Zapped

Yes, yes, yes. The times I have seriously contemplated suicide, it looked to me like my family and friends would not only be better off without me, they'd be happy to be rid of me. Distorted, delusional thinking I realize now.
 
In my most recent bout of suicidal thoughts, I still thought they'd be better off without me. At the same time, partially because I'd just been to the visitation and funeral for a colleague who committed suicide and seen the overwhelming grief and trauma, I knew it would be devastating for my family. My adult daughter knows about the earlier episode and has told me many times she'd never get over it if I were to kill myself.
 
So although I was in a lot of pain, and I thought that in some ways my spouse and adult kids would be better off without me (especially financially), I knew they would suffer and see it differently. And I decided that it was better for me to suffer than them.
 
I'm sure some people kill themselves as a kind of "fuck you" to others. At least some, I'm sure, based on my own close calls, think they are solving a problem for others.
 
Like pretty much every major decision we make in life, it's emotionally-based, not rational.
 
And, really, it's fine to be pissed as all fuck at everyone who commits suicide. Then eventually forgiveness can free us. I was really pissed at my colleague, who left behind four kids, two pre-school age. And then I thought about how close I came myself and how I thought my kids be be glad to be rid of me. I'm still pissed. But I also have some empathy and will get to forgiveness eventually.

Yes, yes, yes. The times I have seriously contemplated suicide, it looked to me like my family and friends would not only be better off without me, they'd be happy to be rid of me. Distorted, delusional thinking I realize now.
 
In my most recent bout of suicidal thoughts, I still thought they'd be better off without me. At the same time, partially because I'd just been to the visitation and funeral for a colleague who committed suicide and seen the overwhelming grief and trauma, I knew it would be devastating for my family. My adult daughter knows about the earlier episode and has told me many times she'd never get over it if I were to kill myself.
 
So although I was in a lot of pain, and I thought that in some ways my spouse and adult kids would be better off without me (especially financially), I knew they would suffer and see it differently. And I decided that it was better for me to suffer than them.
 
I'm sure some people kill themselves as a kind of "fuck you" to others. At least some, I'm sure, based on my own close calls, think they are solving a problem for others.
 
Like pretty much every major decision we make in life, it's emotionally-based, not rational.
 
And, really, it's fine to be pissed as all fuck at everyone who commits suicide. Then eventually forgiveness can free us. I was really pissed at my colleague, who left behind four kids, two pre-school age. And then I thought about how close I came myself and how I thought my kids be be glad to be rid of me. I'm still pissed. But I also have some empathy and will get to forgiveness eventually.

Talking to strangers is difficult for some people, suicide hotlines have been known to hang up on someone who needs someone to talk to who isn't intending immediate suicide, and helping someone so depressed that they're suicidal is an ongoing project, which all means that a hotline is not always the solution. But it's just as incorrect to say suicide is due to untreated mental illness or to imply well off and successful people have no reason to be unhappy. That letter Kim Jonghyun wrote that I linked above is directed (though not by name) to his psychiatrist. People don't choose their brain chemistry.
 
This level of ignorance about suicide and mental illness hurts rather than helps people who are depressed and suicidal. If suicide is so selfish then suicidal people have even less reason to reach out and disclose their true feelings. Sorry suicide prevention has to prioritize the emotional needs of the suicidal person, not their friends and family and telling them they're loved when they don't feel lovable and won't believe you isn't an answer.

I'll say again what I said previously.
 
Sure, suicide, especially as we look at it from a non-suicidal perspective, is an "easy way to escape." But to the irrational, delusional person taking their own life, it probably looks less like escape and more like a gift. This is probably hard to imagine if you haven't been there yourself.
 
For me, and from what I've read about others who have looked into this deeply, the experience was that I was problem for the others in my life. Like John Dean's phrase "a cancer on the presidency," I felt I was a cancer on the life of my family. I thought I'd be doing them a favor and that they'd be relieved. I thought they'd be glad to be rid of me, not overwhelmed with grief, anger, and self-recrimination. To me, I was a malignant tumor that should be cut out from the body of my family.
 
My dad had a cousin who when she was diagnosed with a condition that would eventually cause her to lose the use of her legs killed herself. We were so mystified and upset. I now understand (or at least project) that she didn't want to be a burden to her friends and family.
 
Now that I've said this over and over and gotten myself clear on it, the thing I'm interested in is how we as a society open up conversation about suicide, and keep it going, so that people for whom suicide does look like a gift to others can talk about it without fear. When I was seriously considering it, I didn't want to tell anyone because I was afraid I'd be committed.
 
