Obligatory "don't do it, god damn it" message here
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"Never commit suicide, everything gonna C alright" - Crip Mac, keeping it fifty-fifth street

Had to text 988 last year
First time in a long time, like three decades, and I'm still processing what led to it and what's happened since
Overall the actual experience with 988 was pretty damn good, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is experiencing the completely rational and reasonable question and would like help reaching the completely rational and reasonable answer of "don't fucking do it."

I do find myself coming back to the krishnamurti-attributed truism just about every day, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Most of my exacerbating factors these days are macro, not micro, but it still has me feeling like I'm bubbling over the edge of 'sanity.'

guess it's just me then

What’s a 988?

suicide hotline

Suppose I could have googled it.
Don’t do that. You can just stop playing the game without actually quitting.

"don't do that" is, genuinely, pretty good advice
i have no plan, desire, or intention to do so

all reasonable conscious creatures consider it at times, it's a normal thought to have. working in hospice i guide people through and out of those thoughts at the end of life with regularity. i am personally not in favor of choosing maid because i know too much about the dying process, but i believe the choice must be available and safe.

life is a rollercoaster of rollercoasters right now, and im struggling with the feeling that every day represents the best it will be for the foreseeable future, and i am very worried for the future of our children and children's children.

forced artificial scarcity in an age of material overabundance is probably the worst way to prepare a society for an age of genuine scarcity

anyone else feeling exceptionally lonely these days
or is it just me
...
my therapist says using humor to cope can be helpful but runs the risk of minimizing and internalizing cognitive distortions, which i didn't think was very funny
...
i don't want to increase my sertraline, and im having difficulty finding time for other restorative routines; critiques of the capitalist narcissism of the cult of self-care aside, what are y'all doing to cultivate resilience?

trying to work out regularly, consuming to distract, creating to expand internalized emotion (altho i'm barely doiing this nowadays)
take that walk while listening to new music when it's warm

I'm doing pretty poorly lately. My wife found me in a heap on the floor in Feb. The past few weeks have been a roller coaster that seems to peak at "pretty bad" and then dives downward from there.

My struggles go back a long way. I thought I'd hit rock bottom several times over the years, but it hit absolute rock bottom back about five years ago and they put me in the hospital for a while.

Without going into detail, basically my daughter found me and saved me from leaving this earth. I was put in a local hospital and then medevac'd to Bethesda. Stayed inpatient for a while in the mental health ward, then they put me in an apartment on the hospital campus there for several months of closely monitored outpatient treatment before letting me go home. I was physically shaking for about a year after that.

It's one of those things where I thought I was "over it" maybe 2-years after that. Now I'm at a place where I don't think there is an "over it" and it's just going to take constant maintenance. Somehow.

what are y'all doing to cultivate resilience? said:

Man, I don't know. I wish I did.

Hi my people! I too have struggled pretty hard lately. I worry for my adult children and my grandkids. I'm worried for their futures. I'm concerned with husband and I aging and leaving them.

I'm not scared to die for myself. And mostly have passive suicidal thoughts like I wouldn't be sad (obvi) if I woke up dead. We are exploring retirement and that sets my anxiety off the charts.

I pray
I use grounding thoughts
Distracting myself by tv, comedy shows only depending how I'm feeling. I avoid the news as much as possible lol.

severe exercise routine and eating about 200% now healthily has helped me a lot
but i still get them morbs and doomies

really sorry to read all that kontaz
but glad you're here to share it

and coco <3<3

Tanks butter!

Like a lot of others, COVID fucked me up. It was frustrating to hear so many people be so flippantly casual and treat it like a mandatory vacation while I had to walk into ground zero every day. I started seeing a therapist a little over a year ago. It's definitely helped put some things in perspective. I'm almost to the point where I believe the advice I give to other people. As for coping, I was throwing myself into work way too hard as a distraction. Getting a new job/promotion made it even easier to do since I could just say "I'm learning the ropes" or "I'm trying to make a good first impression" but it was all just a way to avoid things. I recently reconnected with my college fraternity chapter and that's been refreshing.