We are thinking of you here on HN. I can do nothing for you, but would always make time for you.
What would improve things for you right now?
People always think you should be able to do more than you say but my body is the boss and will fall out from under me and that takes my mental state with it...as you can see now. Nearly two years ago someone here offered me a very bespoke job part time with the ability to immigrate, but my health problems and personal tragedies (family betrayals and death of the person I loved most...one I may have been able to prevent had I been back there instead of across the world) all came at the right time to confound even THAT chance. Now things are even worse physically, financially, and mentally and my capabilities less. In a modern country I'd be on social aid so I could have stability and time to assess and long term help if I couldn't improve...not feel I would be cast out at any moment with no survivable path. Maybe I'd be like this for the rest of my days...maybe I can improve a little and do more. I can't know until I have that security and access to trustworthy doctors and systems...and those are not here in America.
You mention Warsaw as a place where things might be better. It looks like you could fly there from NY for maybe $300 on a good day. Is this a plan you could shoot for?
But it doesn't have to be this way. There are other ways to live, there are other worlds we could have. We don't have to incentivize predation. We don't have to reduce human life to dollar values. We can make a world that does not find its fundamental basis in self-interest, we can have a world where everyone is not fundamentally, irrevocably alone.
I recommend that you try to see if you can find a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or any local group looking to further the establishment of a Solidarity Economy. Don't throw your life away because you know this world is wrong; make it right. We are out there, and we need you.
I understand the desire to get away. I understand the reluctance to believe that things can change. But you have the opportunity to help stop this. This world fights hard to make you believe that you are without agency, but that's because learned helplessness is what maintains the status quo. Collectively, we have a very real power to shift the course of society. There is more momentum building behind an end to this nightmare than you likely realize. Do you not at least want to find out if you could have made a difference?
And you might also be surprised with just how much more tolerable the pain in life becomes when you are near like-minded people who genuinely care about their fellow man.
>There is support out there for people who truly want things >to change.
A lifetime of experience tells me otherwise. What is out there is insufficient. I don't need promises of a brighter future. I don't need cheerleading. I don't need vague ideas of what should be or what someone believes can be. I need practical realities now.
>Do you not at least want to find out if you could have made >a difference?
This is deeply offensive and makes me want to scream. I DID make a difference in the ways I could. I spent my life helping in my work and doing what I could in my personal life. I walked the talk of social issues. I was ethical and honest. That I am now needing help, needing rescue rather than being the rescuer. You don't ask a drowning person to hold up a sign as they go under to highlight the dangers of swimming in the ocean. That I don't have the bandwidth to add MORE work and stress to an already overwhelmed life does not diminish that. I did my part.
End of line.
You have no obligation to anyone. I'm just trying to offer you an option of where to look for aid with those practical realities. Maybe you have already thoroughly exhausted your options, but this is just one more place to reach out to if you haven't already. I don't know where you live, but it's possible they may have a similar program at your local chapter: https://dsabuild.org/medicaldebt
I have been in your situation, and I have had certain privileges you do not have which helped me. So, I do not want to tell you: "just do XYZ and you'll be better". In fact, I agree with you that suicidal tendencies are not due to mental health issues; rather, they are due to deep societal injustices. Since I can't fix those, I can't truly help you. There is a reason why indigenous communities are particularly hard hit by suicide...
I am also not going to try and convince you to not go through with it. That would be selfish on my part. I don't want to have to deal with the hard truth that someone chose to stop existing because of the shittiness of this world.
I am however, going to ask you to reconsider what meditation is. I don't care about any of the religious crap around it, and I am also not going to reduce it to "sitting down and breathing deeply". "Meditation" must happen in every moment. I think about meditation as a sort of self-awareness which provides acceptance, and through acceptance, resilience.
I recommend reading Jon Kabat Zinn's "Where You Go, There You Are".
I had an allergic reaction to the idea of acceptance when I first came across it: things like "opium of the masses" came to mind. This is not that sort of acceptance. This is the sort of acceptance that provides internal stability when there is no source of external stability; it is the sort of acceptance that lets go of the disappointment and frustration, and then frees mental power to consider: "what now?". It's the acceptance that provides resilience which leads to improvements in social justice (and social justice starts with small, everyday victories: moments, individuals, and then society). Or the sort of acceptance that provides the freedom to explore things you would have been too scared to explore otherwise ("a person who has nothing to lose...").
