. But nothing is slowing down. I’m tired of it all. Im tired of waking up in the mornings. I’m tired of coming home to a place that doesnt feel like a home. Im tired of making it seem like everything is okay, even though it’s all falling apart beneath the surface. Im tired of everyone coming to me to be their strength and unloading everything on me; and I have to shoulder all of it, even though I dont have the strength to stand on my own. I’m tired of hope, because hope juat makes everything worse. I’m tired of being used and strung along for the sake of a “possibility”.

[Sky-Trev]

While I’m not exactly an adult or have enough maturity to talk about certain things I can say this though.

I’m someone who is intensely suicidal, almost everyday I have thoughts and urges to just end it, but I push on, and find things that make me happy, but if I’m not in the mood for any I go try something new, keep my mind busy until the thoughts and urges roll over.

And I understand the feeling of no one contacting you, and feeling isolated, I have at least my boyfriend but I can somewhat understand, rarely do my friends check up on me or talk to me.

People have their thoughts and reasons to why they believe the action is selfish, but I don’t, I find it as a cry out for help. And help will come, if you are religious go pray or do some form of worshiping and meditation. If you are not, then find hobbies and interests, or even things you feel you didn’t get the chance to do. Try to! And I highly urge you if these thoughts pop up do things or hobbies that out away those thoughts. Meditation works aswell.

But know me and many others support you and I am so glad you are here and okay and alive. Just know we will help you! I’m sorry it isn’t anything well described or long enough like the other two comments but I just wanted to throw in my two cents. :]

[nzkiwi442]

Hey there JoeT,

I can totally understand the sentiment of wanting everything to pause just so that you can catch a break, but I’ve also found that sometimes even when we do get those breaks, we just want more and more and more of it, until it turns out we’re basically just asking for the problems to go away (without doing any work to make them that way). I do think that everyone deserves a break from things in life, but sometimes it needs to get a little worse before it gets better, and we have to actively take time, even while exhausted, to look at how we can solve our problems.

It’s not easy, but it’s something that I found worked well for me. Take time to figure out why home doesn’t feel like home, and then make it feel more like home. Communicate to the people around you about how much things are breaking down, and how you ACTUALLY feel. Let people know that maybe tonight just isn’t the right night for you to support others, and you need a little bit of a break from being that shoulder for them to cry on. Healthy boundaries are important, and you can best help others by helping yourself.

Maybe take some time to try and really critically think about what’s bugging you. Something I’ve noticed with your posts is you make very general statements, which I understand is also out of a sense of privacy from posting specific personal situations on the internet too. But just for yourself, pick up a journal, and write a list of exact, specific things that you struggle with. So maybe instead of “I’m tired of coming home to a place that doesnt feel like a home” It’s “home doesn’t feel like home because it’s never clean. This makes me feel tired, because I like it when things are clean, and I think a home should be clean”

In my life, I’ve found that really taking the time to define exactly what’s troubling me gives me the clarity to then start looking at solutions, maybe the same will work for you

[Micro]

I hear you, @JoeT. And I’m aware that it’s not only with our words that we’re going to make things better instantly. But at least you know that you are not alone. That there is nothing wrong about you, as an individual. It’s about very heavy circumstances that seem to be piling up in your life. Which means that, somehow, actions can be taken. But it has to be done progressively, at your own pace, even if there’s this eager to feel better now and not in an unknown time.

I hear that it’s difficult with your therapist, with finding some energy to do what’s needed and what you want, with feeling connected and supported by people in your life. That’s a lot, my friend. And that’s just how much depression sucks. It’s a bitch, we can say it. It’s this constant dark cloud that drains the energy and life out of us. It makes us feel isolated from the rest of the world, even if we’re objectively not alone.

It’s more than okay to say that you’re tired of it. No one here will ever blame you for having a hard time. And, for what it’s worth, I understand your exhaustion from a very personal perspective. This month, I’m just pushing through while waiting for a new meeting with a psychiatrist, because of a tiredness that’s very similar as yours. I wish, with all my heart, that you didn’t have to experience all of this. Though I believe in you and your capacity to make it through all of this. To find the peace you deserve. A peace that goes along with embracing the air you breathe everyday, with receiving the amount of care, love and understanding you need, and not by being gone.

I’m tired of hope, because hope juat makes everything worse. I’m tired of being used and strung along for the sake of a “possibility”.

