i feel really bad
Rant I wrote when I was suffering from pre-period mental issues (PMDD), I feel better now:
“Shitty work will make you believe that nothing even matters.
I think about new projects, they can’t be realized due to financial or technical restrictions or pure “we have always done it this way”, or they’re things no one really cares about and that we could do without, because they would be compliance work and not much else.
I take on other projects in-house to fill my time, but every time, it ends up being maybe one meeting a quarter, instead of extra work I can do every day.
My boss comes to me with new projects, they falter for reasons outside our control.
I can’t internally transfer and they won’t create new roles.
All that I do end up doing extra somehow that doesn’t fall under the above scenarios is not honored like it used to be, as leadership cancelled employee premiums.
I come in despite so much physical pain and struggle because of the weird guilting and shaming and blaming around home office… just to do mindnumbing work 10-90 min and then I’m done. I waste away.
I feel depressed. Coworkers and my boss are so nice to me and nothing bad is happening, but it’s like the building is cursed, introducing a heavy feeling on my chest whenever I am there that goes away when I leave.
It is perspective-less, hopeless. I am underworked in the things that interest me and overworked with silence, waiting, and very menial tasks that could be automated.
It exhausts me so much that it’s hard to go to the equally exhausting second job of searching for another job and applying.
It feels awful. I’m wasting my time. I’m running against internal walls, I’m told to wait, I’m told it can’t be done, I’m distracted with bullshit projects and vague promises.
Every time at work, I think about death. I think about jumping out the window, off the roof, or in front of the tram that takes me home. I think of preparing everything for my death, whether by my own hand or a sudden unplanned one. I think about life insurances and leaving my spouse enough.
Ironically, despite not being a man and having no children, it makes me feel like a Japanese salaryman who is so unhappy with work and life but does it all for his wife and kids, or then, when he dies, he has left them so much in things they didn’t know about until his death.
I wish I was dead right now. Not really, I actually wanna be alive in a better world with a better body, but since that is impossible, it feels like all that’s still left.
I don’t know if I have ever been suicidal in a way where anything would have helped that’s always suggested.
Calling a hotline? What for? It’s not like I have no one to talk to in life about it all. It’s just futile. It just worries people or triggers them or they don’t know a solution either. Especially as problems get more complex as you age. I don’t need advice on what to do. Therapy was good when I was a teen suffering under a mother, because it made me feel heard and sane, not now, when the entire world feels bad, my work is ass but finding new one is difficult and my sick body is complicating everything. You can’t talk yourself out of rent prices and into a better job, can’t talk yourself out of your spouse’s unemployment, can’t talk yourself into getting done with my education faster.
Clinics? Never understood how it’s supposed to be beneficial. Meeting other sick people, abuse by employees, listening to others’ problems on top, being unable to tackle things in your life, missing work or school, and then being released into the same environment that made you sick, and the effectiveness of the tools you learned fades after 2 weeks. Most people in and out of there aren’t willing to do what it takes, like cutting people off and move, or can’t. So what’s the point? I’d feel miserable being away from home and inform my employer why.
I feel exhausted, I feel hopeless and stuck, I just want everything to be over. I want the pain to stop. I want to stop being to tired all the time. I feel ugly, I gained some weight back, my hair sucks. I actually don’t wanna die, I wish I wasn’t even born. Literally during all I do since 3 days, I feel so sad constantly, like a huge hole in my chest. I assume it is hormonal, PMDD. I am due for it.
I want to feel better again. I can’t make myself do anything I need to do like this. I need a pause while I feel better.
I don’t wanna go to work anymore.”
Addendum from 10 days or so later:
I need people to understand that when someone is suicidal, it really usually isn’t because of this one thing that could be fixed. Yes, there are fringe cases where they die because of being found out or losing their livelihoods or so, but imo these are different and not caused by mental health struggles, but instead a solution to avoid experiencing something else and is a conscious decision.
The one I mean feels like a switch being flipped inside the head that makes you feel like you have to die now no matter what, a strong urge, a panic. A deep fear that if you don’t do it now, something unfathomably bad will happen and you will suffer tremendously if you don’t preempt it now.
It’s not rational. It’s not someone calmly taking stock of their life, falling short, and then preparing everything with clarity over a few days or weeks (though that can also happen). It feels more like a frenzy and something you can’t plan for, something that tries to convince you that you can’t even wait until the next day or execute a proper plan; it’s an urge to just take the paths open to you right now.
The times I was or am suicidal, I don’t care about anything. I know in the above text, I mention my pain and situation, and yes, hotlines can’t fix them, but outside of such a headspace, I also know that in these suicidal moments, I could be in a mansion, a millionaire, and my illnesses cured, and I’d still feel that way. It’s my brain misfiring. At those times, I am just tired of being alive no matter how that life would look like. I feel so overstimulated and sick of it all that I don’t even wanna witness a comfy and easy life any longer. There’s nothing that makes it seem bearable in my head, nothing that is worthwhile. I just want everything to stop. No more awareness, consciousness. I feel out of control when it happens.
It’s understandable when people who loved a person who killed themselves wonder what else they could have done, and regretted the lack of a message or call, or that they didn’t say this or that in their last interaction. Ultimately, it wouldn’t have changed a thing for many, I think. At least not for me. The reason for these moods or misfirings isn’t an objective lack of appreciation or love, or because someone said a wrong thing. It’s a sick brain that can’t assess or process things correctly right now.
Narratives around suicide seem to focus on those cases a lot because it’s easier to fix and explain - just be very nice to the person that feels like an unloved burden and they’ll stay! But it helps nothing with the many, many cases of people that sit there comfortably in their own warm homes, happy family, good job, stomach full, loved, financially ok …. and thinking about ending it all. And even they don’t understand why they are so goddamn unhappy.
So please never blame yourself or replay situations in your head. This is like someone randomly slipping and falling so badly that it instantly breaks their neck. Their brain just decided to do that, and you just are your brain, you can’t separate from it; it’s just like when some brains suddenly decide to go psychotic and paranoid.
I think a lot of suicides are almost some sort of freak accident that happens on a whim, which is why so many don’t see it coming and there’s no preparation, no letter, etc. and seems out of character. It probably was.