- To have a 1% chance of your life improving. Death is a 0% chance of anything getting better. Any kind of life comes with better odds than 0%.
- To try all of the most extreme options while you still have them.
- To eat a really mediocre grilled cheese sandwich.
- To develop a rating system for mediocre grilled cheese sandwiches.
- To laugh at stupid memes at 3 in the morning.
- To draw characters being queer together. Stick figures count.
- To pet kittens and puppies and bunnies and all the soft fluffy things of the world.
- To see the next movie, read the next book, enjoy the next comic.
- To spit in the face of everyone that’s ever hurt you.
- To spite the voice in your head and show it who makes the decisions in your life.
- To get the ultimate revenge: completely and utterly ignoring those who want nothing more than for you to die.
- To take back what others took from you.
- To let the pain pass through you and learn that you will survive it.
- To spare strangers the pain you carry. Death doesn’t erase pain; it passes it along to those left behind, even the ones you think don’t care. I’ve cried over a complete stranger at my high school that I never saw, never met, but who touched me with his death. There are so many people you’ve brushed up against in your life who would be hurt if you left them behind. Live to see them happy.
- To see what happens tomorrow, tonight, five minutes from now. Even a shitty story is still a story.
Death is the ultimate metaphor for drastic change. It’s a general specific. Whatever your problems are, it is very likely that dead people don’t have to deal with them. A real solution to your problems may demand a very narrow range of action that’s likely to be out of reach at this moment, but death is sold on every street corner, so it feels like a more realistic fantasy than happiness.
You don’t really want to die per se but it’s also not completely random chemicals swamping your brain for no reason. You want the pain to stop, you want to be somewhere else, you want to be someone else. It’s urgent. You don’t know how to do it. The end is not the end but a means that feels within your reach right now.
This is the wisdom of Bell Hooks: daily rituals of meaning and resistance and solidarity are part of slowly building a future where you can make the change you really need. And only alive people can do that. Every step you take towards change and power is another step away from death.
Mags (ritavonbees), Tumblr, 2023
One of the weirdest thing about growing up suicidal is that you assume you have no future, you don’t even try to envision it because you see no point. So eventually, you start assuming everyone else sees nothing in your future either. Recently, my friend and I were talking and she said something about how at her wedding I could wear a suit or a dress as long as it matched her bridesmaid’s dresses because the butler of honor has to make a good impression. This hit me so hard because I had never realized before how other people thought about me. She said it so casually like it wasn’t even a hard decision, just a given fact. She loves me so much she saw me at her wedding, standing with her on one of the most important days of her life. And you know what? There are so many people who think about you that way. If that isn’t proof that you should keep going I don’t know what is.
desultory-suggestions, Tumblr, 2022