[AlteredState01]

How long should one HAVE to endure such pain? Why is it such a big deal to let go?

For whom and what does one live for when it is quite obvious that there is no desire to go on (and hasn't been for years and years)?

And why is it that "guilt" over what a "loved one" would feel (and the resulting embarrassment they may feel) always be the reason to continue going on day after day after miserable effin' day?

Why does it become so important that their feelings are always considered first - always considered the only ones who truly suffered after a loss? What about our pain? Why are people considered "losers" if their choice is not to go on?

Why is "the physical" the only measure of discomfort our society is willing to accept as a "good enough" reason to let go?

Why is it not acceptable to even say "I've had enough?"

[pachyderm]

> Why does it become so important that their feelings are always considered first...

Whose feelings?

> Why is it not acceptable to even say "I've had enough?"

Who says it is not acceptable?

[AlteredState01]

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
Whose feelings?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Those in my life.

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Who says it is not acceptable?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Well, the law, for one. Society in general, is another.

What bothers me is the fact that, when one decides to take their "exit", they are most often considered "selfish" for NOT considering the people in their lives.

Frankly, I don't want my family to have to continually suffer the consequences of my illness.

Time and time again, it is proven that my illness causes much destruction when it comes to relationships. I cannot blame my brother and sisters for not wanting me in their lives; my mother, I feel, is "trapped." It is her nature to be long-suffering, but is it fair to her to have to, at the age of 72, continue to care for an adult "child?"

I just cannot see any up-side to life anymore. My illness(es) run deep and I am at an age where change does not come as easily as it did when I was younger. And I am tired; so, so tired (like we all haven't heard that one before).

I am not planning to "take my exit," if anyone should have any concerns while reading this.

[pachyderm]

Time to take care of your self, it sounds like to me, without worrying over much of what others say. Your own self matters too.

[Perna]

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AlteredState01 said:
What bothers me is the fact that, when one decides to take their "exit", they are most often considered "selfish" for NOT considering the people in their lives.

Frankly, I don't want my family to have to continually suffer the consequences of my illness.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

We're all inter-related but everyone does what they have to do. I ask why, if one kills one's self and is dead, why they care what other people are going to think afterwards?

But to your frankly concern; you're trying to control what other people feel and think by deciding whether someone else is "suffering" from the consequences of your illness and whether they want to or not. Given the choice between having you alive and ill and "my" suffering trying to support/help you and you dead, I'd choose to suffer myself. That's what you're trying to take control of and it's not yours to control. That's what is selfish, though in a merely misguided sense.

I am in charge of what I consider to be my suffering. I am in charge of whether I love you and want you here with me and it does look like selfishness to a lot of people when someone who does not want to be here with us tells us that.

"I want to die" often feels to the person hearing it that that person has failed in some way to love enough or care enough or help enough, etc. to make a difference. "I want to die" implies the person saying it cares enough about living to tell me in case I can help them with their pain. Otherwise, why talk about it? People who succeed suicidally often leave no clues as to their intent. They "give up". Talking is an attempt at dialog, at communication but not everyone is real good at that. I use to express my suicidal interests most often when I had no other words to ask for help. But think of those words!

They're a threat to life. Anyone living is going to feel threatened by them and feeling threatened makes us feel anxious and angry and a whole lot of other stirred up, "natural" feelings. Unless one is a mental health worker or someone who has worked hard with one's own experiences and feelings, the reaction is often "knee-jerk". Someone is depressed, what do we not want to hear? "Cheer up". Mouse was talking about how she expressed her anxiety to her doctor and he told her to "Just relax". "I want to die" is going to get a variety of replies from those around us but those who have never felt that way or don't know how to respond are going to be scrambling for anything they can find :-) Some will throw religion, guilt, selfishness, etc. at one. It's the knee-jerk, "Don't do that!" response.

Life is painful. I didn't like hearing that from my T, it wasn't the "comfort" I wanted. But death is not an "answer" to pain or life. When someone breaks their leg, the doctors don't amputate to stop the pain. <font color="red">Potential Trigger </font> My husband was in a whole leg cast nearly a year when, at 16, he stepped on a piece of glass and severed the small nerves in the bottom of his foot. He almost didn't learn to walk again, had to force himself through the pain. He's 64 now and I have to massage his foot every night to make the pain go away for a little while; they didn't have micro-surgery yet in 1959.

