Originally published at: Another beautiful, heart wrenching song and arresting video from Ren | Boing Boing
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I know the feeling of being on the verge of suicide, I don’t even know why I am saying this here. I just needed an outlet for my thoughts. I’ve tried many times to kill myself, and I didn’t succeed for lack of trying. One third of my life has been spent in hospitals, I’m tired of living a life of nothing but worrying when is the next time I am going to get locked up for months. I am lost and don’t know what to do but end it. Eventually everyone dies, why not now? I’m sorry I posted this, if it is inappropriate, just delete it.
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I’ve been there, though only during one dark period, so it sounds like you’re wrestling something much bigger.
I have just a few things to say, in the hope that they might be of some use:
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I’m sure there’s a neurochemical rut one falls into that makes it difficult to deal with these thoughts and feelings. I get it: It’s not that you’re not trying. This is not your fault, and there’s nothing wrong with you. But there’s a medical component to this experience, and you can try treatments for it.
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That said, I think one’s imagination also gets broken during these times: Not being able to imagine things ever being better says nothing about what’s possible and everything about the limited perspective you’re trapped in. All the best things in my life happened after my suicidal period, and these great things would have been completely unimaginable to me then. But here I am. I almost made the biggest of mistakes.
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Please ask for help. People really want to help you, even though you may find it impossible to feel others right now. I wasn’t thinking about anyone else when I wanted to leave, and now it takes my breath away to imagine how deeply and permanently I would have hurt them – my mom, my dad, my brother, my friends. And I have been hurt this way by someone I loved. It’s a terrible, terrible thing to do to others.
Please give your future self a chance. We’re not here forever, regardless of how things end, but there are better days for you to enjoy before then. Please search for a local or national support line and call it. Or even take yourself to a hospital; my experience of ER was that they were a bag of dicks (they gave me more pills and sent me home), but because of my admission I was hooked up with a counselling service that started me back to being well again.
I wish you all the best.
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Thanks for your message. It really does help.
My biggest problem is that I’ve tried literally almost everything. I’ve been to outpatient programs lasting from a few days to six months. I’ve been in so many hospitals, including a long stint in a state psychiatric hospital. I’ve tried dozens of meds. I get ketamine weekly. A couple months ago I even got an implant that is supposed to help.
I feel there is nothing left to try.
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Apologies for my presumption and projection; I spoke without knowing your situation.
It’s weird, this being anonymous internet chat and all, but, hearing your story, I feel care and compassion for you. Unfortunately, I’m way out of my depth here and have no answers. Hopefully another member of the BoingBoing community will have some insight from their experience.
(There seems to be a correlation between creative/curious/sensitive people and mental health issues. The angry, awful, mendacious bastards manage to cruise through life without being troubled by self-reflection.)
Love from a stranger.
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There is no need to apologize, there was no way for you to know my situation.
I know how you feel about an anonymous connection, maybe that’s why I posted in the first place.
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You’re still here, and you’re still looking for your own answers. And there’s nothing wrong with you posting about yourself here.
The amazing thing that Ren has done is inspire conversations about deep issues like these among the people who hear his music and see his videos.
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The first part of the song, which seems to be about Ren’s contemplation of suicide during the worst parts of his chronic illness that was eventually diagnosed as Lyme disease, had been written and finished for some time, but still felt incomplete to him, even though he had planned to make it his next release. He recently was thinking again about his childhood best friend Joe Hughes who committed suicide in 2010, felt inspired to write the second part of the song, and quickly reworked the song and video to include it.
There’s more detail in Ren’s own words here:
Also take note that he’s raising money for the Anglesey Royal National Lifeboat Institute, who put tremendous effort into trying to find Joe’s body (sadly without result), and he’s donating profits from the sale of his first album, Freckled Angels, to Joe’s family. Links are in the pinned comment on the YouTube post.
This isn’t the first time Ren has commemorated Joe Hughes. He wrote a song “Freckled Angels” that he performed first at Joe’s funeral and made it the title song of his first album. It’s much sweeter, but still heartbreaking.
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2 dozen product misses, if not just dosage misses sounds like enough, I don’t know that they looked at lipid panels at the same time, maybe there’s a dietary knock-down in there. I’m under the impression that TMS cure thing is real, though ofc there’s a horror story of someone who took 5 tries (2 years?) to get gains, with a 2-week reequilibration thing and a half in sometime. (It’s the magnetic rig thing with some precision to it, but skipping the MRI with some of the claustrophobia. After you do about an hour -in- an fMRI I think?)
Working thyroid etc, exercise at a 7 for a whole hour a day plus, are all very nice towards processing forwardly too; I should be so healthy I get diagnosed with jaundice for overfocusing on carrots (yellow sclera, boom! underlines photosensitivities tho.), etc.
an implant that is supposed to help.
Cyberpunk 2077 I need to finish watching, thanks for the minder. Get that new art invented so you can unglummify a touch. You got this.
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I’m sorry for your pain. I don’t know that I can offer any words of comfort that will sound like anything other than empty platitudes, but maybe the best take I’ve heard on suicide is that death is the one thing you are absolutely guaranteed in life whether you seek it or not—so there’s no need to rush it.
In the meantime every day you are still here brings the possibility of some new change for the better, some new opportunity to create or receive some kind of peace or love or joy. I hope you are able to keep holding on to those possibilities. You deserve them.
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I know it can feel impossibly hard at times, but please stick around, you would be missed.
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