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Wrong day for a Buddhist to see this.
Living is full of complications, not living is simple…
you explained it in the fastest and easiest way.
why should you play a game that you already lost before it even began?
why should you live if you died already from the moment the sperm fertilized your egg, and you became nothing more than a walking corpse?
Just a comment that this is what I felt like a long time ago. However, it makes the assumption that the suffering is a permanent thing, which I have found it is not. But the thinking in this comic is hard to let go because when you’re suffering in your head it’s really really difficult to see that it’s not a permanent situation. I wanted to say this because this comic in particular paints a point of view that sounds like it’s advocating but it isn’t — it’s a reminder of what I was thinking and how difficult it was to let go of that mindset
Depression is the biggest mindfuck there is. It makes everything you feel and think seem true and real, uses your own infallible logic against you. The mind turns “I want this suffering to end” into “I want my life to end”. I think most people want a different life and want to be a different person. Since that seems impossible, the mind translates it into a thing that is possible: suicide. I would love a see comic about how you let go of this mindset.
What helped you let go of this mindset?
For me the first step was to write down the thoughts and feelings I experienced (e.g. “No one cares about me”, “I’m worthless and useless”, “Nothing is worth doing”, etc.) and then critically examine them. They were clearly irrational. None of them had any basis in reality. It also helped me recognize that feeling something didn’t make it true no matter how strongly I felt it.
Knowing that those thoughts and feelings were irrational helped me reject them. Each time I recognized one of those negative, irrational thoughts I would tell myself the exact opposite. It sounds trite, but changing your thought patterns is an essential step toward recovery.
Great illustration with the ink… slowly creeping up until it all turns black. That is like how it feels… at times it really does creep up on you. Today is a good day, I’m keeping the darkness at bay.
and yes, logically that is in a way simple.
and emotionally when there is no hope and day in and day out you just get crap, after a while this comes around again (the wanting to kill ones-self and attempting again) even though its still traumatic for lack of better words. (as someone who tried, failed and survived several times yes. i know this feeling)
feels like there is no end to the pain and the people who are SUPPOSED to be helping or CLAIM to be helping actually make it worse because they DO NOT understand even though you have tried your best to explain….
dying seems the best END to the pain. it took this comic to get me to realize i only wanted the pain and misery and darkness to stop, and keep living yet not thinking ok if i kill myself it will stop but so will i. and i have someone who depends upon me.
having had someone commit suicide in my life and KNOWING what is left behind and the aftermath, i don’t want to do that to them….
but it really really doesn’t help that if there is a way to get the pain to stop no one seems to have an answer or is willing to help.
i have to solve all my problems apparently (even though i didn’t create them)
The logic is flawed in that as long as you’re alive you haven’t lost the game. You only lose the game when you stop playing.
When you’re brain is all messed up by depression, you can’t think straight and logic doesn’t enter into the equation.
For my worst times, I always had an anchor. Someone whom I couldn’t bear to contemplate finding me afterwards. Someone of whom I thought, “I can’t do this to them.” Even if I thought that person was better off without me. It may not help everyone, but it helped me.
It helped me too.
This is why I think it’s been so bad for me, lately. All my people reasons are gone. Very few flimsy reasons left. I ask myself every day why am I still holding on?
Linda, I don’t know if these words are an answer to your question. It’s just an answer that has taken me a few years to find and be ready to share.
When all your “people reasons” are gone, there’s one more person that depression hides from us. Our future self. We haven’t met this person yet, and while in front of depression’s megaphone, we might have misconceptions about this person. But, they’re worth outlasting depression for the opportunity to meet our future selves.
My present self, owes a debt of gratitude to my past self for sticking around. Please add your future self to the list your “people reasons” to hold on to.
Clay, once again you’ve captured in ink what is so hard to express in words.
Depression seeps in, until it obscures everything. Depression makes it sound simple, but depression is a fucking liar, and suicide is no solution.
We have to remember that depression is the cause of everything looking hopeless; not the result of everything being hopeless. I have to tell myself that all the time.
I don’t deny that life circumstances can be depressing, or contribute to depression. My point is the depression comes first, then everything in life looks like shit. First you get the flu, then you feel terrible. Your symptoms don’t cause the disease; the disease causes the symptoms. First the depression hits, then you hate yourself, question everything you’ve ever done, and feel like a failure, etc . Whatever the thoughts are that bludgeon you, remember they’re all lies and distortion.
Get some help before you decide to kill yourself. The help isn’t perfect; the meds aren’t perfect, and things can still be rough, but you can get out of the pit.
Thanks for your art, Clay.
Well, it’s normal for depression to come about because of a prolonged hopeless situation, too. Optimism and willpower isn’t infinite. So on that one point I’ll have to disagree. One illustration of this is in cases of abuse where the victim is unable to escape, such as from being underage or financially dependent. Another would be the insane medical debt that can so easily happen over here in America. The hopelessness comes from an external source in these situations and is enough to break otherwise normal people.
Hi Clay. Thanks for sharing this one.
I’m losing the game tonight.
If you give up, there won’t be a future you to look back and say, “I’m glad I didn’t do something really stupid”. You owe it to your future self to survive.
When Sinead O’Connor openned up about her struggle with depression a local radio host wished her luck in the battle. Hearing that and reflecting on my own struggle, it hit me, depression is not a battle, it’s a war, and the only way to beat it, is to die of something else.
when u commit suicide you do not end pain. you just pass it to someone else.
I’ve been saying this for years. When you play Monopoly for 50yrs, and it becomes boring and pointless, you don’t continue the game in the hopes it get better, you simply quit. People on the outside view it as a selfish decision, that someone took their own life while thinking only of themselves. But those of us on the inside wonder why we should continue this miserable, pointless existence simply to keep *them* from feeling bad. Isn’t that just as selfish? When you care nothing for your own life, you care even less about anyone else’s. When your future is a bleak arctic landscape, with nothing on the horizon and nothing to look forward to, why keep going? I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid of surviving a suicide attempt and being in even worse shape than I am now. And even if I do get better and rewire my brain, achieve some miniscule iota of happiness, the world is only going to get worse. Fuel / water / food shortages, global warming, racial & income inequality, what the hell is there to look forward to? The next 25 years are going to SUCK.