Personal: The Friendship Myth, A Cynical Rant

No one gave me a guide on how to realize when people just weren't worth it and I needed to let them go. I was always taught to shut my mouth and suffer in silence, treat them the way I wanted to be treated even if they didn't follow that same rule. I was always taught to suck it up and deal with my problems on my own, but always listen to others and try to help. These double standards were ingrained in my brain, etched into the very core of my being.

Recently, I've been learning to undo this damage (yes, damage) and start taking care of myself, my emotional needs. Apparently, for clinically depressed suicide risks, it's bad to surround yourself with negative people. Common sense should've told me this, but part of me is still stuck on that "help people, keep to yourself, treat them how you want to be treated" stuff.

Tangent: You know, in life this isn't a practical school of thought. We're taught the golden rule when we're young and we're pretty much supposed to let it rule our life. Even several religions say to treat your enemies with kindness and not retaliate. Where's that good, Old Testament eye-for-an-eye philosophy? I'm here to tell you what I'm just now learning: YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE SHIT FROM ANYONE. If they're negative all the time, overly sensitive to the point where you're afraid to say anything, if they make mountains out of molehills and take things out of context, if they twist your words, are constantly passive aggressive and then deny it, are insensitive but accuse you of not caring when all you do is care, if they make your shared hobbies feel like obligations and chores, if they act spoiled and throw tantrums when they don't get their way, and/or are basically soul-sucking hypocrites... Ditch them. Did that really need to be said? When it's put like that, it's so clear to see, yet we can never see it when it's actually happening. But here it is again: YOU DESERVE A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT. YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY. YOU DESERVE TO HAVE FRIENDS THAT THINK ABOUT MORE THAN JUST THEMSELVES. YOU DON'T NEED THE DRAMA. We can't pick our family, but we can sure as hell pick our friends. Why should we settle? Why should we suffer?

Back on topic... I've been at risk of suicide for a while. The last attempt was Christmas which, oddly enough, had nothing to do with the holiday. That was just how the timing worked. My friends know this. One in particular doesn't seem to give a shit about me, or anyone but herself for that matter. She makes everything about her and she always accuses others of the same things she's guilty of doing - whether or not the accusations against us are true.

Example. We share a hobby. I'm trying not to spend too much time around her because she's negative and that puts me in a bad place. I have legitimate medical instructions in writing to distance myself from negative people and situations (among other things) to help lessen my depression and lower my risk of suicide (as well as lower my stress levels because they are quite literally off the charts - seriously, there were charts). Again, she knows this. Still, she pesters me to take part in this hobby - though it is dull for me now, stressful, she's too emotionally invested in it, and it puts me in a bad place. I tell her this, that I don't want to and I'm not interested. Maybe some other time. But then she gets passive aggressive. She says things like "Lol I should just go fucking die. Cheers." No, I mean it. Those were her exact words today, all because I just asked for a little understanding and didn't want to play some dumb ass game that hasn't held my interest for about a year now.

After saying that I'll be more than happy to just chat with her because she says she's been feeling lonely and isolated, then still receiving passive aggressive comments...

Me: Look, I just don't like [it] anymore. I'll get to it when I get to it. It would just be nice if you could understand that.
Other Friend: It's not about [that specific game] for her. She just wants to [play] with you. It doesn't matter which [game].
Me: (Feeling like they just don't get it and like they're going to start dragging me into negativity and gang up on me...) I'm gonna go.
Other Friend: Oki. (With heart emoticons.)
Her: Lol I should just go fucking die. Cheers.

I mean, who the hell does that!? After knowing I'm struggling daily with not offing myself, and knowing that it's just me not wanting to play this game because she's bored and lonely (and she pesters me about it every time I'm online for any decent length of time), she get's like that. Then they proceed to discuss behind my back ways in which she and I were wrong. Normally, I'd encourage this - gain perspective from an outside party. I do it. But HOW WAS I WRONG HERE? Seriously, tell me if you see it.

You see, friendship is a myth. Everyone says it's full of love and understanding, acceptance and building each other up, support... But it's not. People lie. People manipulate. People are self-centered and take advantage of you if given the opportunity. They don't care what you're going through if it doesn't effect them directly.

