Posted by Wendy B. on August 1, 2001, at 12:06:26
In reply to Re: overdose » Wendy B., posted by sar on July 29, 2001, at 3:11:41
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> > not so sticky, I've wondered all my life how, if someone wants to be gone from this world, their right to do that should be taken away by zealous hotline helpers and concerned shrinks. I have trouble with it myself...
> > I think I live outside the norm most of the time, I hate the banal. sometimes I just want everybody to be well, and you get attached to certain folks on the BBoard. you think the right thing to say is: 'killing yourself is not the way out of your particular hell, please think again.'> I think that because we're Americans (are you American? or a Brit, or from where?) suicide is completely taboo.
I'm not a Brit, but I was married to one. Actually, still am, can't seem to get the damned divorce finalized, we've been separated for 6 years. So I have leftover brit-isms in my speech/writing. I don't say "bloody hell," though. I say, "Jesus fucking Christ," which shocks the hell out of Brits…
>I've taken many anthropology classes and have learned that in other countries, breastfeeding a child until age 5 is the norm and considered very healthy.
Yeah, I had some Brazilian friends who did that, it seemed fine to me, just a little draining for the mother. It's hard on the body to nurse for that long, you have to have the right nutrition, eat a lot, drink a lot of milk, get all the iron and folate you need, and are supplying for the baby-child. It's tough. I'm glad I didn't personally have to do that.
>Here, that would be consisdered sexual abuse.
No, probably just super-weird. Plus, you can't send your child to daycare if they're dependent on your tits for some or most of their nutrition.
>In Japan, kamikaze missions and hari kari (Is that what it was called) was very noble and humble; here, it would be considered illegal and a reason to haul you off in an ambulance.
Yeah. But I'm glad I don't belong to a society that thinks ritual suicide is an act to be proud of, or that suicide in the defense of the fascist realm was considered noble... Just IMHO.
My fave example is the family bed, which almost every culture, besides ours, participates in, to some degree. Because they don't have the space or the room. The US is so big, so spread out, we all have our own plots, our own houses, our own rooms… it's more healthy for us to be in our own little beds than all together in one? I honestly don't know the answer to this, just saying that loads of our daily habits are culturally produced, historically late, practices. All influenced by the industrial revolution, and twisted by the later revolutions of global capitalization, and then the 'Information Age.' Which have nothing to do with being 'normal.'> (...)
> Ah, drowning...isn't that how Virginia Woolf did it? Tonight as I was driving to the store to lift some wine (because I am broke and it is past hours)Ahhh, stealing… the impulsive behavior again... Don't get caught out there, babe, it's gonna be no fun *at all* to sit in the cop station waiting for the 'rents to come pick you up and pay the bail for ya…
>I thought of Marshall McLuhan--what did he say, "the message is the medium" or somesuch? "the medium is the message"?
Yeah, the medium is the message. But he said a lot of other things, too. I threw all his books out during one of my many moves, or I'd quote you something boring.
>Mila brought it up some time ago, speaking of once wanting to slit her wrists, but intsead allowed herself to become a "handless maiden." Let others take the burden.
I didn't catch that reference, what was she talking about? Cutting off her hands? Or the net effect if you succeeded slitting your wrists? I always read and like Mila's posts.
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> > > i hope this isn't making you uncomfortable...
> >
> > No, it's really ok... But Hemmingway shot himself in the head, actually, he put a shotgun on the ground, put his mouth over it, and reached down and blew his head off, or so I've read. And he was a classy guy, I guess...
> >
> You're right. Hem was quite a talented but tortured bastard; however, he was a sportly Man's Man and (as I imagine) simply would not have done with a quivering pill overdose or humanly blood. He wrote like bullets--that extreme, cowboy-style short powerful prose--and died by bullet.Yeah, he used to go on African safari's, shooting up them there tigers and lions and giraffes and shit... A real Man's Man with real big guns (standing for the imagined real big penis).
> Powerful. Since you say you're not freaked out by this topic, I'll tell you this: at my most suicidal, I researched it extensively on the web
At least it kept you from doing it... You can't commit suicide if you're researching on the web, right?! Keep sitting in fromt of that screen, ok?
>and came across a site that contains photos of both successful and unsuccessful suicides. Gun through the mouth or in the side of the head is not a foolproof method--it could quite possibly just leave you with massively ugly head injuries.
Ugh! I'd rather be pretty and sad...
Reminds me of a job I had when I was 18, cleaning out a warehouse space with my uncle. Most of the debris were medical journals. I spent at least half my time looking at medical photography of diseased tissue, or surgery, or morbidity and mortality, or annals of dermatology (they only show diseased flesh, only interested in pathology, not normal determalogical stuff, is this why my dermatologist seems so bored when I go see him, he'd like something more gross to look at and treat). Ughghhh... that job made my flesh crawl.
> > > one moment i am drunkenly suicidal, the next morning i am in giggles and eating my organic vegan food lingering over hot tea and loving the sun. dr. jekyll & ms. hyde.
> >
> > yeah, it's always the big back and forth.> it's all about feeling! i became a big animal-rights activist at age 16, not to feel better physically, but eating tortured/dead animals had always disturbed me. I think now it's an interesting parallel--I turned veggie when receiving the most abuse from others (parents and guys).
Of course it's all about feeling! This I understand! No, I mean, I didn't question the vegan-vegetarian thing, just the beating up on your system later by drinking...
>now it's all somatic; not only do i still strongly believe in the animal-rights movement, but it feels so good to eat raw/organic/vegan! it just feels good. and when i don't eat that way i don't feel guilty (i'll have some cheddar or white bread etc sometimes) i just don't feel as good.