A few weeks ago, some financial issues were really weighing on me. I'm retiring from a job at the end of this month and for the next couple of weeks there's a lot of life insurance that comes with the job. One voice in me was saying my husband and kids would be better off if I died and they each got a big chunk of money.
 
The more I kept those thoughts secret, the more intense they became. Finally I told my husband that a good bit of this insurance was going away, that I was frustrated that I hadn't generated new income streams in the way I'd wanted, and asked him if he'd rather have me or this particular amount of money. He was quite quick to assure me that he'd rather have us broke (which won't be the case) and me alive than me dead and him with enough to restart his life.
 
Well, then the whole thing lifted. Once I spoke it out loud, the nightmare ended. I'd recently been at the visitation and service for a colleague who killed himself, and I'd seen the tragic mess he'd left behind and the extraordinary grief. So I was quite in touch with the fact that it would probably be devastating to my family. Which wasn't the case 20 years ago or so when I thought I'd be giving them a gift and they would be glad to be rid of me.
 
Many of us don't feel like we can tell anyone when we're having suicidal thoughts. How do we give people the space to tell others what's going on?

The first time I was suicidal, I wasn’t just depressed, I was delusional, I now realize. I not only thought my family and friends would get over it, I thought that they’d be glad to be rid of me. To be honest, I’m not sure how I got through that time. Maybe it’s because I procrastinate a lot and things cleared up for me before I’d gotten around to figuring out how to do it.
 
In more recent episodes when suicidal thoughts have been triggered, I have been acutely aware of how devastating it would be to my loved ones, especially my (now adult) children. That’s kept suicide in the realm of fantasy rather than action. I haven’t, at those times, been willing to pass the pain on.
 
So while it may indeed be incredibly selfish to take one’s own life, I imagine that most people who actually follow through are out of touch and not able to imagine the pain that will ensue for others.
 
I don’t believe family ever “get over” a suicide. Certainly there may be forgiveness, and learning how to go on. But the damage lasts, leaving scars after healing has happened.

I can only share my own experience, and here it is.
 
There have been a couple of times in my life in which I was genuinely considering suicide. In each episode, I was in a place where some part of my brain was telling me very strongly that my friends, spouse, and children would be both better off without me and happy to be rid of me.
 
It seemed like I'd be doing everyone a favor.
 
Yes, I was facing financial and other challenges at the time. But later I woke up and saw how much people loved me and that the financial challenges were things that could be dealt with (and it turned out, in my case, that bankruptcy wasn't the end of the world, but actually a helpful new start).
 
As far as outwardly successful celebrities go, yes, it doesn't make sense to us. But having known a couple of fucked-up rich and famous celebrities (at least in their own world), I can say that I've seen how big the pressures can be. You can be rich and famous and financially over-extended. You can be rich and famous and find the pressure of living up to your own reputation and past successes overwhelming and crushing. You can be rich and famous and hooked on drugs that distort your thinking. You can be rich and famous and get into a lifestyle in which you get chronically sleep deprived and that distorts your thinking. And, perhaps most tragically, you can be rich and famous and then never know if people actually care for you or only want something from you, whether that's money or simply to back in the reflected how of your fame.
 
And as far as I can tell, wealth and fame can be their own soul-destroying addictions. If some part of you thinks you are crap and you are getting rich and/or famous to compensate, each success can end up reinforcing the sense of inferiority once the initial high wears off. And there's always the fear of losing it all. I don't know anything in particular about Sade and Bourdain, or if this applies to them, but I can imagine in a more general way that the fear of becoming a "has been," which happens to every famous person sooner or later, could be terrifying.
 
I remember years ago the jovial and beloved Today show weather guy, Willard Scott, went public about his anxiety and depression. I was pretty young, and almost disbelieving that this guy who seemed so naturally at ease and warm was suffering when off camera, afraid he'd not be able to pull it off next time.
 
My anxiety can get so intense that I can hardly function sometimes, and I have a pretty low-stress life. Someone like Bourdain? With the weight of not just his own celebrity but the livelihood of everyone surrounding him? I can imagine how that stress combined with a messed-up brain chemistry and, probably, sleep deprivation could have totally distorted his thinking. (I wasn't aware of Kate Spade until she passed.)

The first time I was suicidal, I wasn’t just depressed, I was delusional, I now realize. I not only thought my family and friends would get over it, I thought that they’d be glad to be rid of me. To be honest, I’m not sure how I got through that time. Maybe it’s because I procrastinate a lot and things cleared up for me before I’d gotten around to figuring out how to do it.
 
