solidarity in solitude

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Stolen from My First Dictionary.

I know just how Mary feels lately.

Please do not email, phone, text, leave comments, message me on Facebook or @ me on Twitter if you are going to ask for a response, because you will not get one right now or possibly ever. And if you’re thinking of threatening to commit suicide this week, most ESPECIALLY do not email, phone, text, leave comments, message me on Facebook or @ me on Twitter, because those are my least favorite kind of messages of all, and the way I’m feeling lately, I’d probably just tell you to go the fuck ahead and jump. Remember: the Burrard Bridge isn’t high enough to do more than break a limb.

There, don’t say I never did nuthin for ya.

70 thoughts on “solidarity in solitude”

  3. So here’s the thing. I’m just here to leave wordpress hugs because twitter hugs aren’t long enough and don’t have enough character(s). If you reply, I’ll be really fraccing mad at you because you’re only supposed to be receiving now, not giving and I get really fraccing annoyed when people don’t listen to me.

    Got it?

    Good.

    (If you need someone beat up for ya though… just let me know. I probably can’t do it since I’m old and out of shape… but I could swear a lot, give them really scary eyes and do a lot of other things that might embarass them or maybe even make them cry…. if you want…. I really can be a horrid sot when I have to be and frac, sometimes even enjoy it… so just yell… or wait, that would be a reply so don’t. I guess I’ll just have to take it upon myself to scour the internets looking for people to scare and make cry just in case they were the one… but you know… anything for you rain. <3)

    Seriously. Hugs.

  4. It had appeared for a while as if it had stopped raining on the coast.

    But about the Burrard Bridge: watch out you don’t get impaled on the mast of a yacht passing underneath.

  6. How many messages from those considering suicide do you get in a day? Are these suicidal feelings present before they read your blog? I am surprised that you get any at all. All that you have done here is tell people one place where not to commit suicide. Is there not a list of suicide friendly venues in BC somewhere?

  12. Well, I’m basically going on strike. There are too many people who are leaning on me and while normally this is fine, right now I have zero spiritual resources. So those people are all on their own at the moment.

    Last week I took a quite unprecedented amount of crap for the Willy Pickton post, and then on Saturday I had to intervene when my friend who gets clinically depressed and suicidal every 14 days got clinically depressed and suicidal again. Being somewhat proactive and utterly devoid of spiritual resources by last Saturday, I didn’t try to talk him out of it; I just called 911. And spent Saturday night at St Paul’s Hospital spending my last ten bucks on food and drink for this friend instead of taking my other friend April out for a drink to celebrate her profile in the newspaper.

    So, after that I’m pretty wiped. I know I shouldn’t take someone else’s suicide threats personally, but I am just spiritually exhausted right now and he’s just gonna have to talk himself out of it next time.

  13. Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry to hear stuff’s been shit.

    I’ve been in similar situations where I was there for everyone but me and it takes a lot out of you.

  15. Anyone who gets clinically depressed and threatens suicide every 14 days either needs to be hospitalized until they get his meds straightened out, or is a manipulative little dickwad. Here’s hoping for a little space for you to breathe, a little sun to make things better, and peace of mind.

  16. You’re telling me! I’m thinking of starting a chart so the next time I call 911 I can just hand them the mood-o-meter and they’ll KNOW he’s lying when he says he’s not in a regular depressive cycle. But then, it’s not my responsibility, is it?

  17. Speaking as someone with a whole lot of clinical depressions plus the random bipolar kind, you can’t help your friend by sacrificing your own energy… spirit, karma, time, whatever. You can only listen to their rationalizations so many times, you can only hold their hand so many times, you can only be on the receiving end of the suicide call so many times. The only thing you, someone who is not a trained psychiatrist or medical professional, can do is pick them up from the hospital after their 72-hour stay.

    I’d suggest giving them a simple three step plan: find a doctor, see the doctor, accept the treatment.

    I wrote something about relationships with people like your friend (and me) a while back, it may help [link]. You could also give them a link to my site… I’ve got a whole blogroll full of links which could help.

  18. Thank you, Gabriel. I will pass that link along, and I’m speaking at Mental Health Camp tomorrow on using the internet and social media for healing.

  19. Really? That’d be really interesting… there’s an interesting dynamic with mental health bloggers. There are the X3nu and Ic@rus people denying the existence of mental disorders and diseases — and there are a lot of them in here, so they’re always popping up and telling us all about the evils of psychiatry and the benefits of not taking our meds.

    Then there’s a lot of kids who enable each other, but at the same time the only support they receive is from each other because their parents have no clue and the mental health systems of most country’s are totally fucked.

    Then there are the NGO’s who are trying to reach out to people like myself and those kids, but who don’t have the financing or ability to do more than create a blog or website.

    Then there are the people who have been in recovery for a few years, people we can really learn from, but they get to a point where they can’t write about mental health issues anymore because they’ve essentially recovered…

    If you’re looking for some great mental health blogs I’d go with Seaneen [link], who has been featured regularly on BBC radio, and Spin Me I Pulsate [link], which is a blog about having bipolar and two kids.

    I’d be really interested in learning more about the Camp…

  21. My non-blogging friends don’t get how I can be so emotionally involved with my blogging friends. I keep trying to tell them you are real people, too. It’s sometimes easier to find support here.
    You do much for many. Kudos for taking time to recharge those raincoaster batteries!

  22. Sorry if it seems like I’m dumping links on you, but the need for a more community oriented approach to mental health (off/online) has actually been a recurring theme with me.

    http://saltedlithium.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/bipolar-anonymous/

    http://saltedlithium.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/start-with-intervention/

    “We can spend so many years trying to convince people of how sick we are then, when we’re finally diagnosed, we’re left by the health care system to fend for ourselves as if our family and friends network was fully formed and operational, as though we have a working understanding of what the disease is doing to our minds and bodies, as though we should know and understand what the medications will do to our minds and bodies.”