I'm sure some of you are saying: "That's not true! My friends care about me! I care about them!" Yes, well just wait. If you genuinely care, then it's more than likely they don't. For every person who genuinely gives a shit about people, often at the expense of their own happiness and well-being, there are three people pretending to feel the same and are ready to turn on their friends at a moment's notice.

Am I bitter? Yes. Cynical? Obviously. But am I wrong?

No.

Suicide Attempts: The First Step is Admitting It

Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. When it comes, it degrades one's self and ultimately eclipses the capacity to give or receive affection. It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself.
- Andrew Solomon, "The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression"

Treatment resistant clinical depression. The label hangs over my head like the executioner's axe, waiting for the command to sever my head from my shoulders and spill my blood to the earth. Whenever the noonday demon wakes from his slumber and rears his head, gnashing his teeth and clawing at my spirit, dragging it downward into darkness, I close myself off from the world. As if my depression is shameful. As if the choking and crushing emotion is something that I can control. As if I have to hide what is part of me.

I've always needed solitude. I preferred it. I consider myself misanthropic; people are inherently evil and I have issues that would make Edward Norton in *Fight Club* look well adjusted. Put short, I don't trust or enjoy people at all. Individuals can be tolerated or even liked, but the general population is to be loathed and avoided. I praised Henry David Thoreau for leaving civilization behind in favor of nature and longed to do the same. But when your brain is wired a certain way, there is nothing quite so impractical as isolation...

I have loved and I have lost. I've marked the passing of four friends and two beloved family members in quick succession. I was broken, and then... I felt nothing for a long time - almost a year. Not joy nor sadness, not excitement nor lust. I was an empty body drifting along from day to day. I hardly even spoke. It took a long time to recover. Just as I was feeling hopeful again, I lost five more friends over the course of three months. I was utterly destroyed. My grip on reality was peeled away. Some mornings I wake up, still trying desperately to cling to a fiction in my head that makes more sense than the world around me, but never was it as overwhelming as it was November. I was drowning.

And then Christmas came.

I will not go into detail of what triggered the demon. There is none to recall. I was only aware of a need to stop my confusion and pain. So profound was my grief that just being in a room with other people made my heart race and my head spin. I would panic and have to run as far as I could just to be able to breathe again. On one such occasion, I found myself outside in the storm on Christmas as the flood coursed through the surrounding area. It wasn't enough to worry, but I knew the ravine would be filled and made up my mind.

Suicide isn't the easiest thing in the world to discuss, even more difficult to admit that you've attempted it. But in the spirit of honesty to strangers over the internet, I will just say it... Since the age of twelve, I have attempted to kill myself on average of two times a year. I have nearly been successful on five separate attempts. Christmas was one such occasion. It was my final attempt.

There was no parting of clouds and chorus of angels as light illuminated me. There was no great thundering voice that spoke to me. There was no dramatic entrance of a hero nor any profound sign from the cosmos to save me. It was a cat.

His name is Bowie and he's my cat. I raised him since he was first able to leave his mother, but because he's such an asshole and destroyed everything he touched, he went to live on a farm. No, that's not a clever way of softening the blow of death. He's very much alive and living on an actual farm with several other outdoor cats and a plethora of animals from peacocks to goats, snakes and rabbits to cows and horses. This is where I happened to be for Christmas, among friends. And as I prepared to hurl myself into the ravine hundreds of feet below, splaying my body on jagged rocks being overtaken by the rising water, there he was - in the way as usual, laying right on my feet. I shooed him. He dug his claws into my leg and yowled at me above the loud wind, getting as saturated as I in the downpour. I ripped him from me and set him on a lower branch of a tree. In a blink, he was back on my feet with his claws dug in, refusing to move. Again, I pried him from me. Again, I blinked and he was there as if he'd never left.

Without warning, I started to cry. I couldn't stop. I sat down heavily and he finally let go, crawling into my lap and purring, rubbing his head against my chin. I held him and just sobbed until I heard people calling for me. I stood and started back toward the house as he decided it was safe to leave me and run for the cover of the garage with the others.

It was that moment that I realized yes, I have loved and lost. But as long as I'm still alive there will always be love - from more friends, from family, even from pets. Love is all around us. We may lose from time to time, but love... That's infinite. Boundless. It can be found anywhere we look and cannot be destroyed. And that, I think, is worth sticking around for.