In more recent episodes when suicidal thoughts have been triggered, I have been acutely aware of how devastating it would be to my loved ones, especially my (now adult) children. That’s kept suicide in the realm of fantasy rather than action. I haven’t, at those times, been willing to pass the pain on.
 
So while it may indeed be incredibly selfish to take one’s own life, I imagine that most people who actually follow through are out of touch and not able to imagine the pain that will ensue for others.
 
I don’t believe family ever “get over” a suicide. Certainly there may be forgiveness, and learning how to go on. But the damage lasts, leaving scars after healing has happened.

Phyllis Diller used to do this joke in her gigs with orchestras:
 
"I was staying at the [local upscale hotel] last night and it was lovely. But the people in the next room! So noisy! At 3:00am they were yelling and banging on the walls.
 
"I kept practicing anyway!"
 
She was a very good classical pianist and did a lot of fundraising shows with orchestras.

I was once one of those bi 30-something dads with a wedding ring. I don't think the place we stayed at Disney had a gym/spa, but I might not have noticed it. I guess I missed some fun. There's something particularly hot about locker room/steam room play that has to do with its spontaneity and official inappropriateness.

He looks like he should be dishing out macaroni in the buffet line at a cafeteria

Are you in fact a massage student or therapist?
If so you could always say you don't know who made the referral but you do do massages. I know of a female trainer at my gym who trades hours of training for hours of massage with a massage therapist so it's not unheard od.

Phyllis Diller used to do this joke in her gigs with orchestras:
 
"I was staying at the [local upscale hotel] last night and it was lovely. But the people in the next room! So noisy! At 3:00am they were yelling and banging on the walls.
 
"I kept practicing anyway!"
 
She was a very good classical pianist and did a lot of fundraising shows with orchestras.

Tip the doormen well and they won't care what you're doing in your apt.

https://archive.org
 
Looks like your blog isn't archived there, unfortunately.

This sucks SO SO SO much. Condolences on your loss!
 
This has happened a LOT with blogs with adult content. I used to follow dudetube years ago when it was on blogger. It got shut down and I was one of the people who advised the guy who runs it to create dubetubeonline.com on an adult-friendly hosting service (I forget which one he chose). Hosting adult-themed blogs on blogger and wordpress.com is extremely risky. It just takes a small handful of complaints for it to get taken down, even if things have been fine for many years. There are SO many blogs that the free hosts don't care about YOUR blog, unfortunately.
 
If you don't have an archive backed up, you might be able to reclaim the posts through one of the internet archive sites (I don't have a specific one to recommend).
 
Start again on a paid host, make your own archive if you don't already, and better luck next time!

@FrequentMassageGetter
I am very sorry, I cannot imagine how I would feel if I were in your shoes.
 
I advise you to move to a paid server, one that is friendly towards adult content. I can recommend the one I use for my blog: https://portal.tmdhosting.com/marketplace
I just paid for one year, with a few extras besides hosting, 95 bucks. Very affordable and gives you much more tools than a free hosting service. You can even choose the location where your blog would be hosted.
 
Whatever you decide, I hope you can be back up soon.

Been there recently ... haven't completely finished doing that (going to back to ABQ to spread ashes in september).
 
My heart goes out to you; condolences.

When I indicated I "Liked" your post, I meant that to indicate that I'm sorry about your situation with your Mom. My father had Alzheimer's. So in many ways I probably have some idea of what you are going thru. I'm keeping you and your Mom in my thoughts.
 
Gman

When my dad died unexpectedly on a Friday evening, my sister, who lives in a state far away, couldn't get off work (she was a doc on call that weekend) until the next weekend. He was cremated, and then we had a funeral about a week after he died. The funeral home who handled the arrangements, not particularly well, managed to charge $4000 for not much!
 
The delay was fine, though, because they had moved near me just a couple of years before, and everyone coming was coming a long distance.
 
My mom has been in hospice care for over 18 months--something that happens with Alzheimer's and few other conditions. She will be cremated, too. One of the hospice guys recommended a low-cost service that will cost about $1000.
 
Over 10 years ago, one of my cousins died of some sort of drug toxicity--I never got the full story. He was single and broke. His parents somehow got talked into embalming him and getting a very nice casket, so there was a viewing, and then he was cremated. They were then asking for help with the $15-20k expenses from the extended family. What a waste of money -- expensive casket that (we assume) was burned up along with him.
 
