I read the news to day, oh boy.
Dreamed last night that I had a fucking massive spider caught in my hair, one big enough that the bite would have been a problem, and I couldn't see it to get hold of it safely and release it. I kept asking people to help me but they kept running off or screaming or going omfg no or asking how I could let something like that happen. Someone offered me a mirror, I explained that I need both hands and I think my head is in the way of being able to do this safely, but that was all anyone was willing to do.
As analogies go it's pretty thin.
Wasn't sleeping at first and went on Twitter on the tablet so got news of Robin Williams that way; unsurprisingly have woken up to an internet full of people holding forth on suicide and depression, and you know you're not in a great frame of mind when your reactions to this are:
1. Well at least SOMEONE escaped.
2. It's not just depression that leads to suicide.
People I know try to replace the traditional, wrong narrative of suicide with a more nuanced but not globally-applicable narrative of suicide. They say "it's complicated and has many contributing causes"; they forget to mention that sometimes suicidal gesture becomes suicide by dint of accident or intensification; people talk, relentlessly, about depression. Other mental illnesses cause suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviour. I know this because I live with one which is very much high-risk for suicide and self-harm. This is why, now the diagnosis exists, I get a gentle interrogation from the Halliwick in case anything sounded like suicide attempt or like I might need to see a doctor as a result. Impulsivity is an overlooked factor in these things. The classic warning signs are "people setting their affairs in order" and suchlike; I've attempted suicide in the afternoon of a day when I was happily making Christmas cards in the morning; I've attempted suicide late at night when my day was one full of excitement and interest.
Suicides aren't just performed in a kind of dead sadness but in hysterical unrest. People leave this life for as many reasons as people stay in it and the only connecting factor I can think of is that "staying alive seems like it will cause too much pain to cope with", whether that pain is physical (as in the case of people with some chronic and terminal illnesses), emotional/mental (bereavement, depression, borderline, other mental illnesses), or social (cultural shame, fear of punishment after conviction). People commit suicide to escape, not just from sadness but from fear, from violence, from hatred, from rape, from persecution, from self-loathing, from grief... from humanity, from natural disaster, from loss, from prison...
Every time this happens the world fills up with people screaming about cowards or sad clowns or whatever archetype they think fits the moment, and every time it happens I see an upsurge in feeling like I should be out of the door myself not because I think people will speak any better of me, or speak of me at all outside of the usual anger aimed at private citizens who exercise control over when they die, but because it would be an escape from the knowledge that I am surrounded by unsafe, unsympathetic human beings who hijack someone else's escape to bully those around them consciously or unconsciously who might have the same feelings.
tl;dr today looks like being bullshit, I am staying off the internet.
As analogies go it's pretty thin.
Wasn't sleeping at first and went on Twitter on the tablet so got news of Robin Williams that way; unsurprisingly have woken up to an internet full of people holding forth on suicide and depression, and you know you're not in a great frame of mind when your reactions to this are:
1. Well at least SOMEONE escaped.
2. It's not just depression that leads to suicide.
People I know try to replace the traditional, wrong narrative of suicide with a more nuanced but not globally-applicable narrative of suicide. They say "it's complicated and has many contributing causes"; they forget to mention that sometimes suicidal gesture becomes suicide by dint of accident or intensification; people talk, relentlessly, about depression. Other mental illnesses cause suicidal ideation and suicidal behaviour. I know this because I live with one which is very much high-risk for suicide and self-harm. This is why, now the diagnosis exists, I get a gentle interrogation from the Halliwick in case anything sounded like suicide attempt or like I might need to see a doctor as a result. Impulsivity is an overlooked factor in these things. The classic warning signs are "people setting their affairs in order" and suchlike; I've attempted suicide in the afternoon of a day when I was happily making Christmas cards in the morning; I've attempted suicide late at night when my day was one full of excitement and interest.
Suicides aren't just performed in a kind of dead sadness but in hysterical unrest. People leave this life for as many reasons as people stay in it and the only connecting factor I can think of is that "staying alive seems like it will cause too much pain to cope with", whether that pain is physical (as in the case of people with some chronic and terminal illnesses), emotional/mental (bereavement, depression, borderline, other mental illnesses), or social (cultural shame, fear of punishment after conviction). People commit suicide to escape, not just from sadness but from fear, from violence, from hatred, from rape, from persecution, from self-loathing, from grief... from humanity, from natural disaster, from loss, from prison...
Every time this happens the world fills up with people screaming about cowards or sad clowns or whatever archetype they think fits the moment, and every time it happens I see an upsurge in feeling like I should be out of the door myself not because I think people will speak any better of me, or speak of me at all outside of the usual anger aimed at private citizens who exercise control over when they die, but because it would be an escape from the knowledge that I am surrounded by unsafe, unsympathetic human beings who hijack someone else's escape to bully those around them consciously or unconsciously who might have the same feelings.
tl;dr today looks like being bullshit, I am staying off the internet.