I think its what i fear the most with my son. He’s a toddler, but life goes by fast and one day he’ll be grown with his own problems to solve. I just give him everything i can, from love to time to entertainment, and i wish i’ll do a good enough job for him to come seek refuge to me rather than with the tool to end his life.
I love him so much, just sharing because this anon shook me with this story.
I’m tired of pretending that life is OK. We all deserve better.
Aye, don’t send innocents to war, not their war, but fuck politic dumbasses. Let ppl gain some living salaries, nothing luxury, but something to live with, throw some respect if they do weirdo decision about themselves… don’t act like an assholes who know better how others should be. Don’t push anons to such stories, to no stories where they pick a shotguns and aim, anyone.
Not to worry, I have no family to lose me.
Don’t do it
We’re right here, bro.
A large part of my younger self wanted to be a paramedic. But I quickly realized I didn’t have the emotional resilience to be one.
I remember watching Nic Cage in “Bringing out the Dead” (Excellent film by the way) and that movie putting the big ol’ nope on that plan once and for all in the early 2000’s.
My uncle was a paramedic. It really messed him up.
maybe this is helpful for people that are actively suicidal but i deal with a lot of passively suicidal ideation and to me this comes across as emotionally manipulative scolding.
I get it but you are in less immediate danger and the post isn’t targeted at you then. Please get the help you need though.
Lost one of my boys a little over a year ago. Still get crippled with grief from time to time - maybe every other day now instead of multiple times a day. It gets easier, but never easy. In the process of getting a ring with some of his ashes built into them and I think that’ll be pretty special to get to bring him everywhere I go.
Not looking for condolences, just wanted to put this perspective out there in a sea of folks who seemed to have bad relationships with their parents. To those: I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.
Thank you for sharing your experience. As someone who doesn’t have kids to begin with I can’t even begin to imagine
Sending love your way <3
As an old and retired paramedic myself, there are definitely parts of me, as a human being, that will never grow back. And I worked in a rural area where you work on neighbors, family, and friends mostly. It was never easy to explain to the family that might be present that not me or god could fix what was wrong. I also did a few suicides over the years. Never easy and they leave a mark that won’t grow back by morning.
The worst thing about any of it, was meeting a family member in a cafe or store in our small town. And they would invariably come up to me and give me a hug and tell me how grateful they were that I was there for them. Despite the fact I couldn’t do shit for the dead person beyond calling dispatch and telling them to send law enforcement to come and do their paperwork and secure the scene until the funeral home got there to haul the body away.
I think often just being there makes a big difference, even if there’s nothing that can be done.
I’m sorry, that sounds so hard. Handling logistics in a traumatic situation is such a hugely important task. Definitely don’t sell yourself short. Even is you didn’t do anything you’re “holding space”
So do it after Dad dies is what I’m reading.
Dad, Mom, sibs, close friends, person who’s nice to you at the bus stop, and of course the person you hate most in the world
Mom is already dead so that’s one name off the list.
Be careful keeping a list with names ticked off or crossed out, that may raise suspicion.
Especially when you only cross them off after they’re dead.
A similar experience I had was when I saw my mom cry and pay respects to my grandpa for the last time as he was sent to be cremated.
I respected my grandfather but as we lived half way across the world, I wasn’t emotionally attached to him and didn’t feel very sad. But seeing my mom, usually a very silly lady and a very strong, loving grandma herself, turn into a daughter saying goodbye to her dad in tears for that split second broke my heart.
My dad was a drunk and made sure I learned every racist term in the book before I was 12. I’m sure he’d be devastated if I managed to kill myself, without ever realizing how much he contributed to the desire in the first place.
My life has only gotten better since he died. Rest in piss old man, I’m glad you’re dead.
Edits: also, single moms rule — I’d fight a T-Rex for my mom. I’d lose, but god damnit I’d try.
I’d be willing to help you train to fight the T-Rex. You don’t have to lose.
My parents are crazy too but they’re drug free, which has always confused me. The problem is their personality, not an addiction. But I have thought about how they’d react - my mom would play the victim and my dad would play pickleball/tennis. That’s just what they’ve always done. I look forward to the day they die. When all of my grandparents died my parents became slightly more tolerable. I imagine my baseline will also rise….
Does everyone in this comment section have a horrible relationship with their father??
What the hell, am I the only one here NOT hating my parents??
I think it’s survivorship bias. People with fubctional relationships with the parents (my self included) probably don’t feel much need to weigh in.
People’s families are complicated, and sometimes they need to vent. I (generally) don’t see a problem with giving them space to do so.
This is the exact reason I’m choosing to just scroll past some of these comments that are missing the bigger picture.