When my dad died, the funeral home gave us the option of a real coffin, I think, and definitely tried to upsell us on expensive coffin-like boxes for the cremation. I almost laughed at them . . . no way my dad would have approved of spending a lot on a box to be burned in! So we went with the cheapest option, which was still over $100. For a cardboard box.
 
My sister and I are, I guess, semi-estranged, in a truce period at present. We've talked about what to do when my mom dies in terms of a service. By the time she moved here, her dementia was such that even though she was able to be at home for a while she didn't make any friends. So basically no one knows her, relatives have died off . . . and she keeps fading, more and more zombie-like. We have no idea what we'll do or when we'll do it.

One time at Syracuse at the Ramanda 3 years ago I went to get food and a cocktail for my night cap, the bartender gave me this weird look and acted very shy. I get back to my room (I had just joined rentmen) and it starts barking at me email, email, email, email then a text.
 
It was the bartender! He seen me on rentmen, adam4adam AND Grindr I was scared he was gonna snitch on me! But guess what! He hired me instead

I can only share my own experience, and here it is.
 
There have been a couple of times in my life in which I was genuinely considering suicide. In each episode, I was in a place where some part of my brain was telling me very strongly that my friends, spouse, and children would be both better off without me and happy to be rid of me.
 
It seemed like I'd be doing everyone a favor.
 
Yes, I was facing financial and other challenges at the time. But later I woke up and saw how much people loved me and that the financial challenges were things that could be dealt with (and it turned out, in my case, that bankruptcy wasn't the end of the world, but actually a helpful new start).
 
As far as outwardly successful celebrities go, yes, it doesn't make sense to us. But having known a couple of fucked-up rich and famous celebrities (at least in their own world), I can say that I've seen how big the pressures can be. You can be rich and famous and financially over-extended. You can be rich and famous and find the pressure of living up to your own reputation and past successes overwhelming and crushing. You can be rich and famous and hooked on drugs that distort your thinking. You can be rich and famous and get into a lifestyle in which you get chronically sleep deprived and that distorts your thinking. And, perhaps most tragically, you can be rich and famous and then never know if people actually care for you or only want something from you, whether that's money or simply to back in the reflected how of your fame.
 
And as far as I can tell, wealth and fame can be their own soul-destroying addictions. If some part of you thinks you are crap and you are getting rich and/or famous to compensate, each success can end up reinforcing the sense of inferiority once the initial high wears off. And there's always the fear of losing it all. I don't know anything in particular about Sade and Bourdain, or if this applies to them, but I can imagine in a more general way that the fear of becoming a "has been," which happens to every famous person sooner or later, could be terrifying.
 
I remember years ago the jovial and beloved Today show weather guy, Willard Scott, went public about his anxiety and depression. I was pretty young, and almost disbelieving that this guy who seemed so naturally at ease and warm was suffering when off camera, afraid he'd not be able to pull it off next time.
 
My anxiety can get so intense that I can hardly function sometimes, and I have a pretty low-stress life. Someone like Bourdain? With the weight of not just his own celebrity but the livelihood of everyone surrounding him? I can imagine how that stress combined with a messed-up brain chemistry and, probably, sleep deprivation could have totally distorted his thinking. (I wasn't aware of Kate Spade until she passed.)

These comments made me think of this:
There is an Instagram account called
"Dilfs of Disneyworld" - and all it has is pictures of hot dads in the theme parks at Walt Disney World.
If a dad is particularly buff, they say he has "stroller arms".

I was definitely a great experience

I near Indianapolis. Of course, there are the "religious freedom" would-be theocrats claiming he's a victim.
 
The kids have a right to be called by the name they want to be called by.
 
If that's part of the rules of the game, he doesn't have to play the game.
 
What I don't understand is why SO many "Christian" people don't want to follow a course of action for religious reasons, and then go crazy because they are "victims." This guy wants to take the students and the student's parents' right to decide the student's name on to himself. All in the name (supposedly) of Jesus!
 
Here's a conservative columnist's column defending the teacher. The column has gotten a lot of negative response. And helped to polarize the issue. I guess now that we have same-sex marriage and it's more and more accepted as the norm, the white middle-class religious-zealot fear has nowhere to go but to demonize trans kids and immigrants.

I was once one of those bi 30-something dads with a wedding ring. I don't think the place we stayed at Disney had a gym/spa, but I might not have noticed it. I guess I missed some fun. There's something particularly hot about locker room/steam room play that has to do with its spontaneity and official inappropriateness.