I have to say, finding your writing and your Twitter account has been a real ray of light for me this year. I have constant suicidal ideation. I genuinely hate living. I really don't want to continue on, and I don't get why everyone else chooses to. I thought I was alone with those thoughts. Seeing your account and your writing (especially the "I'm not always very attached to being alive" helped me to understand what I was thinking and verbalize it to my therapist. I literally sent her your article and was like, "Yeah this is what I'm feeling, all of it." Also, being able to laugh about it has been such a blessing. Your insight and your good humor and your understanding and empathy have helped me immensely. Thank you.
The single best thing I did this year, in late March, was foster a cat. It started as an altruistic thing, yknow, shelters being closed down and all. He was marked "URGENT DUE TO BEHAVIOR", extremely skittish and difficult to handle, probably semi-feral. Not an ideal choice for a first-time cat person like me. I could barely touch him for 4 months, but he's the first mammal whose life I've ever been responsible for other than my own. What got me through was knowing that if I died, he would eat my corpse.
He's still here, so I'm still here. He sleeps on my chest now.
I set intentions each end of December for the coming year. Not resolutions. Just intentions. And my hope comes now from both my 4½-year-old son’s sense of wonder at life and my intention to get back to writing more regularly and trying to reincorporate things like meditation that I know have worked for me in the past.
While I've found better ways to cope with and avoid ideation, this year definitely created a different side of that in the form of waking up and just...wondering why I should even get out of bed, why should I keep existing. Between the lack of material support or real care from the people in charge and just being increasingly disinterested in my freelance job, it was just like this constant layer of "why". It wasn't that sort of active "I would like to die" feeling. It was a different sort of ache that often had me feeling like I was an impersonator.
Honestly, I don't think I came out of it with an answer aside from "Because", and there were plenty of days where I only made it through because I had gotten into such a set routine that I was running entirely on muscle memory.
this past year, keeping my head or hands busy actually made it possible to somewhat place the need to not live aside for a few moments. however, other major floating devices (like thinking about my family and friends afterwards) has lost much of its power and i dont know why.
none of it has been majorly influenced by the pandemic and again, i dont know why (apart from the initial anxiety). i thought it would be sucky as a thing to happen but change my perspetive to something like more grateful or appreciative of life.
Just so you know, your original “I’m not always very attached to being alive” message made a world of difference to me in 2020, simply because it put words to something I had felt for a long time. I shared it with friends and found I’m not alone, too. Thank you!!
The last few weeks have been particularly hopeless. My boyfriend of 6 years enlisted — going from having someone to see/talk to every day to just being alone has been hard. Without him I am feeling all of the big emotions that he once helped me “float” through. My future seems to be stagnant. I may have self-sabotaged so much that my health and my goals for my life are slowly falling apart. But there has to be some hope, right? People survive so much. The world is so broken and people keep breathing, keep existing, keep pushing. There has to be some way to survive. So I will find a new therapist and accept that I need medication again and try to keep going. But in the meantime, if anyone else will be crying and drinking all night, perhaps we can help each other just a little bit.
For me it started when things started shutting down and when I switched jobs. When I switched jobs they were all working from home and with that came a lot of regular “new job” anxiety. My husband was also deployed at the time so with the time difference it made things a lot more difficult. Not even a week into working from home I moved back in with my parents and the week after was when I was at my lowest. I was just so overcome with anxiety and existential dread that all I could do is sleep and wait for time to move faster. My anxiety wouldn’t let me sleep or eat and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I stumbled upon one of your articles from self about “17 Mental Health Tips and Things to Do If You Feel Cooped Up, Isolated, and All-Around Crappy”. I bookmarked this page and tried to do my best to stick to some of them. Specifically 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, and 16. I started writing down everything I was feeling and reminded myself that I was loved. I started therapy and medication to help with my anxiety and depression and it helped me so much. That along with animal crossing. I’m also planning my wedding and I specifically remember thinking “why am I planning this wedding if I don’t even want to be alive.” Ultimately I kept pushing through and along with my medication, those ideations aren’t as prevalent. Thank you for your articles and helping me survive 2020.
My suicidal ideation was really strong at the start of the pandemic, and I had an event that probably should have sent me to the hospital. I really really really doubled down on working through it with my therapist and talking more about the underlying feelings/causes and going really deep on them. She also frequently asked me very directly: "do you want to die because of x?" When she put it that way, I realized the answer was usually no. Now when I'm feeling that way, I can usually back myself out of it a little bit by trying to figure out what I'm actually feeling. I also think finally getting the right combo of meds has helped.
Wanted to let you know that your writing has been a flotation device for me! I am having a particularly bad day and came here to read your writing, to remind myself that there ARE people who share my perspective on this. It's both sad and comforting...and sometimes it just is what it is...
My floatation device was ripped out from beneath me at the end of this year. The one person that I’ve built my whole life and future around, decided that our marriage was not enough for her. My wife/life, left me on Xmas eve, and I’ve never been more blindsided in my life. She’s been lying to me about this connection she never acted on 3 years ago, and decided she finally needed to. 2 days after she ended it. 7 years together gone. My adult life thus far, gone. I’ve been through so many emotions this past week, but I finally got to anger. And if I hadn’t, I might have been stuck in a very bad and dark place for a long time. Or not that long. But I’m starting to reflect and see that it was not me, that this has been who she was all along. The woman I fell in love with long gone. Or maybe never there. I mean nothing to her now. And I choose to make her mean nothing to me.
Shoutout to Kristin for giving you a shoutout, otherwise I would not have found you and your work. Your humor, no matter how masked, has gotten me through these past few weeks. I hope you find the peace you deserve in this rocky ocean.
