Metablog

Well, I just left my new therapist. My fourth therapist in four years. I had seen him like six times or so. (Another therapist I was with for a year, with no real progress.)

I don’t think therapy is ever going to work for me. Successful therapy requires trust in the therapist. But I’m smarter than therapists. I’m more balanced than them. I’m more insightful than them. Why should I trust them?

In fact, I don’t think I really trust anyone. I don’t actually know why, for sure. I’m not even sure where to start explaining it.

For me, being open with someone doesn’t create trust in them. I’m a very open person anyway, and self-revelation doesn’t leave me feeling vulnerable at all. There’s nothing anyone could do with that information that could hurt me. (With a small number of exceptions. About those things I am private, even with therapists, but only because I believe society unjustly stigmatizes those things.)

So what would leave me feeling vulnerable? I’m not sure, honestly. Well, an expression of admiration or love. Or a desire to spend time with them. None of which are really appropriate for a therapeutic session.

Can I learn to trust anyone? Do I really want to? Am I doomed to a life of solitude? Well, I’m capable of interacting with people, I just find it kind of awkward. Not awkward because of me, but because of them. I feel superior to them. I feel unappreciated, detached, and alienated from them. Unappreciated because almost none of my interests or beliefs are shared by almost everyone. So I look more like a crank, or some incredible unapproachable genius, to a lot of people. And I don’t think any of that is necessary, or inherent in my personality. It’s just reacting to their common, vulgar qualities.

Am I hopelessly arrogant? Very possibly. I have never viewed arrogance as a negative quality. At a certain point, it’s just obvious that (in certain ways) one is better than most other people, and to believe otherwise, or to act otherwise, would be foolish. That is the source of my arrogance. And in the company of my true peers, I don’t believe I am arrogant. At certain blogs, I’m pretty humble.

I have never been in a physical, real-life group in which I was merely average, or above average. I haven’t attended college (well, except for a semester). (You might say that it would therefore be a good idea for me to attend a competitive college, like MIT or Caltech or something. But I hate college—the pedagogy (I could write several posts), the outrageous expense, the stress. Plus I have a learning disability.) I haven’t been in any Mensa group, or any other sort of highly-self-selected group (outside of blogs, of course). I’ve tried a few meetup groups, but nothing that really made me feel part of a group. Nothing where I really felt I was among peers.

I pretty much hate this post. It doesn’t give me any new insight at all. Well, at least it’s a start.

Unfogged has been in a decline for a long time now. It’s just not as interesting to me anymore. My brand of humor isn’t extremely appreciated over there (i.e. I don’t get much positive feedback), though I’m sure it’s around average. My positions on issues are not challenged seriously by anyone, and most of the topics aren’t ones that I have anything to add to.

So I’m going to try to stop reading. Finding another good blog to comment at is going to be quite hard. I’ll have some regrets. It’ll be a lot like breaking up with an old girlfriend when you’ve drifted apart. But it’ll be a positive thing. Less Wrong is already a good blog I’m reading regularly. Overcoming Bias is also a pretty good source of stuff. But neither will quite fill the hole left by Unfogged. The blogosphere is so huge, and it’s so hard to sift through. Well, maybe I should focus less on online time-wasting anyway.

Of course, now I have to figure out where I’m going to get my news.

Well, I got my notice a couple weeks ago. I’ll be leaving my job within the next few months. It’s nice to get such advance warning; I feel like I’ve really been appreciated at this job, and it’s a shame that my mental and emotional problems (not to mention my sleep problems) have interfered with my productivity to the degree that this has come about. But, as one of the owners said, this might be a good time to get out anyway.

I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I’ve been in a pretty sweet position as regards the tolerance I’ve had for my current style of life, which involves a lower salary than might be expected for my position, but with the ability to come in late and have lots of free time. I’m not sure if I could ever adjust to having to get up at 7 AM every day. So anyway, I’m going to be taking a bit of time off once I leave. Part of that will involve, perhaps, moving in with some family to cut down on rent costs. I’m a bit conflicted about the decision, as it involves moving from here in Austin to way out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t really get out all the time, but still, the city’s nice. And the job market in Austin is probably way better than the one in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve been thinking that maybe I should go into a different line of work, though. Perhaps one with more time flexibility, even if that means giving up advancement opportunities. Perhaps one where I work from home. That would be nice.