Yea… I feel that, friend. Sometimes it’s really… frustrating, to say the least, to have hope. It feels like an inner treason. But we both know that it’s not, from a rational standpoint. Hope leads us to the rightest path. It gives us opportunities to persevere when we need it the most. Keep hope in your heart, Joe. It’s not your enemy. Your heart is not your enemy. Your tiredness is tied to what is difficult in your life right now, but not you as a person.

You mentioned several things that are causing you hurt and loneliness lately. Regarding therapy, emotional fatigue and also your relationships. You’re already reflecting on what could be improved, which is truly awesome and valuable. But it’s still important to take it easy. You can’t climb a mountain just in a day if you’re feeling vulnerable. You need different steps, you need support and you need breaks as well.

What could be your next step, Joe? I want to encourage you to think about it and, if you want, to discuss it with us. It’s not an engagement though. No pressure. Only an open question that will still be here tomorrow and the day after. Theory doesn’t imply to jump into some kind of action instantly either. Your pace is ours. This suggestion is only to think about your possibilities from now. If we can’t do things for you, we can still help you to find some clarity if you feel like you’d need it. You are not alone. You are cared for. I mean it.

[Wings]

This little bit of added information may be more significant than you realize. That “everyone is coming” to you to “be their strength,” is quite telling. That burden of expectations alone can be debilitating and make life seem impossible to manage. While struggling to be the strength for others, few if any have enough strength left to stand on their own, unless they have extensive experience, training in one form or another and a rather unique perspective regarding where such strength is derived. It’s not unusual for trained therapists to feel either burdened by patient expectations, or they adopt a “professional detachment.” Neither of those approaches are a solution, as evidenced by your therapist’s demonstrated symptoms of burnout. So, if the experts have a hard time dealing with it, don’t be hard on yourself just because you can’t bear unrealistic expectations of others either.

The clock keeps moving forward, and inevitably will continue that progression. BUT, you can stop, and for a time, step out of the flow and clear your head. Sometimes it’s hard. I’ve been known to seek refuge on the toilet, for lack of any better place.

I see a few references to “it all,” and “everything,” that’s wearing you down. It’s best not to expect “everything” to be okay, and looking at “it all,” all at once, is enough to overwhelm anybody. Even “happy” people are often intimidated by daily responsibilities, unless they mentally break the day down into manageable segments of time and set achievable and immediate goals. Another way of looking at is to keep your focus on the present moment, and decide what your best or most fulfilling action in that moment is.

It’s unfortunate that you are in a place that doesn’t feel like home. Everyone needs a place of relaxation and comfort, a place to daydream without being disturbed. Perhaps you can pick out a “special place,” in a library, or maybe a pretty place in nature. My family was evicted several times when I was growing up, therefore, I decided my special place was in the woods. Maybe you can plug in some earbuds and escape into your favorite music. My head clears best when I’m out walking or doing something else physical.

You really do need to let those around you know when you are not willing to let them burden you with their emotional baggage. Be fair to yourself. You don’t have to be mean about it, unless they don’t respond to a respectful assertion of your boundaries.

Keep letting us know how you’re doing.

[Icantdothisanymore]

Well JoeT, I don’t know if any of the prior answers already helped you, but I had that same feeling as you described, to have found some peace of mind, saying to myself hey I would be ready to die now. And I woke up the next morning, or after sleeping, just like you, realizing I am still there. But what I would say differently is that I don’t regret any of it. I feel like this peace of mind I found, and may it have been just for a tiny bit of time, is so valuable, I feel like there are so few people who really have reached that. I dont mind siucidal thoughts being involved, and in the last times I am more and more living like that, just searching for some peace of mind, and eventually I will find it, maybe I will kill myself on the road down there, but then at least I can look at myself in the mirror and dont have to regret anything, because I have tried. They may say how can you say that, you have to avoid suicidal thoughts by any means, but well, I cannot say that, I would even dare to say they have helped me many times in the road I have taken so far. And if it helps you, and gets you some inner calm, why not pursue it? May be not so wise an answer, and not what any psychologist would approve of, but well, I find some value in these moments of calm, and maybe it is somehow close to what you experience, because I feel like that is a really beautiful and quite rare thing to find in this world that seems so full of chaos and intentional mind-blowing.