hmm on reflection I think my whole thing about the Hamilton quote, besides my conviction that we need to maintain martyrdom/self-sacrifice as a separate category from suicide, is that “dying is easy, living is harder” seems to me to be what depression tells us. depression says “death is an easy escape”, depression says “if you go on living it’s going to be impossibly hard forever”. and depression lies!!! accepting its premises and then saying “but I’ll heroically do the hard thing anyway” is a necessary step if you’re in the thick of it, but it’s not the ultimate step! recovery allows you to actually, finally reject depression’s false premises, and recovery is possible. you won’t necessarily live in depression’s world forever.
#I think if you accept depression’s premises it becomes increasingly difficult to have principled opposition to things like MAID#you can see how it’s exploitative and money-driven#but you can’t quite explain why it’s inherently wrong every single time even with ‘perfect’ consent#because like…life sucks right? we all agree life sucks?#and I think on tumblr (especially the tumblr of yesteryear) people are afraid to reject depression’s false premises#because if they admit that it’s a lie then they’re afraid no one will be able to see how hard they’re fighting#but that’s the paradox I think.#we have to be able to BOTH acknowledge how hard people with depression are fighting#AND affirm that their experience is not definitive of the ultimate truth of reality#we are doing them no favors by acting like what they see and believe is correct.#(and why would george washington agree with it?? anyway)
