[tw25532050]

It might help folks that can be helped by talking to someone. For someone like me, it would only make me feel bad, like I'm burdening someone else with the knowledge that I'm going to end my life; I know they won't be able to "talk me out of it".

I have no friends, no family, nor any coworkers since July. No one will notice me being dead then any more than they notice me being absent now. When the money runs out, I have the nitrogen tank ready to go.

Life isn't for everyone.

[smeej]

For some of us, it's not about changing your mind. You're right--life isn't for everyone. Death comes for everyone, one way or another, at some point. Normally we don't pick when, but maybe you're right and this is how it comes for you. That's not up to me.

If you don't want to go through it alone, though, you don't have to. We could look that mystery in its face together. See what's there. I'm not expecting to go through it myself yet, but I'd stand there with you while you do.

I'm not any kind of counselor. I'm a longtime lurker who just made an account to say your confrontation with and even path through your own death isn't a burden for everyone. If you want to talk with someone about it, that option is available to you.

[tw25532050]

I appreciate the offer. For me there's no great mystery; I die every night, and wake up every morning with that dead guy's memories. Life takes effort, and keeping that cycle going just hasn't been worth the effort for a long time. I made the decision months ago.

I think there are a lot of people who keep putting in the effort only to avoid imposing suffering on their loved ones and others. So, in a way I'm lucky in my loneliness: I'm free to be selfish.

[4ce0b361]

I admire your composture in talking about your loneliness and your apparent reluctance in burdening other people with your problems. While agreeing with some of the other posters on the generic upside of being alive and serving others, I would also like to tell you that God himself, in the person of Christ, has chosen to share in our suffering, and lead us to hope, as a community of believers. PM me if you (or anyone else, for that matter) want.

[ip26]

You need some kind of lonely together COVID pod. Other people in the same circumstances. As long as your circle of contact is a closed loop, the exposure is not a big deal (same as with a family quarantined together).

You might not have a lot of shared interests or whatever, but there are countless others suffering exactly like you- in this, you are not alone. People feel a little better being lonely together. And you know, two key ingredients to friendship are simply shared hardship & routine interaction.

P.S. Ever consider volunteering with Big Brothers Big Sisters?

[throwawengo]

I feel like I might have ended up in your position if I hadn't been inoculated against it early.

I'd like to tell you how even objectively bad circumstances do not demand subjective suffering, that there exist treatments and substances that can genuinely help, to try to point you in the direction of Standard Official Resources, and that the future can be better and so on, but I also know that all of that can sound empty or even annoying.

So instead, I'm going to try something that might be unwise. I've only seen it work once.

You're not alone, in the worst possible sense of the phrase. Extreme suffering is common and nearly ignored. Through what can only be reasonably termed negligence, more people die each year to trivially preventable causes than at the peak of the holocaust. Unanswered prayers and extinguished hopes are the sum of experience for a number of people so large that we can't have a proportional emotional response to it.

You have a blessedly uncommon insight in this. Even if your experience isn't the same as all the others, you have an understanding that reality has no safety net.

So now we come to the part that I've always hesitated suggesting to anyone else:

Please help. Please take upon yourself the completely ridiculous and unreasonable burden of doing what is within your physical power, even when it means exposing yourself to even more suffering indefinitely, even when doing anything is already asking too much. It's not a matter of obligation or moral expectation, there's just the brute fact that people constantly suffer and die for no reason, and they could be saved. Just actions and consequences.

I won't tell you that this will help you. It may. I am alive right now. Therapists might suggest 'crying yourself to sleep for a year' and 'having recurring dreams composed solely of uncontrollable sobbing' are not an ideal recovery from severe depression, but if all else fails, turning yourself into a robot that tries to guide others away from the sharper edges is still better than the alternative.

Please stick around and help, because no one else will replace you.

[justathrowa]

>Please stick around and help, because no one else will replace you.

That's a touch arrogant to say, isn't it? 7.5 billion people, I'd imagine that most are not only replaceable, but trivially so.