Personal thoughts

As someone that has long struggled with those kinds of thoughts, it's amazing to look back and realize how hard it was to wriggle free from the tendrils of depression. It's like trying to go through life while chained to heavy stones, except no one around you can see them.

But I guess in many ways, people are invariably prisoners of their own minds. Whether it's addiction, codependency, mental illness, or religion and politics, it's easy for one to lose themselves to a certain frame of mind.

It always reminds me of the infamous Nietzsche quote: "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you". People who focus their lives so intently around one thing inevitably become captured and ruled by it. Marcus Aurelius touched on this too when he said "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts"

While I can't blame people who look to death as an escape, it can become a honey pot of sorts. It promises people an end to their pain and misery while also robbing them of any opportunity to ever be happy again. It gives them incentive to stop trying, to quit looking for solutions, to avoid working on themselves.

Surrendering to the idea that there is no hope, no joy, no love to ever be found, is less a statement grounded in reality and more of a complicated coping mechanism. It takes the pressure and stress off of ourselves to change, off of the uncertainty surrounding our futures, off of the time and effort needed to make connections or pursue interests which keep us going. It's a fantasy, however morbid it may be, that removes us from toil and tedium of daily life.

Looking back, I'm happy that I didn't follow through on my intentions. While life isn't all sunshine and puppy dogs, I get to now reap the rewards of my efforts that make living worthwhile. I hope anybody that finds themselves in the grasp of deep despair can read this and gain some insight needed to keep trying to free themselves and take ownership of their minds.

I saw a video on youtube a couple years ago where a couple of joggers witnessed a man drive off the end of a fishing pier. It was at sunrise and as the car went over the pier, birds flew over. It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. It still upsets me. The pier was a favorite spot of ours when we went to the beach. I hope he is at peace now.

I agree, it is desperately sad for those people and also for everyone who is left behind and who loved them and cared for them. But perhaps we ought not to be always looking for someone to blame. Our life, this life is ours to do what we want with it...we have free will. Perhaps we ought to spend a little more time checking up on each other and making sure it happens less in the future.

during my medical career, i cared for too many poor souls who attempted and or succeeded in suicide. some did it in a moment of despair and regretted their action many of them ended up taking a lethal dose of an irreversible poison. there were not always signs that the person was so disturbed, and the action was one of an impulsive behavior. I cried with their families.

It is sad but another part of me feels that at least now they're at peace.

I had people fake “attempts” and possibly “deaths” just to troll, hurt & gaslight me 😢
I feel sad for people genuinely struggling with thoughts like this - I’m in a bad place myself and I struggle a lot

I couldn’t ever imagine a just God punishing someone further who had already been in such despair. But people believe it.

I remember after 9/11 hearing "good Catholics" condemn the jumpers.

You believe they go to hell?