Yeah, milk products and wimpy bread are the worst for my system. The basil and tomatoes are coming in strong now, and those are great, uncooked and chopped up, with pasta and a little olive oil, some salt & pepper, and voila!
> when i don't drink i don't feel guilty or proud, i just don't feel as good.
>
> besides, eating healthy helps to temper the impending beer belly!That's the truth!
> > you mean you just stay, no matter what, and get trashed?
>
>
> No. (I mean I've done that, but that's not what i was talking about.) Jah's metaphor was the party=life; if you're not having a good time you leave. (Walk home in the case of a party; kill yourslef in the case of life.)Sorry, I just think that's a simplistic duality, even though I like JahL and all...
> > i have lots of doctors and pills, lots of my anxiety is gone, i listen to music now and have started perusing non-psychology books in the first time for more than a year.
> >
> > music is the way, man, it really soothes me, too, playing guitar as well... like I said, it seemed from your posts that you're really getting some moments of clarity and lightness... being able to laugh and enjoy life while drinking tea and eating excellent food is a good sign, no?
>
>
> i am. i used to be so against pyschiatric medication, but now i'm alll for it. i realize now that my depression led to so much delusional thinking (like, if someone were nice to me, i'd think they were making fun of me, knowing what a loser i actually am and trying to humor me or see my reaction to their kindness so they could laugh about it later)--and prozac/klonopin have seriously reduced my ruminating/paranoid thoughts and have led me to hermit to social butterfly, and now so uncomfortable with the responsibility of the transition that i find myself hermitting up again.You're great at explaining your moods, etc. I think that paranoia about others that you describe is a type of social phobia, and the klonopin is good for that. I'm glad you're feeling so much better. I have the ruminating stuff, too, the neurontin is good for that.
> i was just hesitant to discuss suicide in a practical, honest way because it is taboo, & i've no desire to freak anyone out.
I don't think there are any real taboos on P-Babble on discussing suicide, are there? People can choose not to read them...
>Another thing I admired about Jah is one post (awhile back) in which he said he was suicidal; another (new) poster accused him of "crying wolf" and not to mention it again if he didn't immediately mean it or some such,
That wasn't right of the new poster, I mean, we all can support someone who is feeling on the fence, and try to bring them to the side of the living, if we can. S/he should have just moved to another non-threatening thread.
>and his rebuke was that his chronically suicidal feelings legitimately made him a suicidal person without cries for help or what have you.
Right. He shouldn't have to be judged in that way by the other guy. If the other guy didn't want to read it, then he should have just ignored it and moved to another thread, instead of making JahL feel badly...
>all regrets if i'm somehow misinterpreting the exchange between Jah and the other poster, I just haven't got it in me to search the archives.
>
> i hope this doesn't sound too pessimistic, but plenty of people live 75 years worth of shit then die of cancer. in a nursing home eating creamed corn.Right, ugh. Or they aren't depressed and live 75 years of an ok life, and THEN they end up in a nursng home, eating chipped beef on toast (also creamed!), and then they die of cancer...
> i'd rather (if i don't rebound from all of this) take a massive morphine overdose and not deal with 50 years of frowns.
I hope you feel better with no rebounds... Is morphine readily available to you? Or do you mean some assisted suicide thing?
> i've got hope. a decent job, supportive parents, a few kind friends...admittance to excellent college, nice shoes...
Well, I'd say the shoes are the most important thing. Hee hee. No, really, that's a list not many people have, it's good you can count all the good things.
My sister and I used to judge the quality of someone's personality by their shoes. So watch out what you put on your feet, there might be two adolescent girls checking out your footwear.> it's my moods that bring me down.
Right, that's true for us all.
>the loserish feeling.
Try listening to "Losering" by Whiskeytown on the Stranger's Almanac cd. If you don't have it or don't feel like buying it or getting it on Napster (can we still do this?), I can tape it for you…
My solution to a mood is get into it, listen to the hungriest Emmylou Harris song, or a kick-ass Sheryl Crow tune, etc., and just wail! My therapist says singing is very good for me. Since I do it all the time, I now have the justification I need to *keep on* doing it...>insecurity.
Yup, got that one…
>no romantic love, the ones i love never love me back.
Ditto.
>existentialism.
Man, that stuff fucked me up for a lifetime! Can't seem to come up with an alternative philosophy, though, no matter how hard I try… I guess I think Sartre/deBeauvoir and Camus and those guys were probably the most intelligent group of beings to ever visit the earth…
>the craving for self-destructive activity--drunk driving, any drug, danger etc--
Yes, I know, I worry about that, wish you'd get some kinda handle on that…
> > I'm behind you, for whatever that's worth...
>
> It's worth a lot, and I thank you for it. I remember you posting much more often when I fist began visiting PSB back in Feb or so~where have you gone? Give us a shout out, chick, and let us know how you are.I was visiting the board a lot back then, since then I've been back on and off, lurking. When I need group therapy, I come here, this is what PSB gives me, people who know what it all feels like, people who I tell stuff to that nobody else knows, wants to know, or would be bored with, etc. In the deep of winter, I get/got/will get totally blackly depressed. The slow, painful death of a love-relationship did not help, and I'd been fired from my job about 5 months before (insubordination, such a rebel), and was still trying to deal with the aftermath of that. So I was a frickin' mess… That's why I did a lot of posting then - I was giving the shout-out.
>
> Warmly,
> sar
>
more warmth, and a hug, too,
Wendy
poster:Wendy B.
thread:7857
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010731/msgs/8531.html