I’d kind of like to stay more independent, but I’m just not sure I’m up to handle the job market right now. I’m still not feeling very great. I just dumped my new therapist and I don’t think I’m going to look for another one. I just don’t see therapy ever helping me. I’m way too untrusting of people to ever really form the connections needed to make therapy efficacious. Especially not some random dumbass therapist. (In fact, I very well might be the most untrusting person you’ve ever met. I should do a post on this.) And honestly, I’m not too thrilled about psychiatry either. I articulated some of my concerns to my psychiatrist once, and all he did was feed me the standard bullshit pharma line about chemical imbalances. Apparently they’re even indoctrinating the medical students nowadays. Either that or he was just too arrogant to acknowledge that my concerns were legitimate. But I think the former is more likely.

Anyway, independence would be nice, but more difficult than I think I’m ready to handle right now. I’ve never had any other job except this one, which I started when I was 18. So maybe a few months of just thinking and gathering myself would be good before I go out into the world again. Maybe.

Inevitably, someone is going to bring up school. Ugh.

OMG! Someone actually started a conversation with me on a dating site! Someone interesting and attractive? Yes! This is surely a first. Since she could read this, I will say no more about her directly. Besides, I don’t really know that much yet, having had only one short conversation with her. I am anxiously waiting continued conversation. And anxiously dreading the possibility that she, having lost her interest, due to our conversation (or worse yet, due to reading my blog) has stopped correspondence between us.

I have limited my emotional investment in the possibility from the beginning with this scenario and others in mind, but it’s not possible to limit it enough to obviate the pain of rejection entirely. (Even rejection still floating off in the land of possibility.) But it’s not really the pain, so much as it is the possibility and tension and fear in the situation—the anxiety of it all—that really gets to me, drives me crazy, and drives me to distraction.

This has really preoccupied me. It’s driven me to feel more suicidal. I’ve already been feeling pretty goddamn suicidal. I’m at the stage now where I’m seriously getting close. I haven’t yet purchased the tools I’ll use, but I’ve gotten close a couple days to going out and buying the stuff.

So what’s my point here? I guess that, even with all this stress and drama, I think it’s worth it. The possibilities, the hope, the potential, make it worth it. Because nothing in life is worth quite as much as a good relationship, I think.

I’m thinking about getting electro-convulsive therapy. Apparently it’s quite an ordeal, what with the full anesthesia every two days for a month. On the other hand, it’s only done once, and then you’re done with it, pretty much. And if it works, well great. And it’s a month away from work. (Work that I can barely handle right now.) If my new psychiatrist doesn’t have some really compelling medication options on the table, I’ll probably be getting it soon.

Welcome to my online world! You know, I’ve thought a lot about building my own world. Like, you know, a personal vision of a fantasy world of some sort that’s immersive and expansive and provides an extended analogy to my psyche and whatnot. I guess I haven’t gotten crazy enough and single-minded enough to pursue such a vision yet. I’ve thought about doing such a world in a text-based environment, like a MUD, and in a graphical environment. The latter would require more tools (like a 3d modeler) and more time per unit of world, but be more immersive. (And more primitive, considering my lack of artisticalish skilz.)

I’ve found the main limitation in pursuing such a dream is the lack of inspiration. I don’t really have many ideas for worlds that are much different than our own, dull, dreary, miserable, dissatisfying world to draw upon. I’m not creative in that way. If I were, I would definitely have been creating such a world and wouldn’t be here now posting. I’m a very practical person. More interested in science than art. More interested in programming languages than programs.

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Hello, world. I’m learning Scala. It’s a pretty neat language, despite my initial negative reaction based on the name, logo, and color scheme of the site. I think I’ve finally gotten over liking Lisp especially. F# doesn’t seem especially impressive to me compared to Scala. Or even SML, to be honest.

Still single, and miserable. There’s no one out there like me. Well, close enough to no one that I haven’t been able to find them after three years of looking, off and on, through dating sites. Only a couple people that even come close, and those ones don’t respond.

They say that suicide is a disease in itself. Aside from depression, it takes a life of its own, and eats away at you even when you’d otherwise be happy. I’m not quite happy, but I’m close to it. Closer than I was a year ago. I still have plenty to justify suicide. I just wonder if I will ever run out of things to justify it. I clearly have a will to live. Just not a very strong one.