There's absolutely no telling what tomorrow will bring. I would have argued with that 10-25 years ago, said that one could have a pretty good chance of knowing but I don't go there anymore because I've had too many "miracles" happen in the last 20-25 years. The older I get the more grateful I am that I stuck with the pain, kept trying, kept stuffing the bedspread in my mouth when I screamed in psychic pain and "invented" living, moving furniture with evil intent that would have pushed me out the window to my death if I had gotten off the bed (nevermind that the bed is a piece of furniture, I didn't think of that :-)

"When is enough, enough?" is one of those questions we can never know the answer to, can debate it all we want and have an opinion of but, since we can't know the future, we can't even resolve it anymore than we can know how the world actually was "created" or what happens when we die.

What helped me was Edna St. Vincent Millay's long poem, "The Suicide". It's online here: http://tinyurl.com/37t3vs or I'm sure libraries probably have it. She captures the "problem" well as seen by her first stanza:

"Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more!
Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore!
And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me,
I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly
That I might eat again, and met thy sneers
With deprecations, and thy blows with tears, --
Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away,
As if spent passion were a holiday!
And now I go. Nor threat, nor easy vow
Of tardy kindness can avail thee now
With me, whence fear and faith alike are flown;
Lonely I came, and I depart alone,
And know not where nor unto whom I go;
But that thou canst not follow me I know."

[SeptemberMorn]

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{AS}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}} You never know what tomorrow may bring.

Perna, amazing post! WOW!! I bow to you.

[Fuzzybear]

(((((((((((((( AS )))))))))))))

[LMo]

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AlteredState01 said:
Frankly, I don't want my family to have to continually suffer the consequences of my illness.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Trust me, as someone who has "suffered" from the consequences of my husband's illness, my biggest fear was that he would decide to end his life. I'd rather suffer a lifetime of trying to help him than be without him. It would absolutely kill me if he died.

I bet your family feels the same way, AS.

And Perna... as always...

[Mouse_]

((AS)) Perna great post!

I'm very sorry you are struggling so alteredstate

I might be repeating what others have said.... sorry I forgot to read the other replies before I clicked on reply. ....
was wondering if you have someone to talk to when you feel like this? I think it's important to reach out especially when we don't feel like it-- that's when we really need to.

This question is not meant in any mean way-- Have you ever been to a funeral where someone ended their life? I have....... just this week........ sure gives one a clear view of how loved ones are affected. and hearing people say things like, "why didn't she get help?".... and "she had so much to live for"..... and "those that loved her will never be the same"...... it was beyond difficult and heart wrenching to see her mom so sad and lost.

I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say....... just that-- you are worth every breath you take-- you are valued, unique and a treasure on this earth.... there will never be another you-- you have touched people in ways you will never realize or know.

I hope you can get some sort of help/support so you can see just how valuable you are and how precious life is.

Been here almost 3 years and don't have many posts as I often struggle to properly express myself-- I've meant to support and care. Hope you understand.

alteredstate

mandy

((((((((AS)))))))))

thankyou for posting EXACTLY how I feel.....

Perna, thankyou so much for that post too....one day I hope to be as wise as you dear one..... hugs to you both from the bottom of my heart

Jin x

[AlteredState01]

Thanks, pachyderm. Somewhere deep inside I feel like I matter, even if my conscious mind and heart would rather think/feel otherwise.

BTW, my point seems to be made in this post by your post about having to deal with a borderline mother.

Can you see my concerns about how I affect, so deeply, those around me?

[AlteredState01]

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I ask why, if one kills one's self and is dead, why they care what other people are going to think afterwards?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
'Cause at this point, I am not dead yet and as such, still care. Believe me, if I could shut down my emotions, I would.

I understand and appreciate your POV, Perna, but I believe you are talking mostly in idealistic terms, here.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
you're trying to control what other people feel and think by deciding whether someone else is "suffering" from the consequences of your illness and whether they want to or not.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Not really. Sometimes, it is pretty obvious to me and everyone around me that there is much suffering going on. Like watching my mother break down in tears out of frustration and anger or having to watch the embarrassment she feels when taking me to the hospital after an "episode," or the humiliation she feels when those around her accuse her of being a horrible mother; like having to hear from a sister that she does not want me to know her new family (by marriage) because I will "poison" them as well (her words). These are real and tangible situations - all very painful for both sides.

Of course those around me have a "choice," to suffer, but like many people, that choice may be "tainted" by their own insecurities and/or feelings of obligation, etc.

