An update on my status

A brief update, somewhat clinical, somewhat snarky at the end.

The upside and downside of telling people that you’re feeling suicidal is the same:  Everyone reaches out to you. 

The upside is tremendous.  I really had no idea so many people – people I didn’t expect to give a damn – reached out to me via text, e-mail, Facebook, and more.  It sounds like some kind of bullshit humblebrag, but it’s not.

The downside is that I kind of have to be a bit more public about how I’m feeling in the days after saying something like that.  And honestly, I don’t want to.

I should, mind you.  I know that.  But I don’t want to.

I write about my experiences and my feelings, yes.  But not because it’s about me.  The point post about feeling suicidal wasn’t so much about me, as about how hard it is to talk about – with an exhortation to pay attention to others who may not be as able to speak about it as I was.  Even my holiday wish – which was a hope for a specific person – I tried to write in a way that it was useful for lots of people.  (And thank you for the feedback that it was.)

But now people want to know about me.  I’m doing my best here to make it only about me, so if there’s stuff that seems left out or only alluded to… yeah, you’re right.

So.

I wake up in the morning, and for once in my life I haven’t been having horrible dreams.  I normally have surreal, often horrifying dreams.

Not now.

They’ve been great dreams.  Everything is okay again.  It’s like it was just a month ago again.  I’m happy in those dreams.

And I wake up.  For a little while, I can manage to pretend. 

Then something happens.

I see something that reminds me, and the facade crashes down and I have to take a few minutes by myself.  I still stand on the edge of the pit on a fairly regular basis.  I still don’t know – for sure – how I’m going to make it.  (No drama, just reporting.)

But so far, I have.  I continue to.  I find a thing to do.  A thing I have to be guilty about if I leave undone.  Sometimes I scroll back through the messages you all sent me, even if I was only able to answer nothing more than “thank you” at the time.

And eventually I can go on a little bit longer. 

Rinse, and repeat.

I’ve made plans to be around friends this weekend so I’m not by myself.  I’m going back to work on Monday, because being alone with my thoughts would be far far worse.

I distract myself with imgur and funny cat pics.  I try to forget the story I just sold is all about the dreams I just lost.

I remember the friends I knew I had – and the ones who have come forward whom I really didn’t expect to care at all.

Thank you.

PS:  There’s one person I’d just met as this all went down.  They seemed cool enough.  It was a casual brief acquaintance – just long enough to exchange blog addresses – so when they said they’d rather not deal with someone in my situation right now, I said I understood.  I even commented to another person that they seemed nice, and maybe later on they and I could be friendly.

And then they wrote a shitty poem where they exhorted me to just kill myself already.

I haven’t put a name or gender or blog link.  Because I wouldn’t want anyone to feel like that.  Not even someone who knew where I was emotionally and then did that.

That and I’ve already deleted it all, and I’m not going to look it up again.  I may not wish that kind of pain on them, but I’m certainly not going to associate with someone who would wish that on another.