Insatiable Reader

You wanna know what happens once you kill yourself? Your mother comes home from work and finds her baby dead and she screams and runs over to you and tries to get you to wake up but you won’t and she keeps screaming and shaking you and her tears are dripping onto your face and your dad hears all the screaming and runs into the room and he can’t even speak because the child that he loved and the child that he watched grow up is gone forever and finally your little sister runs into the room to see what all the fuss is about and she sees you dead. The person she looked up to and loved. The person she bragged about to  her friends, the person she wanted to be just like when she grew up, the person that made her feel safe. But she’s never really going to get to grow up and smile and laugh and love because she’ll always be consumed with this feeling of missing you. And now there’s something missing from your family and they can barely look at each other anymore because everything reminds them of you but you’re gone and hurts more than anything. and you think that your mom never cared because she was always busy and yelling at you to finish your homework and clean your room and forgot to say I love you sometimes but really, she loved you more than anything and she doesn’t leave the house anymore, she can’t even get out of bed and she’s getting thinner and thinner because it’s too hard to eat. Your father had to quit his job and he doesn’t sleep anymore, every time he closes his eyes he sees his baby dead, and the image never goes away no matter how much alcohol he drinks. And at school your best friend sees that your seat is empty and she gets this sick feeling in her stomach and that’s when she hears the announcement. You killed yourself. And suddenly she’s screaming and crying in the middle of class and no one even bothers comforting because they’re all  busy sitting there staring at your empty seat with tears dripping down their cheeks and all she wants is for you to hug her and tell her it’s gonna be okay like you always did, but this time, you’re not there to do it, everything is dark now that you’re gone and her grades are slipping, she barely goes to school anymore and she ended up in hospital after taking too many pills because she wanted to see you again. the girls who used to make fun of the way you dressed feel their throats get tight, they don’t talk to each other anymore, they don’t talk to anyone, they’re all in therapy trying so hard not to blame themselves but nothing works. and your teacher who always gave you a hard time stares blankly at the wall, she quits her job a few days later. And then your boyfriend hears the news and he can’t breathe, he still calls you a lot just to hear your voice and he talks to you on facebook but you never message him back, he can’t fall in love again because every girl he meets reminds him of you, he’s never going to get over you, he loved you and he cries himself to sleep every night, hating himself and slicing his skin because he couldn’t save you and he’s never going to hold you in his arms or hear you laugh again. Now everyone who knew you, whether they were a big part of your life or someone you passed in the hallway a few times a week, they carry this aching feeling around inside them because you’re gone, and they miss you, and they don’t know why you left but it must’ve been their fault and they should’ve stopped you and they should’ve told you they loved you more and that feeling is never going to go away. And so you killed yourself

As someone who works fulltime and does classes and attempts a social life and hobbies, this gets very hard and stressful. But here are some tips I have for helping:

Learn to say no and not feel guilty. Picking up that extra shift when you had plans? Politely decline. Your friend is begging you to take ANOTHER class when your plate is full so you can have one together? Just be honest and say you can't.

Prioritize your sleep and eating. You can't function well if you don't sleep and eat enough. These are not things you can just push aside and do when you get the time. These are basic things you need to survive. These are literally basic needs. Don't throw them to the side. Your body does its best to take care of you. Make sure you take care of it too.

Have boundaries and be firm with them. If you tell your manager you can only work x, y, and z, don't let them add a or b to it. Respectfully but firmly let them know that you can't take on those things and if they have you do a or b, your work overall is going to majorly decrease in quality. Schedule time for yourself. For studying. For going out. And treat those set aside times just like you would if they were work or school times or appointments. You are the most important part of your life.

Understand that some weeks are going to be absolute hell. You're not going to have enough time. You're going to be exhausted and cry and throw things and want to quit everything. You got this babe. Take breaks and remind yourself how amazing you are and treat yourself after.

Prioritize things and adopt better habits. Wash your dishes right after using them. Get a set bedtime. Get easy breakfast things. Take a walk.

Your friends will understand if you just need time alone. I promise. They love you and don't hate you because you're overwhelmed. I PROMISE. And if they don't, maybe they aren't really your friends.

But now that you moved away, focus on your present and how you do to really move on. Sure, maybe you blocked yourself in a painful situation for longer than you should have done, but that's not something to blame at all. We all need some time to take difficult (and possibly also painful: if there's/has been a connection, it's still painful to say goodbye to something/someone and to grieve properly) decisions. You went away anyway in the end, you made the best decision for yourself and now you're doing good: do not regret what you couldn't see. That's what matters. We need to let the past stay in the past as much as we can and focus on our present to bring ourselves a definitive closure.

When we have disagreements with family members in these scenarios it’s almost always because the family wants to keep going with aggressive measures and we don’t see any utility in that. It’s always shocking, I mean genuinely takes us aback when a family wants us to stop being aggressive when we want to keep going. It’s so unusual, so rare…it makes it harder when we are at a stalemate in the other direction with a family because you want to say, look. we never say no to doing more if we thought we could do more. our default is to want to do more. if we’re saying we want to keep them comfortable it’s because we believe there is zero utility in continuing as we’re doing.

There are always people though that will say, hey, the doctors told us my uncle wouldn’t live 3 more weeks and he lived three more months! that’s why I can’t give up on mom! And sometimes I just want to shake them and say, were those three good months? How many of those weeks were in a hospital? How often were the nurses holding down the patient so the doctor could shove a NGT down their nose? Were you there when they were crying from needlesticks every morning? Were you there when they kept ripping off the O2 mask because they didn’t want it on their face anymore?

Not to downplay the burden of that decision for families. It’s hard. It’s really hard. It’s just…also hard to watch. It’s hard to do. I feel for the nurses most of all, who are often the ones who have to do the physical work of carrying out a plan for someone who is clearly suffering to those who know what suffering looks like.

"Rise up against genocide. Free Palestine"

It's also worth pointing out that Ukraine has a population of 43 million, while Gaza's is only a little over 2 million

And yet...

PERIOD DRAMA APPRECIATION WEEK ► day 5. favourite dynamic - Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy - Pride and Prejudice.