Metablog

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.

Overall, emotionally, I am 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.

How much of the stability of our various economies relies on the relative rationality of the actors involved? I mean, it’s a common criticism leveled against economics that models fail to take into account ways in which humans are not rational actors. But this is a different point entirely. How much of the actual instability which we observe in economic systems is due to the stupidity of people? Could the housing bubble and current crisis have occurred in a world where people were more rational? Is trying to create economic stability hopeless with such irrationality to deal with?

Everyone would write using the IPA. No more standard spelling. Spelling would change along with pronunciation, and so vary by region and country. No more of this stupid kanji crap, or every other word being completely irregular and impossible to know how to pronounce without a dictionary. “Know”. “How”. QED.

Ehh. Maybe.

My life doesn’t particularly suck—well, kind of, but—but the world does. Poverty. War. Global warming. Peak Oil and the energy crisis. Bowling alone, and the disintegration of community. Sexism. Homophobia. Racism. Sundown towns. Prison. The Drug Wars. The entire fucking justice system. The past eight years in the US. “Education.” Information overload. Healthcare in the US. Misunderstanding of mental illness, and discrimination against the mentally ill. The brokenness of democracy, representative or otherwise. Corruption. Terrible city planning in the past 30 years. [Update: List of woes expanded. Feel free to suggest your own.]

It’s pretty normal for these things to be a little depressing. But what about when they get really depressing? What about when when you’re suicidally depressed (probably not primarily due to the above-mentioned ills), and all these issues are just weighing you down? What do you do? Stop reading the news, stop following all of it? Put yourself in a cocoon and lead your own little life and don’t worry about the bigger picture? Try to forget, as much as possible, that there’s anything out there to worry about? But then, are you somehow deserting a duty to be socially involved? (After all, millions of people in the US doing just that are often given a big share of blame, perhaps deservedly, for the pitiful condition of politics here.) Are you putting yourself at risk of being personally harmed for not following these issues? What if something happens where then it really would make sense for you to move to Canada, if you really thought about it? (In my case, it’d be Spain or the Netherlands, but same diff.)

I’m afraid to stop reading about all this stuff, and afraid to keep reading. Afraid, perhaps, that without the higher narrative provided by politics, my life would completely lack any narrative, and without narrative, who am I? Actually, though, I think using the word “identity” (i.e. “who am I?”) to refer to the concept usually referred to by it is silly. It’s an awful way to describe what it describes. But then, “purpose”—what am I doing here?—, which describes the same thing, is still bad, though closer. I think I would need to understand a lot more psychology a lot better to precisely describe what it is that narrative provides one’s life that is so necessary for well-being. That is, to describe what “purpose” and “identity” really mean, without using vague, ne’er-defined terms.

God I hate living.

On a brighter note, I’m planning to ask someone out early next week. We’ve flirted a little so far, so I’m kind of hopeful, but I’m not even sure she’s single, so I’ll need lots of luck. I’m trying to decide whether to cut my hair in the meantime.

Little Nemo is destroying the clownfish! (Link in Spanish. Muy gracioso español.)

Life is really fucking hard sometimes. Really goddamn hard. My life has been nothing but pain for quite awhile now. There are moments where it’s enjoyable, I suppose. But every time I finish an activity, when my mind has a chance to recenter for a second—even during lulls in otherwise happy conversations—it’s right back to that hopelessness, that apathy, that feeling of being paralyzed and overwhelmed and sometimes even anxious, even panicky. It’s the feeling I live with.

I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist for six months now, and we’ve tried several different medications, and none of them have really worked, except maybe for one, Lamictal, that we had to stop because of some side effects. (There are still a few options to try, though.)

I have what they call treatment-resistant depression. It’s a formidable adversary. I’m in the 15-20% of people with major depression who aren’t helped by the first few medications they try. I have a few bipolar II-type symptoms that complicate treatment decisions. I have many ADHD-like symptoms, (though a clear diagnosis doesn’t seem to be possible in my case). I have delayed sleep phase disorder. (The prevalence is around 0.15%, lucky me, though it’s much higher in the teens and tends to get better over the years, usually. I’m pretty young yet, so it could improve on its own.) DSPD is both very hard to treat and very disruptive to normal lifestyles. In fact, in the cases where it doesn’t respond to treatment, where symptoms are moderate to severe, it’s starting to be regarded as an occupational disability.