My own relationship with my family is incredibly complicated. But it’s not really about the family. It’s about the fact that somebody will miss you. But when you’re that deep into depression, it’s really hard to see.
I like my parents well enough
People rarely feel the need to talk about how good their relationship with their dad is. Well except for one friend of mine, but to be fair to her her dad sounds exceptionally good.
But yeah, my father and I haven’t been on speaking terms in a decade.
Not me. Had a great dad who disappeared after my conception
Mine was not horrible, just exasperating. I warned him about every single thing that caused him issues, but he refused to listen, and that killed him.
Sometimes I wonder how many suicides are invisible, people start to skip medicines, they dont care about health etc
that isn’t suicide. suicide is the active act of killing yourself.
dying from neglect, or self-neglect isn’t suicide.
though both, are ‘deaths of despair’. in the sense they are entirely preventable and due to a lack of emotional/social connections.
actually that’s called “passive suicidal ideation” and is in fact exactly what it sounds like:
a kind of “if this happens to kill me, oh well, at least it’s over.” kind of mindset and it is an earlier stage in the process of suicide.
quick copy paste from the wiki:
TIL. I get this when I’m off my meds. Never knew there was a name for it.
My close person died in very young age. Cancer. That person knew that was something going on because of trumor, but tried to postpone doctors visits as long as possible. When was diagnosed, it was in last stage.
I feel like there’s no human relationship that doesn’t experience strain and parental ones can be tough.
Even though my parents are wonderful people we still have our stresses, mistakes, a few scars, and our differences. They will never know I’m bisexual, they will never know I’ve done weed let alone hard(er) drugs, they don’t share my sense of humor - so we’re not “friends” - but we do love each other.
my folks my entire life thought I was gay. even though I had girlfriends my entire adult life… they just had such a stupidly narrow definition of straightness that things like reading books and liking school made them ‘suspicious’. my siblings, friends, and even gay friends, my entire life never ever once accused me of being gay or anything other than perfectly straight.
and i still meet so called ‘progressive’, adult women, who think this way to this day… esp because i cook and clean. because in their mind, no ‘really straight’ man can do these things… actually some of did they ‘well if you aren’t gay, you must be bi’.
some folks are just so weirdly obsessed with gender stereotypes in their head, and just totally reject anyone who doesn’t conform to them.
Have experienced similar. People love to speculate on this shit, for some reason. Ain’t they own sex lives interesting enough?!
They are afraid of how it would ‘reflect’ on them. That’s why they are so paranoid about it.
They are afraid of the shame and judgment of other people knowing their child is a sexual deviant.
I dunno, it don’t think most folks are different. I have hung out with plenty of self-identified queer/sexual open people… who also viciously judge other people for what they perceive as non-conformity to their own sexual expectations. Like, queer couples who live in fear their child will be ‘a straight’ or see being ‘cis’ as a negative thing. Folks just want you to be what they want you to be, and they are mad when you are not.
People generally just feel the need to police other’s sexual behaviors and gender identity, and a lot of people have hypocritical double standards around it.
yes.
people who don’t hate their parents are rare.
even people who had wonderful parents… i know tons of them… hate their parents for not doing more for them.
a lot of children are infinitely resentful of their parents for not giving them more than they could. like, my favorite example is I dated a lady once who was enraged her parents only gave her $50,000 as a graduate gift, and spent every other date going on about how terrible and awful her parents were to her despite them giving her an objectively awesome life. She was an only child. Met sooo many people like that, and they are so weirdly arrogant, they would lecture me on how my parents being poor and abusive was ‘more privileged’ than them…
and it’s also true, many of us had really bad parents. i think my parents tried they best, but their best was objectively shitty, and it was abusive. because well, all they knew was abuse themselves, they didn’t know any better or how to break the cycle of abuse. so i had to do that. my own siblings actually, actively admit my parents were objectively shittier to me than they were to them… and they said they never really could figure out why my parents hated me so much, even though i was a really good kid who never did anything bad or wrong. for whatever reason, esp my dad, just hated me for not being what they wanted me to be, and even though I got into Harvard, they looked down on me for it. even at my college graduation they were not proud, they were resentful. what my dad wanted was for me to be a state uni football player douche bro, and what i was was a massive nerdy sensitive theater kid.
oh, and my graduation gift? Was a $20 handshake, and a bill for my healthcare costs that was like $2,000, and my first student loan payment, which was $300. lol
I think in the bubbles that we are in, including Lemmy, people with bad parents are overrepresented. Simply because of sexual minorities, progressive or radical ideas, or just plain old not conforming to the norm in terms of behaviour and character.
Plenty of people never had an issue with their parents, but also, plenty of people never had to tell their parents that they are homosexual, think their political beliefs are stupid, and have ADHD, for instance.