I’m learning Isabelle. I want to write a new user interface for it. Something awesome. I have a good idea of how to make it awesome, but I haven’t yet decided how to approach it. Or how to spend my free time working on it. Or how to deal with the stress of my job. Or the lack of a desire to live. Anyway, I’ve thought that I might take a bottom-up approach, reading the source code in order of how the compiler compiles it, which is guaranteed to be the most linear bottom-up approach available. (Unlike in languages like C# where source files can have circular dependencies up to the assembly (dll) level, which makes bottom-up reading potentially impossible.) But I’m not sure I’ll do that.

Due to an unfortunate incident, I’m required to attend AA meetings. It’s a shame, since I’m not an alcoholic, that I’m being forced to intrude on these meetings, but seeing the camaraderie between these people makes me want to attend something more appropriate for me. A bipolar meeting, perhaps? I don’t see anything in my city. Shame. I should call some hotlines that have better resources than google on this issue.

No real progress on lucid dreaming, despite the post title. I remember bits of dreams every few days. That’s about it. I promise not to subject you to any of my dreams. I may post here of some revelation I’ve had as a result of some dream. But that’ll be it. So far, the most significance any dream has had is that I needed to pee while I slept.

You know, I’m not even sure why I do this type of post. It’s not like there’s anyone who enjoys them. Now, my last post. That was one with popular appeal.

Have you ever thought about committing suicide? Well, if so, maybe you should actually go through with it. I know, I know, you don’t really hear that anywhere. But it needs to be said. Sometimes, suicide is the answer. I believe suicide is the answer for me. And it very well could be for you.

But not likely. Most people who commit suicide are not thinking terribly rationally. If you’re having really hard times right now, things do get better. (On average.) If you’ve just broken up with someone and are feeling extremely depressed, suicide is almost certainly a bad idea. If you’ve just suffered a large or huge financial loss, it’s very likely that if you just hang in there you’ll be just as happy in a couple years as you were before (even if poorer). People’s happiness is sticky like that. It tends not to change over large time periods. Fluctuate, yes, but not change permanently. (There are some exceptions to this. If you’re friendless, making friends will make you happier. If you get into an accident and become disabled, your happiness does go down some, but not as much as you would think.)

This essay is really aimed towards people like me: people with treatment-resistant depression. I have bipolar II disorder, and it has not responded well at all to many different medication combinations. (Update 2009-09: I have recently been re-diagnosed with chronic major depression, and I tend to agree with that assessment.) My suicidal thoughts have never really gone away. I have no support structure, and no chance of forming one—I have rather severe avoidance issues. No friends, largely unsupportive family. I hate people, deeply. Mostly people I’m not close to. I don’t hate humanity, though. If I did I wouldn’t be writing this. I do hate the world—the system as a whole, in which people play the part of small cogs. The world screws people over. (I understand this isn’t an especially unhealthy feeling.) I feel sorry for those people as people, even as I hate them as individuals.

In other words, I am, emotionally, severely fucked up. This isn’t going to get better. I’ve spent the last 8 years trying to make it better. I made some progress, in easing my social anxiety and in increasing how well I understand social cues and such. I’m not autistic or anything, just a late bloomer. (I do have non-verbal learning disorder, which involves social awkwardness.) But I’ve stopped making progress. There is no more progress to make on this front.

My life right now is not worth living. It hasn’t been for two years. And I can’t foresee that changing for at least five years. Five years of probably pointless therapy and stupid self-reflection and even more medication changes and dealing with idiotic insurance and bills and the other stuff I can’t stand to deal with. Before I start to get better. In the best case. And by then, I won’t even be young anymore.

(Update 2009-09: new medication has seemed to alleviate these symptoms to an extent, so I’m more stable at the moment.)

It’s not worth the terrible anxiety and lack of purpose* and continued isolation and the ups and downs. I’m even starting to think that, maybe, there is no way out of the emotional corner I’m in—that my hate of people has such a great amount of real support in people’s behavior that I won’t be able to change the attitude and still be able to be intellectually consistent, let alone content. That’s a rather new belief, though, and I’m not sure it’ll stick.

* Anhedonia, really. I think happy people are able to feel plenty purposeful without trying too hard. I believe people make their own purpose; they don’t get it handed to them. But you can’t find a purpose if you can’t feel anything.

