From: sloey@kodak.com (Jim Sloey)
Subject: Re: I'd rather be breathing
Organization: the edge of night
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 15:36:29 GMT

Note, this is not intended to be a flame. I'm glad you're where you are, but...

In article <1992Nov10.070143.15669@u.washington.edu>
kaygee@hardy.u.washington.edu (Kevin Giansante) writes:

>The last time I seriously considered suicide was when I was twenty-
>one; that was twenty-one years ago.  My childhood was pretty
>rough, my adolescence even rougher, and I barely survived my
>twenties thanks to encounters with drugs, depression, and other
>demons.  In my thirties I started coming into my own, breaking out
>of my agony; now I'm in my forties, fully in possession of myself
>and in command of my life.  It feels great.

Gee, does that mean I'll feel better by my next birthday?.

>...; my accomplishments and
>acquisitions, modest though they be, tend to remain in the
>forefront of my consciousness.  I still have plenty of problems and
>I'm still sensitive to the pain of daily life, but now I've got
>something else besides all of that; it's not just pain and emptiness
>anymore.  It's pain and joy, and that's like being dealt a whole new
>hand.

Lose them. Acomplishments discredited, acquisitions gone, empty hands...

>I hope this isn't too abstract.  If it is, forgive me.

No, this is abstract... as far from the world you are in as Orian...

(What use to struggle. Life is a never ending stream of pain and sorrow held
together by my dreams and goals. As time goes on I look at my cracked and
bleeding hands, nails broken from my struggles, and see only the things I will
never have, the goals that I strived for that will always be out of reach.)
	(But there is a worse thing. To look at the goals I've reached and ask why.
What use the struggle? Years of toil to reach an illusive dream that I know
will make me happier, and then I'm there! In a flash the pleasure of the
accomplishment is gone and I am off on another struggle.)
	(If I am unfortunate enough to get "Breaks" and become rich, to make it in the
world. Even if I struggled against nearly unsurmountable odds and won, I find
the victory empty and worthless. I am no happier than before, in fact less
because now I begin to see that it was never all that I'd built it up to be.
The idle rich. Idle because they know that there is no sense in the world. No
sense in chasing rainbows. If I struggle too long and fail, the sorrow is
overwhelming, but if I succeed and find my goals to be only smoke and mirrors,
the pain is just as intense. )
	(Eventually a deeper ache fills me. I look in every direction and see nothing
but more pain and striving after empty dreams. Explore the best or worst of
these, the most bizarre, the most forbidden, they are all empty promises of
happiness. )
	(There is no happiness in the end. Only the illusion of making progress toward
my dreams, before I reach them, takes my mind off the emptiness of my life.
What use then is life. perhaps the only end to the sorrow is the final plunge
into forever darkness. No afterlife that would continue the struggles in a
different realm, just darkness, nothingness, the peaceful endless night. )

Jim

Solomon was right...it's all chasing after wind...