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What is it about neediness that’s so unattractive, even for people who are themselves moderately needy? Why is it that confidence is so very widely viewed as so desirable, even a requirement? People take this so far—to the point where even depressed and lonely people try to fake high confidence and energy in order to attract others.

I really don’t understand this well. For me, I’m attracted more to moderately needy people than to people who aren’t, because I like to feel needed. I like to feel important to others. I don’t want to be too independent. This relates to my own insecurities—because I perceive myself as not having a lot of charisma with others, of not being seen as attractive, I try to find someone who sees themself as having a similar lack of power, so that the relationship will be balanced, so I won’t be plagued with fear of abandonment.

Though it might not always be this way, I think that where I am now, I’m going to need to depend a lot, emotionally, on my girlfriend, (if and when I get one,) until I can get happier and more confident. And I don’t want to be taking a huge risk when I do that.

I really don’t understand what the reason behind being so attracted to confidence is, unless you yourself are that confident (in which case the reason seems obvious). Do any readers have any idea what it is?

I got a message from an OKCupid user today, one I hadn’t contacted. It’s nice to get something out of the blue like this:

Hello dear, how are you doing today, hope great, let me introduce myself, my name is merry william , 29 years female from chicago. I searched your profile, read it and I was amazed with the content of your words…

Doesn’t she sound intelligent?

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Online dating has been frustrating for me. I’ve been on OKCupid since last August, ten months ago, and I’ve only gotten two dates out of it. I’ve sent out dozens of messages, and I’ve only gotten responses to maybe 20%. Some of the people with the most promising profiles turned out not to be interested. And I have received only four messages from people I didn’t contact first. So it hasn’t been completely bare, but don’t people typically have more activity than that? Even when I haven’t been doing anything on the site, I regularly log in so that they can see that I’m still active. I have some good, objective reasons to believe that my profile doesn’t have anything seriously wrong with it, though of course there’s always room for improvement.

I wonder if part of my problem is that people just tend to be really picky. I think that the people I’d be interested in would be especially picky. Maybe I’m underestimating how picky most other people are, and so my expectations for success are too high. (Short-term success, for me, would be ongoing conversations with other interesting users leading to around a date per month on average.) Do I need to be less picky to get there? Would I have a much better chance of finding a long-term partner if I were less picky about first dates?

And I’m pretty sure that part of my problem is that I find it hard to get a good idea about someone, to the point where I can actually feel attracted to them, online. On the two dates I’ve actually had, it just ended up feeling weird and flat. I imagine this is unavoidable. You just have to spend time with someone before those feelings can start, and e-mail conversation, especially through a dating site, is a slow, slow process. And then, how long do you need to try to make conversation before you ask someone on a date? Would I have better luck if I sent out first e-mails suggesting a date (along with the usual greeting and conversation starter), instead of e-mails just trying to get a conversation going?

It takes so much energy, and it’s discouraging when you feel like the women don’t have to put as much energy in. I’ve heard a lot of success stories, or at least “success-getting-dates” stories. I’m not one of them.

I am not an introvert. I just reclassified myself today. (Well, back in March when I wrote this, anyway.) I had always thought that being uncomfortable around people, and being socially pretty reclusive, meant that I was introverted. But after reading this WaPo article, (via Overcoming Bias,) I realized that those aren’t really the core traits of introversion as commonly conceived. Introversion, according to Mary Carpenter, means that “[you] don’t reveal [yourself] by working through problems out loud or by talking much about how [you] think or feel.” And that’s pretty much the opposite of me.

In fact, my non-introversion goes farther than that. Why, I’m positively extroverted, considering that I published a diary online for over a year (no longer available), and that I regularly reveal rather intimate things about myself to total strangers in the internet public, or to people IRL that I’m not especially close with.

I could be described as socially isolated or interpersonally hostile, but not introverted, not as a character trait. I do get introverted when I’m around strangers, but that doesn’t mean much. Social anxiety, maybe.