Why write all this? Because it makes me really fucking angry that so many people out there would read this and think that I’m crazy. Out of my mind. Not rational. Not able to validly come to this decision. I feel that it is my right to decide to end my life, and that I’ve been plenty rational. There’s a little trick that they pull in this argument, you see. They define rational partly based on the person’s feelings, rather than solely based on their processing of those feelings. If I’m having suicidal thoughts, that means, ipso facto, that I’m being irrational. The slightly more nuanced position is that if I feel that my life is not worth living in its current state, that I’m being irrational. Because every rational person has a will to live. And that is such complete bullshit.

And it’s kind of funny, actually: there’s a closely related position that I actually agree with: Death is bad. If I could cure death by aging today, I would do so. If I could spend every last penny of my savings and all of my future earnings for the next 40 years to cure aging five years sooner than it would otherwise happen, I would do so. (My making such a huge difference is extremely unlikely, though, so I’m not inclined to be that generous.) Because death is just that bad. But.

If you want to commit suicide, for the right reasons, having thought through everything you can be expected to, then you should be able to go to the hospital and get put down. Google “nitrogen suicide” for an easy way to do this on your own. Here’s one link you might find helpful.

Now, I myself don’t have any dependents, but suicide for those who do does raise some moral questions that I’m not sure how to answer. On the other hand, it is a person’s right to commit suicide regardless of the pain that they might inflict on friends or family. I think in many cases, perhaps even most, it might be wrong to do so, but that doesn’t impinge on the right. Again, I’m speaking abstractly here because these considerations don’t apply to me. My parents would be the most upset by my suicide, but besides them, I don’t think anyone would really be too disturbed. And they helped put me in this huge clusterfuck in the first place, so I’m not shedding any tears for them.

And as for society? Do I have any sort of obligation to society to remain alive? FUCK NO. Society can fuck itself in the ass with a poison-tipped mace as far as I care. “Society” doesn’t care one bit about its people. Some of its more altruistic members have been trying to change that, since, like, forever, but so far their overall effect has been minimal. And believe it or not, I’m actually mildly optimistic about the future. But that doesn’t change my condition, right now. Society is not yet worth being a member of.

These judgments are very contentious, of course, and legitimately so. But regardless of whether there’s a consensus on these issues, I have a right to, motivated by these judgments, end my own life. I can’t be put into the crazy-house because I think society isn’t worth living in.

Any arguments against a right to suicide from the suicidal person’s sense of obligation to family, friends, or society will be deleted with prejudice. It’s a legitimate issue, but banned from this thread. Anyone asking about advice for the same will be likewise deleted. I’m sorry if you’re a person with loved ones wrestling with suicide, but I can’t help you. The only advice I have for you is to avoid rationalizations.

I have no immediate plans to commit suicide. I have a good chance of trying several more treatments before I commit suicide, if it comes to that. Any comments urging me not to commit suicide will be deleted if uninteresting. Also, I’m not terribly interested in sympathy, but advice is not entirely unwelcome.

Wow, it’s really been a while since I’ve touched this site, huh? I’ve been having a really bad day, and thought it might make some interesting reading. That association might give you a clue to my personality.

Friday night I tried to get my perscription for antidepressants refilled. My insurance refused to pay. My doctor, last appointment, raised my dose, and told me to just use up the remaining pills in my current bottle and then refill with the new perscription. Well, that used up the bottle a lot quicker than my insurance company approved of. They wouldn’t refill the prescription until two days later. And I was out of pills. I could have paid three times the price, $300, to get them then. Of course, I couldn’t just buy two or three pills to get me through to Monday, since that wasn’t prescribed for me.

Saturday night I had a hell of a time getting to sleep. And during the night, I had two of the worst nightmares I can remember for years. Horror movie kind of nightmares. (I have been watching a lot of those lately.) Not actually traumatic, but extremely disturbing.

But the worst part is that I still feel like I’m in one of those nightmares. No hallucinations or anything really weird, but exactly that same atmosphere of anxious dread, of looming evil and disaster. I feel like Cthulhu is camped out outside my door. I feel like I’m about to go insane.

I really fucking hate my insurance company. Everyone, really. I’d like to kill myself, honestly. (Comments exhorting me not to kill myself will be promptly deleted.)

I’m learning Isabelle. I might do a post on it at some point if I have something interesting. I’m thinking about making it the logical basis of the algebra editor I’ve talked about previously. Which is more work than I was thinking in the beginning, but less work than what I had been going to do.

You know the worst thing about depression? There’s nothing to fucking blog about! Unless you want to hear endless, repetitive whining, that is.