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Given the choice between having you alive and ill and "my" suffering trying to support/help you and you dead, I'd choose to suffer myself.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
Then you now are the one being selfish (well, not you, per se) because you would rather have me go on suffering so you can continue to try to support/help me. It's like keeping a family pet alive and in pain, so you can avoid the heart-ache of doing the right thing by letting it die or being pro-active by putting it to sleep so their own suffering will stop. Ok, this may not be the ideal example, as I am not asking that someone make this choice for me, but I am sure we all can understand what I am saying here).
</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
and it does look like selfishness to a lot of people when someone who does not want to be here with us tells us that.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
Yes, I know. My point exactly! It "looks" like selfishness. Am I really being selfish because I am tired of all this pain I feel and the obvious pain I put others through, and want it to stop? If "we" feel as though someone took their life because "we" thought it was because of "us," then I ask again: who is the one being selfish? If "we" are thinking about how "we" feel, where does my pain and suffering come into the picture? It doesn't. And tell me, why does anyone want to continue "suffering?" Could they be wanting to continue to feed their own dysfunctional perceptions?
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People who succeed suicidally often leave no clues as to their intent. They "give up".

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
Don't know the exact stats on this, but I don't believe this is the case. Most times, it is only in hindsight that clues can be seen all over the place, and I can almost guarantee that someone was told, at some point, of their pain and their desire to give up or to die. I would surmise that they just got sick of trying to get their point across - just look at the instances of mass killings at schools these days as only one example. Every one of those kids(young adults) left glaring clues to how they were feeling - and for a very long time! People just choose NOT to see others in distress (for a whole list of reasons).

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I want to die" often feels to the person hearing it that that person has failed in some way to love enough or care enough or help enough, etc. to make a difference. "I want to die" implies the person saying it cares enough about living to tell me in case I can help them with their pain... Talking is an attempt at dialog, at communication but not everyone is real good at that. I use to express my suicidal interests most often when I had no other words to ask for help.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">
I agree wholeheartedly with this. It is why I have chosen to talk about it on-line, here at PC, where these thoughts and feelings are not at all shocking, and are commonplace among many who are here. I do not express this IRL any longer, precisely because they do not/ would not/ cannot understand the depth of my pain AND because I understand that, as much as they would like, they simply do not have the power to relieve my pain. Is this being selfish? Or am I being selfish because I have raised it here rather than with those IRL?

And again, if that person feels they have "failed," they are no longer thinking outside themselves, but are being ego-centric. It also confirms that they still do not, or don't want to, understand the depths to which I continue to suffer.

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
"When is enough, enough?" is one of those questions we can never know the answer to, can debate it all we want and have an opinion of but, since we can't know the future, we can't even resolve it anymore than we can know how the world actually was "created" or what happens when we die.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> You are right. It is a question that cannot be answered to any satisfaction. It is a question I must answer for, and by myself. However, it doesn't stop the question from being asked, in thought or in words.

I am glad you have stuck around to see all the miracles in life that you have experienced. Don't really know if I could say the same (well, I'm sure I can, just not at this point and in this frame of mind).


I do appreciate what you have said here, Perna, even though there are valid arguments that can be made against some of the your points (but that is normal for any topic open for comment and debate, right?)

It's also just where I'm at right now - B&W thinking.

At least it keeps me thinking (and I gotta be alive for that!)

[Perna]

I believe feelings are meant to inform thinking and I am at the point where if I like what I'm thinking I go with it and if I don't like what I'm thinking, I don't.

I think I would always have too much trouble thinking other people's feelings didn't matter as much as my pain. I'd rather hurt than cause other people hurt. Even when the other people "didn't matter" (when I couldn't feel them because of my depression) my head still works pretty good and I know that is why I can't feel them and I'd remember that when I could feel them I loved them and did not want to hurt them. In other words, when I get in a "conflict" between my thinking and my feelings, for me, I know my thinking is better to "trust".

Sometimes I've "gone with" my feelings and that has turned out well too because sometimes when my thinking is squirrely or causing me trouble my feelings can "feel" their way through a problem :-) In the end, I trust "myself" all that is "in" me, to take care of myself. I don't want to die, one way or another and the little "spark" that's left is always feisty :-)

[AlteredState01]

Wow! I actually understood that (reading it) first time 'round! That was quite a thought all to take in (but well put)!

And you are right:
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and the little "spark" that's left is always feisty :-)

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Thanks!

