we need all the help we can get: School of Life

 

Admittedly, I compartmentalize things in my life so I can carry on with my self-depreciating humor and nihilist memes, business as usual, "life's like that", "let it flow", and whatever motivational quote that gets passed around in chain messages these days. I'm opening a compartment tonight as I'm writing this, because things have been happening around me lately that I think if I ignore any longer will eventually give me more issues in the future.

So, suicide. I can talk about death, the fragility and absurdity of our existence for hours on end, but I can never quite be as articulate for suicide. Because the degree of hopelessness and loneliness and insecurity and pain that precedes a suicide is really one of those things words can never describe. It's only ever things that you feel inside your skin and all throughout the edges of your bones and as a constant throbbing headache and a monotone humming in your ear; it's only ever in the way your hands shake and your palms sweat and your body just feeling like a sack of feathers and a ten-wheeler truck all at the same time. And yet it's not quite that. Because it's worse.

God, I hate talking about suicide. Because I have people I love and some of them have thought of committing suicide and I hate not being able to help them, but most of all I hate not ever being able to comprehend in full what they're going through because words just don't cut it, and that's our limitation as humans. The most explicit way we can put things are in words, but the things that really drive us mad are indescribable.

It's all intrapersonal with these and so it's so easy to feel alienated and more lonely because your friends and family can listen to you but it's not like you can put your brain in a flash drive for them to feel for a second. It's all intrapersonal and so a support system can only do so much. So many great people have killed themselves despite having been surrounded by so much support and love, and that's neither the fault of the support system nor the fault of the person for not asking enough help.

It's the fault of language. Our vocabulary can't catch up with these things. I can tell you that I'm sad but my sad is different from your sad. And there's always that presumption that the present tense will disappear tomorrow and I will have stopped being sad after telling you, but most probably I have not, and the present tense continues. I remain sad, but you have not remained to care. Not because you don't care, but because you thought it was over already.

It's all intrapersonal. It's something only you can fully comprehend and so something only you can fully solve. But of course, we have this other issue that we don't really like talking to ourselves. We're mean to ourselves, we're offensive, we think the worst of ourselves. There's so much self-loathing to get past before we can get to the actual talking. That's why we need a facilitator. One to keep us on track.

Most ideally, it's a therapist, but we all know that in this country, things like that are a luxury. So we make do with a support system. While we don't have the linguistic tools to fully explain our situation to our friends and family, there's always the reassurance that they have our back, and that's maybe all we need for now.

One can also meditate, but that didn't quite work for me, whose thoughts run like that road runner in Cartoon Network, and I'm the coyote except I catch the road runner each time and I ponder and worry and stress about it to my heart's discontent.

So now I've come to watch introspective videos on youtube about self-help. I have linked a few very helpful videos below that might help you at least put things in perspective. It''s from a very helpful youtube channel called School of Life, which talks about literature, philosophy, and psychotherapy. It really might be worth taking a look at.

Please, in times of need, I hope you find the strength to reach out. I'm sure that you are loved by many, and while they can't fully understand what you're going through, they'd 100% want to save you if you're in trouble. I hope one day psychiatric help will finally be accessible for all. Mental illness is consistent throughout classes, but while the rich have the opportunity to try to reach out, the poor are deprived of even that. Just the opportunity.

Good luck - to those struggling with the thought of suicide, and to those who have fallen prey to it. I'll quote a The Front Bottoms song that have always helped in times like these: "You have to promise not to break no matter how far you are bent."



Til next Sunday,

Des