    Thanks for your links, I like what I saw on the two sites…

  23. Thanks. And Gabriel, thanks for the links. This is a perfect example of community-building online (or will be, once I figure out how to fix the CSS so that it doesn’t cut off your replies.

  41. I think I activated them, just curious to see how they’d look, but of course a lot of things have to be tweaked with CSS when you’ve got custom CSS and Wp changes something.

  42. I’m all about life, kiddo.
    No messages from moi.
    I just ‘Twittered’ but I’m feeling ashamed and somewhat cheap.
    Can you help?
    :o(
    ~m

  44. Yep, silly custom css. Which reminds me, I’ve made drastic changes to mine and comments look broken now. Off to the css editor I go..

  46. this post went from everyone get lost, to the amount of energy someone can suck from you with out meaning to hurt you and thereby leaving you empty and as you said spiritually exhausted on to links and discussion of mood disorders to vacations and movie plans…then on to twitter and stuff

    at least your not telling every one to bugger off now :D

  52. Honestly, why should I or anyone else follow anyone on Twitter? I’m not trolling, but from what I’ve seen, it just seems kinda dopey to me.

  53. Either you get it or you don’t; I signed up last August, didn’t start using it till October, and just tonight I got a client worth several hundred bucks, some very important news about a friend, and the contact details of a great new potential client, as well as three dates.

    The internet is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

    That said, I make it a policy not to try to talk anyone into any particular platform or online activity; you can throw years of your life away that way. If you want to do it, do it. If not, don’t. You can get an idea of what it looks like by following a few people and not saying anything yourself; it’s free.

  54. Good enough description for me. My kids and their friends already mock the Tweeting Crowd as “old school,” so I guess I dodged a passing fad before I had a chance to try it out. Thanx.

  55. That said, I make it a policy not to try to talk anyone into any particular platform or online activity; you can throw years of your life away that way.

    Yeah, I’ve not reached that point yet! One day I will..

  56. “…. internet is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it …. ”

    Nervous as I am to express an opinion dissimilar to Your Grace’s, but surely what you get out depends on what others (eg the illustrious Cat & that entertaining Racoon)put in

  59. Let me just explain that I could not hope to attract the quality of commenter I do if I didn’t put interesting things into the blogosphere. There, feel better?

  60. “The internet is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.”

    A few months ago a friend of mine posted a “tweet” asking “if I smother my 3 year old, who will NOT GO TO FUCKING SLEEP, is it REALLY a crime?”. That night the police knocked on her door and asked to make sure her kids weren’t being abused.

    A woman in Pennsylvania decided the Internet was hers to police and, based entirely on one sentence, didn’t like my friends behaviour. So she “tweeted” her little buddies into action and one of them found my friends address. The story made it to the News Hour on PBS and some newspapers in the States.

    Personally, I don’t see Twitter as much more than a simplified combination of the Facebook “What’s on your mind?” feature and IM. There are always kinks when any communications technology rolls out as people learn the language and how to behave. Used right, however, all communications tools are useful, but the problem I have with Twitter is the new evolution of technologies are moving in the wrong direction… they’re gutting language and making a virtue of simplicity and reactionary thinking.

    And I think the name is too cute.

  61. rain– I bet you say that to all the trolls.

    Gabriel–

    Pre-internet, I know of two instances where someone said the wrong thing to the wrong folks about their kids.

    One involved some nosy neighbors, and an innocuous smartass comment to the police by an 8 year old that sent his 16 year old babysitting brother to jail;

    Another was an inappropriate joke by a father that resulted in child protective services hovering around their house for months.

    Be careful what you post.

    rain– “Let me just explain that I could not hope to attract the quality of commenter I do if I didn’t put interesting things into the blogosphere. There, feel better?”
    Is that a suck-up comment or what? =)

  62. …read the story I linked to in the post, my friend was careful. She used all the right Internet shortcuts for sarcasm and irony. The only thing she didn’t do was put the LOL or a smiley at the end of the tweet. The person who started the police process did it for something to “tweet” about, it had very little to nothing to do with caring about the kids.

  63. Actually that’s not true (re: my last comment), my friend was naive in that she believed the line Twitter uses to sell itself… which is “post your thoughts, gather friends, you’re the life of the party”. She posted a thought she had in that moment, in a way she believed everyone would understand as sarcasm. And they all did, except for one or two people who used their manufactured outrage to score a few Tweets and drive some heavy traffic to their blogs… which is something they actually bragged about.

  64. I remember that story, because I read it on your blog at the time; Twitter has the power to amplify things; it’s a broadcast medium. And there are always people who will overreact to things. The internet just allows you to reach more of them at any given time.

    And yes, Bunk, that was a suck-up. I’m pretty good at it, eh? After all, you ARE here again.

  66. Excellent!

    I’m wondering how difficult it is to rig up a water wheel or windmill for power…surely there must be a useful battery pack at Canadian Tire?

  67. the illustrious Cat

    I’m liking the sound of that, do carry on..

    I remember that Twitter/mum story too and I agree that it’s over the top, but that could happen with blogs, forums, too.

    And your power is STILL out, rain?!

  68. yes, the power is still out. I’m going to call tomorrow and see if they’ll waive the reconnection fee or not. If they will, I’ll pay it. If they won’t, I’m going to wing it. I can probably last till October, when the weather turns cold.

  69. ‘The Agenda with Steve Paikin’, a public affairs show on TVO (Ontario public broadcasting), had a discussion segment on Twitter last night called “Twitter and the News: Twitter’s coming out party.” [link] The guests had some interesting observations…

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