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I'm Tired and Don't Want To Go On
Mental Health | Last Active: Mar 11 3:59pm | Replies (89)Comment receiving replies
karim1950, I agree that most of life is suffering. I also know that for me if I have a purpose in my life the suffering doesn't seem so bad. I expected to be with my wife, helping my children through college at this stage of my life. My illness and/or the treatments for that illness took that away from me. At my worst I am, for all the reasons you've state, actively suicidal. I've spent a lot of time there lately. I don't know if it is mental illness or all the psych meds I've taken, but sometimes the desire to take my own life is urgent.
Today, I'm a little better. I think I may still be able to make a difference in my ex-wive's and children's lives. On really good days I'm foolish enough to think I might be able to make difference in the care and treatment of mental health patients. And when I am really dreaming, I think I can resume my place as a contributing citizen.
For me being relevant is very important. I know life is pointless. Given that reality all that matters to me is alleviating suffering wherever I can. We who have suffered with mental illness and the medieval attempts at healing us, know what it is to suffer. I find that this suffering has allowed me to care about people in a way I never did before.
Maybe if I can do something with this knowledge I can make some sense of the last fifteen years of my life.
I wish you peace and good health, for as long as you want it.
Replies to "karim1950, I agree that most of life is suffering. I also know that for me if..."
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I find I'm inspired by your wording:
"I find that this suffering has allowed me to care about people in a way I never did before.
Maybe if I can do something with this knowledge..."
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Don't know if you have any insights on this, but I do find solace in thoughts like yours above, and another one I just saw in a post on another topic (actually, it was a Comment posted to Anne Lamott's 2/14/2024 Washington Post Opinion piece on 'Powerlessness as a Superpower of Growing Old', something like that) - where the Commenter said/quoted Ram Dass (I have to look up that writer?/philosopher?) -
[It helps to remember...] "We're all just walking along on our journey home..." Something like that.
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My Q / request for help on this is:
These warming thoughts about our shared struggles, humanity even, are indeed heartwarming, but then I find in the actual real world that people are not recognizably open to admitting they are on the same journey.
So, the hope of sharing that central warmth and hopefulness is diminished, even bashed, by the anger, misery, isolation of so many folks you see everywhere.
Not to say that people are visibly angry (though that increasingly, and tangibly seems evident); but that we are all prone to not be vulnerable.
So, for now, the most I can do, without interrupting someone's space, is to offer a genuine smile, and eye contact, if possible. In my current location, that has been doable, and often is reciprocated, (even if one or the other is wearing a mask these days!).
But, again, I don't know that there's an answer, but how can we genuinely show someone we can SEE them, without interrupting their daily 'doings'? So far, again, a genuine smile, with the possibility of matched eye contact, and there we are.
I'm reminded of the few people along my journey through life, in many many geographies, careers, capacities, that were (healthfully) halting in their demeanor - seeming calming, genuine, present. Have you met folks like that?
It didn't mean one had to engage further, but it stuck with me so much - I think of these folks as a reminder that there are others out there, journeying along, and it can make me feel just a little less humanistically isolated. But, to be honest, if I think about it much more than that, I will recall how few are those folks that I've encountered.
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Anyone else?
I wonder @dfb whether you have experienced this?
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Kind of leaving on an open-ended note, but sincerely interested in whether and/or how others may have felt or known a genuinely warm connection from just a chance and brief encounter.
And, I suppose, if we were to go further on this - where or how do we go about finding more of those who engender this warmth? It can be quite fleeting, but - one more time - encouraging in its shared humanity.