In this vein, I think mathematics is an amazing way to spend time. Not only does it not deal with people, but it also helped me see a...largeness...to the world that I find hard to describe. I suggest starting from here: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hehner/FMSD/
In a sense, you're free. You're free of the "chains" of life. Breathe deep, not because you're meditating, but because you should relax: the chains of life no longer bind you. Let your mind roam now, as it is meant to roam. Build palaces of systematic ideas, which lead to results that are surprising and enjoyable. Explore the world around you: forget about space, but instead consider the amazing orchestra of chaos that is biology. How the hell does a cell work? Layers upon layers of beauty that is hidden because of the shit of our human world...
Or...pick something else to study that isn't what _this_ stranger cares about. Devote yourself to it. Do not let yourself be disappointed with the boring, care only about the exciting. Let the excitement of finding the amazing fuel your devotion.
Dare I say: "don't end the freedom you have earned by going through this pain early; use it, before you end it"?
I find your comparison of me with your family to be extremely insulting, as you know nothing about my life.
The mistake I made, which in your eyes makes me as good as a bunch of right-wing misers, was to 1) suggest a key aspect of what my own therapy was based around, and 2) share with you what _I_ found was something useful in improving my "suffering".
However, you decided to take it as yet another sign of how people are judging you (Jon Kabat-Zinn has a lot to say about non-judgementalness too, and that was another key aspect of my therapy), missing the fact that you are judging others, and in particular in the course of this interaction, me.
I do not have the resilience, capacity, or training to deal with such judgements.
I think that you can read my first response in many different ways. You chose one perspective, and perhaps, in the future you may choose to read it in other ways. Apart from that response, in which I gave you what I felt were the most valuable things I had to offer to anyone, I have nothing else to give you.
I'll leave you with a quote from J. Kabat-Zinn's "Full Catastrophe Living":
> Acceptance does not mean that you have to like everything or that you have to take a passive attitude toward everything and abandon your principles and values. It does not mean that you are satisfied with things as they are or that you are resigned to tolerating things as they “have to be.” It does not mean that you should stop trying to break free of your own self-destructive habits or to give up on your desire to change and grow, or that you should tolerate injustice, for instance, or avoid getting involved in changing the world around you because it is the way it is and therefore hopeless.
> Acceptance as we are speaking of it simply means that you have come around to a willingness to see things as they are. This attitude sets the stage for acting appropriately in your life, no matter what is happening. You are much more likely to know what to do and have the inner conviction to act when you have a clear picture of what is actually happening than when your vision is clouded by your mind’s self-serving judgments and desires or its fears and prejudices.
"I had a nightmare just last night about a victim I recall from early in my career...in such a horrible personal situation...who died in such a terrible way. She didn't have to. She was pushed to it and then allowed to because nobody she reached out to would help. I've seen dozens like that...and not a single one of them had to die." I wonder if your earlier career gave you PTSD and if your current circumstances are triggering it?
You had a bad judge twice - that guy is probably retired now or has moved on. I wonder if another might be reasonable - what you need is some kind of stable income so you can get space and stability. Are there no advocates who could help some kind of claim for someone in your situation - free advisors? Don't set some kind of end of year deadline on yourself - an advocate might be able to do a lot for you.
Please don't worry about me, I've been through some things, (probably toughened my exoskeleton), (or something :). You are not unnoticed and I can only repeat I wish there were some real help that you will get. I am ok.
"Surely there is...why don't you just....there has to be...that sounds terrible what would help?" etc NEVER F^%#$ HELP! They are vague, obvious, useless advices or ideas. Things I have usually made directly clear I have done. The direct answers to needs are never heard. You answer questions and nothing...like it was all just to satisfy someone's curiosity. People give you absurdly obvious "advice" they have never enacted, and certainly not in such circumstances, and then tut when you don't accept it or it doesn't work. The truth is there have been many systems and people who could have helped...really helped...and they said "no". THEY decided that not me. I had my agency stolen.
