Fatal self neglect

[RAZRBAKK]

:wow:

Hope you are getting or working on getting help yourself...

Don't worry guys, I've dealt with it for well over 15 years and know when I need to speak to someone. I've got an appointment to speak with my doctor soon, unfortunately all the COVID stuff has really complicated things and slowed down the process.

[DavidBoren]

Condolences, my friend.

Depression is motherfucker. I battle with it everyday of my life. And I can attest to how easily it leads to self neglect. My teeth are sadly evidence of my struggles and failures in this regard.

There's a point where everything becomes meaningless... what difference does it make if I shower or not? It's often accompanied by a feeling of detachment or seeming invisibility. Have you ever become so numb that you feel like you are phasing out of existence?

It's real. I'm unfortunately well acquainted with the feeling of not feeling. I was in a flat spin a few short months ago... but something clicked inside, and I quit drinking and pulled myself up by the bootstraps. Whatever it is that triggers self preservation instincts has saved my life before, too.

My first deployment, I was 19 then, broke me. To the core, shattered every piece of me. Nothing made sense anymore. There was supposed to be some divine logic to life in the universe, not God or anything, but it was supposed to make sense to someone. There is no sense to life. No underlying principles of reason. No method to the madness.

My young mind couldn't accept this new reality. And I almost gave up. I put a towel in my K-pot, and cut the tip off a tracer... didn't want any collateral damage or leave too much of a mess for others to clean up. I had the muzzle in my mouth, safety off, first stage of a two-stage trigger all taken up... I was THAT close when it, something, sprang to life inside me that I didn't know existed.

Jesus, my heart is racing just typing that. I don't think about that very often anymore. Fuck.

Life doesn't make anymore sense today than it did in 2006, but I have learned to adapt to a life without meaning. I take pride in conquering the day. Every day. Every morning I wake up, it's a day that I am allowed to live, and so I will fucking live it. I will be the one to make it out of Hellview.

It doesn't get better, you just keep putting the past further behind you. Eventually you get a stonecold resolve to make it through the day simply because you were given a day to make it through. There's no outside influence to guide that. There's no purpose that can be taken away from you and send you into a downward spiral. Just you and today. That's gotten me this far, at least...

I apologize for not knowing how to properly articulate this if it all came off as incoherent rambling.

[DavidBoren]

Back on the old Brass Eagle Owners Group forums someone was brave enough to post a stream of conscious thread called Need Some Venting Time. This thread has stuck with me since reading it in ~2001. It was multiple pages, very little punctuation, and saturated with grief and anger.

It was by someone who's friend had committed suicide. He talks about beating a wrench into a metal pipe until his arm went numb, building dirt bikes, paintball, and how the mother of his friend commented that he was the absolute best friend her son could have ever had... but the author was hurt by this comment, deeply, because he and his friend hadn't spoken in a year. No fight, just life, how good of a friend was he if he didn't... blah blah blah.

It was heartbreaking to read. And extremely powerful. I don't do it justice with my summary, but I don't have the copy of it anymore to actually post. Nor is it mine to share.

Upon reading it, though, or any such account from a surviving friend or family member... suicide isn't painless. It leaves a wake of suffering behind it.

Probably too many of us have felt that suffering in our lives as we lose our friends and family to suicide. It's important to reach out. We are all in this together.

The grief associated with suicide is very similar to the pain of watching someone self destruct. Surviving friends and family of people who die of drug overdose often experience the same suffering.

Punkcat, or anyone else for that matter, if you need to talk, I will listen... don't hesitate to call me. If I don't answer, leave a message and I will call you back as soon as I get the message. 503.995.0257

IGY6;