BTW, one would think I would read the quote I chose to accompany my avatar!


(Oh, but then again, she did kill herself shortly after those words in the play.
How ironic that I should choose to see this as a positive statement, when Shakespeare meant it in the opposite sense.

Just sign me TwistedState01 tonight.

[Perna]

Ah, but Ophelia is a very controversial "suicide". She was more driven to her death by non-support? And, she could have been murdered to get at Hamlet. Uncle was NOT a nice man! :-)

[AlteredState01]

Murder, you say?! Never really contemplated that scenario...

[Perna]

Don't you find it rather convenient that she had no support? People just kind of left her alone even knowing she was going crazy? None of the men paid her any mind, cast her off, and in your scene, Gertrude doesn't want to see her and makes short shrift of her. She literally had nothing to hold on to even if she'd wanted to hold on.

Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France;
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death;
Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,
Like to a murdering-piece, in many places
Gives me superfluous death.

Funny that, the "ear and ear" part and talk of "like to a murdering-piece"; where have we heard of that before? :-) and to think Claudius' speech all started with:

Follow her close; give her good watch,
I pray you.

and then somehow that didn't happen and she was able to "wander off" and drown herself which, under the circumstances, is suspicious in how she did it all by herself?

[AlteredState01]

Well, well, well.... I totally missed that one!

If murder is the order, than I give it to Gertrude, ever the opportunist. If Claudius is calling her death redundant, then obviously, she was of no threat to him.

Laertes loved her (or "loved" her - you know, the question of incest that hung over the family - like father, like son - she would still be useful in many ways to him(?) ).

Then, really, the only reason for Ophelia's murder would be that she would eventually be a threat to Gertrude. Women had to fight for their existence too.

Hmmmm.... Just thinkin'

[AlteredState01]

...getting a little off topic?

[Perna]

How is suicide off topic :-)

I like the "problems" and possibilities of Hamlet. There's a lot to learn about one's self. It's like a puzzle, who is trying to do what and causes what and why, etc.

I don't think Ophelia was a threat, more everybody's pawn. I think she "allowed" herself to die/be murdered/committed suicide. Gertrude didn't help her and, as another woman, was in the best position to do so but the men drove her to it with her not being able to control her own lives and they failed to pay her enough mind to "support" her. Hamlet was thinking only of himself when he "rejected" her, made her leave him (as in "Get thee to a nunnery! Go!. . .") her brother didn't think of her at all and her father didn't arrange for her care should he die. But, I think she was a pawn in the "play" between Hamlet and Claudius, that Claud thought Hamlet loved her so did away with her to "really" unbalance him?

But think about Ophelia's "surroundings"/traumas, upbringing and whole life and compare it to your own at the moment? What would you have had Ophelia do to keep from killing herself/being murdered, etc.? Hamlet won't marry her and make her the next King. She has no mother, Gertrude won't take on that role now that her father is dead. Her brother is doing "boy" things and not thinking about his sister at all (I have three older brothers, been there, done that :-) She has no money or power or anything. How do you keep up hope in such a situation and was she "wrong" to suicide?

[pachyderm]

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AlteredState01 said:
Can you see my concerns about how I affect, so deeply, those around me?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

It would be nice to find someone who could weather you, who would be strong enough to know what to do in spite of your fears, without panicking, wouldn't it?

[AlteredState01]

It would.

[AlteredState01]

My feeling is that she offed herself. And really, in keeping with Shakespeare's credo of killing off all the "evil-doers" in his tragedies, one has to wonder if Ophelia truly was as "innocent" as one would think.

I've always had this stray thought that she wasn't as helpless as one is led to believe. I think she willfully played the game. She just wasn't skilled enough.

She was, for the most part, a pawn, as you say - a "plaything" for everyone involved, and most especially, Hamlet. Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to show us this when he has her buried in Yuri's old grave.

And yes, </font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
How do you keep up hope in such a situation and was she "wrong" to suicide?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Are we not just about full circle here, now?

....and still no answers; no resolution. But, I guess, I should not have asked such a question. It was unfair of me.

[Perna]

Ah, but we've learned a bit more and had a pleasant conversation to boot. I know a bit more of you, AlteredState and you of me and, for me, it has been good/profitable.

For me, it helps looking at Ophelia and I don't think Shakespeare would be surprised, think that was somewhat his intent though more for his fellow English citizens rather than for those of us 400 years in the future.

I did a paper in my Shakespeare class about he (Shakespeare) and women :-)