Yes I have PTSD amongst many issues but that like the rest has been scoffed at and said to be "playing victim" or whatever other excuse. Yes the judges, "advocates, doctors etc have mostly been shit but people won't accept that because it's easier to say it's my fault and pretend that it was just an edge case and would never happen to them. I am NOT setting a deadline....THEY are!!!! I have no idea when the threats and drama will appear again or when they will be realized. I live in constant fear of it and have been pointlessly F&^%# screaming HELP ME for years now. The ONE, MAYBE actionable plan was derailed by MORE BAD THINGS. I need support....stability....it's not coming. It never comes. It's like some trickster god is playing with me seeing how far he can push me. And when you say "I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE" you get "hopes and prayers". I wish I had never made this F&%^# account or ever talked to anyone about this as it just brings more pain on already unsurvivable pain. F&%%& everything.
I tried one last time to talk to my family recently...very right wing, faux Christian, self-righteous, bigoted people who think those in need are weak, didn't try hard enough, are to blame. They have never been decent people and I avoided them my entire adult life but was forced to grovel when my health got worse and I was denied official assistance. It's been nothing but misery and makes everything worse. It's a gravity well I cannot escape, I am powerless to do anything but scream online between gurgling breaths as the riptide takes me away and they seem to enjoy that power and getting me back for all that time I did avoid them. Despite a career seeing the worst people did to each other, you never want to accept those who claim to love you are that bad as well. But people show their true selves when they have power over others, when they have an opportunity to exercise their wills, when there is someone smaller/weaker/needier in their path...people will show you who they are every time. Every time.
I am not depressed because of some temporary situation. I am not suicidal because of a chemical imbalance. I had my health stolen, my finances decimated, and my life punched down on hard by anyone who was supposed to be there for me...for whom I would have been there. I am clinging to Maslow's bottom rung and losing my grip and nobody who can do anything cares at all. Everyone I have ever known who is suicidal has some real, actionable reasons like this underlying it. But all people say is "get help"..."take pills"...."meditate". That's all putting a bandaid over a gunshot wound and ignoring the trauma underneath because dealing with that is harder and costs more. People just aren't worth that to others. I am going to die angry and alone and they all know it and do nothing but antagonize, threaten, and make it about themselves. They have important things to do like rage at "liberals" ruining the world and how unfair everyone is being to Trump. Their kids and neighbors and everyone else are tools and threats to them, nothing more, they are so incredibly ego driven it's astonishing. They say "not with MY money" to everything social for others, even as they collect their social security or use subsidized systems. That's what matters to them...their own gain and power. Not me...not others. They are legion in this country. By an accident of birth I was both ruined and abandoned. Both rooted in selfish profit driven mindsets. Had I been born in the fist world the profit driven surgery likely wouldn't have even happened, but had it I would get social assistance. Not here...here I get to go live in a ditch or die.I am too old, too broken, need too much to survive and I refuse to suffer MORE because of this backwards culture so option B it is. Thanks Murica.
No SSRI or deep breathing solves those situations...and most people who end their lives didn't have to if people would do the right thing. But the right thing isn't profitable. So they push pills, write articles, cherry pick survivor-biased tales that show someone who "got better" who didn't really have any problems at the core. They show this as some enlightenment or evidence and hold it up but the light is focused on that and ignores the piles and piles of bodies underneath who were ignored or bypassed because it was too hard and not good for business. Most people don't care about you...they don't care about society...they care about themselves.
I had a nightmare just last night about a victim I recall from early in my career...in such a horrible personal situation...who died in such a terrible way. She didn't have to. She was pushed to it and then allowed to because nobody she reached out to would help. I've seen dozens like that...and not a single one of them had to die. Every one of them was failed by their family, by their neighbors, by systems...it's shameful. But enough about silly bleeding heart things like people and the planet and whatever. There are important things to do like get those likes, those dopamine hits, shut down those losers in a political argument or downvote someone to signal how wrong they are, make those dolla dolla bills convincing someone to buy that useless to society "product" or cash out big to someone else who will because those luxury status symbols won't buy themselves. After all anyone who is suffering only has themselves to blame and didn't want it bad enough or step on enough other heads to get it. Losers.