Stuff and things

Post by "Mike I Guess" @‌mike_i_guess:

The lack of boomer LGBTQ+ people isn't because it's "more popular now." Many were murdered by their peers, died from government inaction during the AIDS crisis, committed suicide due to lack of social supports, or have had to live in the closet due to their peers' cruelty.

End ID.]

- guy at work "Yes, and -" ing the bit me and my coworker were doing where we pretended to be owners of a fantasy medieval tavern not minimum wage retail staff

- at the gay club when Die Young by Kesha came on and two hundred people, all dancing and drinking separately, jumped up and down to make the "- beat of the drums *STOMP STOMP*" as loud as possible

- person who watched me stomp round the beach singing a made up song about breakfast foods to name a cat after and suggested more breakfast foods that would be good cat names

- guy who started a dance off with everyone across the road while waiting for the lights to change

Also. Controversially, and contrary to my point above….dont try to reassure them if they tell you they want to die. Don’t try to list off the reasons they should stay, cause they’ll just double down on why they don’t want to or feel like they can’t. Agree with them, to a fault. People who want to die want to euthanize themselves, effectively. They want to not suffer. That’s the goal. Causing more suffering or trying to be emotionally manipulative doesn’t do shit.

So agree, from that premise. “Oh, I see. How kind of you, to want to end your own suffering. No, truly, it IS a kindness. Do we not call it so when we put our pets to sleep, or let grandma die with dignity on hospice? You are trying to offer yourself that grace, and that is about the kindest thing I think anyone could do for themselves.”

I have repeated some version of the above to most the friends I’ve had call me at 3am, clinging to one last thread of hope and desperation to be seen. I have acknowledged this desperation, too, with more mixed results… depends on the person and what attachment they had to me.

But EVERY SINGLE PERSON I have told this has had an epiphanous reaction, a realization that if they can do that much kindness for themselves, then maybe they can be open to other kinds of self-compassion too. Like letting themselves rest. Like letting themselves be human.

On the record, I did not learn this from therapy, but lived experience. I WISH someone had told me that, and I didn’t need to put those pieces together by trial and error and, yes, being put on a very unhelpful lockdown to divest me of even more autonomy and control of my life…which did the very opposite of help.

Anyways. Three things usually are at the root of most suicide attempts:

1. Feeling overwhelmed, too much going on in life or you don’t have the mental or physical energy to make decisions or think clearly and critically

2. Feeling helpless to control yourself, your life, or your environment. Often tied to the first, but not always.

3. Lack of social bonds. Which is why social attention doesn’t work for long. As my husband puts it, “You need the oxytocin, gremble.” Oxytocin is THE bonding hormone. Every human alive makes it. Some don’t have receptors capable of receiving it, or that don’t process it correctly (psychopathy, and to an extent, sociopathy/ASPD, NPD, certain types of Dementia, and Schizophrenia) but every human brain produces it.

The last one is probably the most significant one, or at least has the largest margin of predictability in terms of outcome. I can’t find the damn study because google is being stupid about it (is it just me or have they gotten worse about burying scientific data lately?) But people with one or more significant social bonds are not only less likely to commit suicide, but they’re far FAR more likely to choose less “violently lethal” methods like guns or jumping in front of a train.

I dug into that research after looking at a facebook reel that mentioned that women attempt to comit suicide more often than men do (true) but are less likely to succeed because they choose “softer” methods. (Also true). But something about that didn’t quite add up to me, (nor the implication that women just don’t have access to those violent ends…literally 90% of the hunters and handgun owners I know are women) so I looked into it, and the truth was simply that women are more likely to have pets, children, or significant others when they do attempt. Men that commit suicide successfully overwhelmingly come from single-parent homes, are 20-40, and live alone, with a close follow up on 40-60 year old men that are recently divorced or separated. There was no data on that for the type of work they did, but blue-collar men are far more likely to commit suicide than white collar ones and that’s been true for a very long time.

Point is.

This is also why arguing that it is selfish and using guilt is so terrible. Great.

I'm not saying this was always an accurate assessment of the situation, but here's what I felt every time; You want me alive so you can use me. Fucking fantastic. Glad to be your pet, your toy, your comfort object, your duty you're being so good at fulfilling, your need not to feel pain even if I'm hurting worse, your favorite thing. In the short run, guilt can work sometimes. And it can for sure work if it's a thought that the person naturally and organically. But it feels like shit, long run. If you are suicidal and someone comes at you with guilt, you aren't the priority, are you? Them losing something is. Their pain over yours, always. That's the mindset of (at least some) suicidal people.

If you cannot understand the horror of being forced to stay alive because of what other people want or believe or are uncomfortable with, until you understand how soul-wrenchingly horrible it feels to be told you have to stay when doing so just means you have to see them suffering over your misery, which makes you feel like you have to stifle and hide everything so they aren't Big Sad (which is extra unpleasant when their Big Sad comes with a side of them being willing to call the cops) and stifling it only makes it worse, you can't fully get it. It makes you feel utterly disrespected and ignored and not understood and like they aren't listening at all.

I'm not saying suicidality isn't often riddled with thought distortions, it often super is, just that you cannot snap them out of it in the ways people seem to like to try.

I don't have an answer for what TO do. I just don't. But I do know it doesn't involve attaching a threat to every last line defense offered to me, or discouraging me from talking to other people in a bad place about it because the Bad Selfish Action might be made too tempting by someone understanding and not spending all their effort trying to get me to not do it instead of really hearing me.

Don't force someone into inpatient. Those places are trauma factories and genuinely statistically result in more suicides and often in total cessation in attempts to seek help that might actually help.

Pick a topic you like, and that's what you're going to read about. Set a minimum word count, and read until you get to it. Start small. Smart easy. First try, it might actually be agonizing.

That's it for the day. Just hit the word count.

Next day, read to the word count again. Read something new! It will be easier today.

And easier the next.

It doesn't even mention Julius Caesar or the Ides of March.

It's from a very different segment of the play

It's not even the famous part of that segment that everyone knows by heart

The "I'm just sayin'" attitude of all the Seinfeldians in the screenshot (although if memory serves, what they're actually saying is, "not that there's anything wrong with that")

It just comes at the whole situation in such an oblique fashion

I don't think I've ever seen an Ides of March meme do anything like this before

Oh, a human being is seeking a social response? Human being, the social animal wired to make and track social connection? A human desires the vital blood that permitted their species to survive for millennia? The human being who was born completely helpless and primed in every way by nature to seek attention and help from their community?

Advent Calendar 2025 - Day 14