Plus, I would say that lonely people tend to flock together, likewise, people with no strong family ties probably end up using the internet more.
i dont know, i know plenty of ‘normal’ people who are all over the internet. True though, they don’t really use reddit/lemmy sites, they use instragram, facebook, twitter. and IME their usage is actually way heavier than my own. but I’m only on here to kill time between tasks at work.
i think people here echo chamber themselves though a lot into beliefs that are not necessarily true. they don’t kind of stand back and question their emotions towards their folks (or anyone else at all, really), or see their parents as flawed/limited people who perhaps, were just making mistakes or could never really be the parents they wished they were. my own parents were totally incapable of being the parents I needed as a child, and like, can i really be perpetually angry about that? i simple vastly exceeded them in every capacity, and sadly they resented that, rather than were proud of it. but it’s who they were, they could be any different, and i’m kind of an asshole for wishing they were.
but then again, very few people ever do that. i def have met people who are grown 30 something adults, who idolized their folks and are still in a state of emotional and financial dependency on them… which you might say the danger of having ‘too good parents’. and form where i stand it’s just… i can’t seriously imagine a parent financially or emotionally supporting me… since mine basically didn’t.
That is a bit of a hen-egg question, isnt it? Do people in certain circles see their parents negatively because the circles echo such thoughts, or because such circles attract people like that? I have no definite answer, tbh.
Maybe it is because those circles make it easier to speak about such things?
Maybe because someone who experienced hardships themselves might turn to more “left” ideas to avoid this happening to others?
I personally am very grateful to my parents, they sacrificed a lot of potential happiness for their children. And yes, they are flawed human beings in a flawed world, who make mistakes, have some issues of themselves and so on. But psychology is messy, fuzzy, and hard to wrap in nice logical statements.
it’s easy to talk about such things in therapy, but a good therapist isn’t going to bias-confirm you, or engage you in escalation/exaggeration. online communities do that, inevitably.
your therapist also isn’t going to flip out at you and call you a ungrateful piece of shit when you complain about your parents. people online and irl will definitely do that.
there is a cultural default where you are not supposed to be critical or resentful towards your parents for sure, which I think forces almost all of us to internalize this stuff. personally i’ve never had a partner who i could talk to about my parental issues without serious blowback and judgement for what a shitty person i was for daring to say such things about my folks… but my siblings? yeah they are more than happy to be critical about my parents esp def to how difficult they were about elder care, which made us all angry and frustrated with them. and i had to keep point out to my siblings… my parents were like this their entire lives… they weren’t magically like more difficult as they got older, they had always been inflexible, stubborn, and refused to be proactive… so we basically had to do all that for them as they aged.
Obviously, people online and even good irl friends cannot replace professional therapy.
I’ve seen both, the “social default” of having a somewhat ok relationship with one’s parents, and people in certain circles who tend to assume that there must be at least some difficulties.
true, some folks relationships, parental or otherwise, are just… boring and staid and uneventful and they are fine with that. some folks want something deeper, or more dramatic.
but that’s also true of their own lives. I’ve def met people whose lives seem unfathomably boring to me, but I’m sure they were happy just not in any way that i would conceive of happiness, personally. But such folks often think my life is miserable for the same reason, because what I like is boring to them.
On average a person will rather share negative things than positive things.
No one consents to being born. Love my parents, even if they are MAGA morons. Even if they kicked me out of their house when they could. Even if they give me massive shit for how I live my life almost every time I see them.
Despite all that, I can see their intentions. My mom wanted a baby to love. My dad wanted me to be a wage slave master and not a wage slave.
While my relationship with father is bittersweet, I would by no means term it horrible. The man taught me most of the things I know when banks were crushing him.
I saw my dad lose his best friend to suicide in my teens. I’ve struggled with suicidal ideation since before even that. I’m not close to my dad, I have lots of issues with the man, but I can never put him through that again, no matter what.
I’ve lost several people to suicide. The hardest was a good friend I’d known for years and who had been my roommate one summer.
That one was 25 years ago and it still hurts.
For years I lived right by the sea. I had plenty of alcohol and medications. the prevailing currents would’ve swept my body across the border into a hostile country, where no one who found it would’ve cared. I don’t live to spare anyone else’s feelings, not least those who would mourn me as dead for living the life I want to live. I live because I deserve it, I deserve my family’s respect and care while we’re both here, and I don’t need anyone else’s shame.
To live on solely for obligation and guilt isn’t living at all, and anyone who wishes that on someone else just so they can remain a half-dead trophy they can congratulate themselves for “saving” can eat shit. If you’re reading this and you need to hear something, keep going. Keep trying. We live in an insane world; sometimes you have to try the same thing over and over so you can get different results. Live another day and see what happens. Not for anyone else, but because it’s a shame to miss out on this wild a ride.