I have to say, finding your writing and your Twitter account has been a real ray of light for me this year. I have constant suicidal ideation. I genuinely hate living. I really don't want to continue on, and I don't get why everyone else chooses to. I thought I was alone with those thoughts. Seeing your account and your writing (especially the "I'm not always very attached to being alive" helped me to understand what I was thinking and verbalize it to my therapist. I literally sent her your article and was like, "Yeah this is what I'm feeling, all of it." Also, being able to laugh about it has been such a blessing. Your insight and your good humor and your understanding and empathy have helped me immensely. Thank you.
The single best thing I did this year, in late March, was foster a cat. It started as an altruistic thing, yknow, shelters being closed down and all. He was marked "URGENT DUE TO BEHAVIOR", extremely skittish and difficult to handle, probably semi-feral. Not an ideal choice for a first-time cat person like me. I could barely touch him for 4 months, but he's the first mammal whose life I've ever been responsible for other than my own. What got me through was knowing that if I died, he would eat my corpse.
He's still here, so I'm still here. He sleeps on my chest now.
I set intentions each end of December for the coming year. Not resolutions. Just intentions. And my hope comes now from both my 4½-year-old son’s sense of wonder at life and my intention to get back to writing more regularly and trying to reincorporate things like meditation that I know have worked for me in the past.
While I've found better ways to cope with and avoid ideation, this year definitely created a different side of that in the form of waking up and just...wondering why I should even get out of bed, why should I keep existing. Between the lack of material support or real care from the people in charge and just being increasingly disinterested in my freelance job, it was just like this constant layer of "why". It wasn't that sort of active "I would like to die" feeling. It was a different sort of ache that often had me feeling like I was an impersonator.
Honestly, I don't think I came out of it with an answer aside from "Because", and there were plenty of days where I only made it through because I had gotten into such a set routine that I was running entirely on muscle memory.
this past year, keeping my head or hands busy actually made it possible to somewhat place the need to not live aside for a few moments. however, other major floating devices (like thinking about my family and friends afterwards) has lost much of its power and i dont know why.
none of it has been majorly influenced by the pandemic and again, i dont know why (apart from the initial anxiety). i thought it would be sucky as a thing to happen but change my perspetive to something like more grateful or appreciative of life.
Just so you know, your original “I’m not always very attached to being alive” message made a world of difference to me in 2020, simply because it put words to something I had felt for a long time. I shared it with friends and found I’m not alone, too. Thank you!!
The last few weeks have been particularly hopeless. My boyfriend of 6 years enlisted — going from having someone to see/talk to every day to just being alone has been hard. Without him I am feeling all of the big emotions that he once helped me “float” through. My future seems to be stagnant. I may have self-sabotaged so much that my health and my goals for my life are slowly falling apart. But there has to be some hope, right? People survive so much. The world is so broken and people keep breathing, keep existing, keep pushing. There has to be some way to survive. So I will find a new therapist and accept that I need medication again and try to keep going. But in the meantime, if anyone else will be crying and drinking all night, perhaps we can help each other just a little bit.
For me it started when things started shutting down and when I switched jobs. When I switched jobs they were all working from home and with that came a lot of regular “new job” anxiety. My husband was also deployed at the time so with the time difference it made things a lot more difficult. Not even a week into working from home I moved back in with my parents and the week after was when I was at my lowest. I was just so overcome with anxiety and existential dread that all I could do is sleep and wait for time to move faster. My anxiety wouldn’t let me sleep or eat and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I stumbled upon one of your articles from self about “17 Mental Health Tips and Things to Do If You Feel Cooped Up, Isolated, and All-Around Crappy”. I bookmarked this page and tried to do my best to stick to some of them. Specifically 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, and 16. I started writing down everything I was feeling and reminded myself that I was loved. I started therapy and medication to help with my anxiety and depression and it helped me so much. That along with animal crossing. I’m also planning my wedding and I specifically remember thinking “why am I planning this wedding if I don’t even want to be alive.” Ultimately I kept pushing through and along with my medication, those ideations aren’t as prevalent. Thank you for your articles and helping me survive 2020.
My suicidal ideation was really strong at the start of the pandemic, and I had an event that probably should have sent me to the hospital. I really really really doubled down on working through it with my therapist and talking more about the underlying feelings/causes and going really deep on them. She also frequently asked me very directly: "do you want to die because of x?" When she put it that way, I realized the answer was usually no. Now when I'm feeling that way, I can usually back myself out of it a little bit by trying to figure out what I'm actually feeling. I also think finally getting the right combo of meds has helped.
Wanted to let you know that your writing has been a flotation device for me! I am having a particularly bad day and came here to read your writing, to remind myself that there ARE people who share my perspective on this. It's both sad and comforting...and sometimes it just is what it is...
My floatation device was ripped out from beneath me at the end of this year. The one person that I’ve built my whole life and future around, decided that our marriage was not enough for her. My wife/life, left me on Xmas eve, and I’ve never been more blindsided in my life. She’s been lying to me about this connection she never acted on 3 years ago, and decided she finally needed to. 2 days after she ended it. 7 years together gone. My adult life thus far, gone. I’ve been through so many emotions this past week, but I finally got to anger. And if I hadn’t, I might have been stuck in a very bad and dark place for a long time. Or not that long. But I’m starting to reflect and see that it was not me, that this has been who she was all along. The woman I fell in love with long gone. Or maybe never there. I mean nothing to her now. And I choose to make her mean nothing to me.
Shoutout to Kristin for giving you a shoutout, otherwise I would not have found you and your work. Your humor, no matter how masked, has gotten me through these past few weeks. I hope you find the peace you deserve in this rocky ocean.