This post honestly just pisses me off. Your life is worth living. Not your parents’ child’s life. Yours.
I survived suicide. As a side effect, the action showed me who my real friends were. People started to finally pay the fuck attention to me and my struggles. Turns out I had a rare physical disease that was making it very difficult to participate in society not just as dude, but as a whole. As many have said, don’t do it, I still have stomach issues from the wombo combo of meds I took to do the deed. I was lucky. If you ever feel like no one loves ya or that your are nothing. Just poof for a week to somewhere they can’t reach you and where you are safe. Don’t hurt yourself. Check to see how many reach out to you. If the number is low or zero, instead of saying: “see, no one loves me.” Go “damn, these fucks don’t give a damn about me, let’s find someone who will!”
It’s insane, but: you don’t die, you learn who loves you, and you have your health.
Go forth and fight the demons. As long as you are fighting them others will assit.
That is certainly some experience, and a good life lesson. I just want to remark, if my best friends disappeared for a week, I would assume they just wanted to disappear for a week, and had their reasons to not tell me. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about them.
you don’t get to decide that for other people. they do.
we have no control over other people, especially not their inner emotional lives.
So? That’s their problem. There are people who’d dance on my grave if I died tomorrow, too, and what they think has just as little bearing on my decision to keep living. Categorically irrelevant. You can’t show someone the beauty and joy of living by dragging them through shame. Worse still, pegging your self-worth to others’ suffering creates an implicit threshold, a thought stuck in the back of your mind: “What if the suffering I cause now is more than the momentary pain I’d cause by stopping?”
It feels good to tell people things like this. It’s one of the most awful things to hear.
I think they may have meant that you don’t get to decide on how other victims of depression feel about suicide. Nobody else shares your life, experiences, and values so iyou shouldn’t assert what they should do with their lives.
If that’s the case they were trying to make, then they didn’t do the best job explaining themselves. Or I could have completely misunderstood their comment
so if it’s their problem why are you resenting them for not sharing in your views? why do you feel compelled to pass judgement on them for not sharing your philosophy and feelings on life?
I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand. Who are “they,” and what is “that” in your initial reply?
I think this is less about guilting the victim and more about reminding them that people care about them. The assumption is that those who take their own lives feel like no one cares for/loves them.
Unfortunately, this take often reads like conservative pundits that only “care” about fetuses until they’re born, at which point they’re considered a drain on society.
A lot of the quotes people repeat when trying to help someone ends up backfiring. You can’t just repeat plattitudes. People suffering from mental illness aren’t stupid or deaf, they’ve already heard the lines before. Mimicry doesn’t help.
The only generalized thing I can recommend people to say when trying to help someone with mental issues is to just ask: “What do you need?”. If they need space, give it. If they need to talk, listen. If they need something else, be honest about whether that’s in your ability to help with.
Another important thing to note is to not view them as something that needs to be fixed. And you need to be very honest with yourself about that. Most people will try to “help” because it makes them feel better, not the person they’re trying to help.
there is a difference between someone caring for me as a feeling, and doing it as an activity.
like yes, my parents cared about me, emotionally. but their actions, were hardly ever caring.
and people don’t seem to understand the difference. i have had the same thing in romantic relationships. someone saying they care about you is very different than them actually doing this that show that they care, and sometimes, their feelings of care, lead them to engage in activities that are abusive and make the other person feel like absolute shit about themselves and the relationship.
have you ever been in a relationship with someone who claims to love you, and just systematically does things that show you they don’t love you, or does those things under the guises of love, but is actively harming you?
because that’s what physical/emotional abusers do. they see their abuse of you as them loving/caring for you. or ‘just trying to help’.
i think my favorite example was LTR i was in once, where i had a girlfriend who showed she cared about my studying for cert exames, by buying me pencils… cute. but then she systematically got enraged that i was spending so much time studying and not spending it with her, and that she engaged in active sabotage of me emotionally so that i’d fail the exams. but she ‘was loving and supportive’ by buying me… pencils… least to say i was never able to articulate the problem to her of her actions. She basically just told me I was a awful jerk for ‘neglecting her’ by needing a couple of nights off to study… she was co-dependent and saw those 5-6 hours of me investing in my (and our) future… as ‘theft’ from her need to be with me everyday. i only broke up with her because shortly thereafter she physically assaulted me, again under the guise of ‘correcting’ my ‘abuse’ of her, which she alleged was because I was not ‘doing enough’ to impress her parents…
everyone cares about when you’re dead
because at that point you are nothing but a memory and you can’t ever upset or burden or annoy them. they can just idealize you.
Don’t tempt me. I’d relish a chance to hurt him like that. Not worth to die for it though.
