THINKING ABOUT THE END

[PopeBeanieModerator]

About Paulina, and reflecting on Breathe, mentioned in your first post. For other readers, too. The recording’s been played when the band’s offstage during intermission. She finally played and sang it live at the Pepsi 2023 concert, for the first time. I thought she was unable to finish it, before realizing only today, it’s a very short song.

The song right before that, Black Holes, is also dark, but beautifully sung. I teared up a bit, sent the link to my brother who also teared up over it. (After introducing him to The Warning fairly recently, he replied “When do the goosebumps stop?”.) I’ve held off on mentioning Breathe to him or asking if he’s listened to it.

I perceive Breathe as even a darker, bleak song, with the irony (again) of being sung so beautifully. It’s so beautiful, reactors to it are deeply affected, and yet many don’t recognize, much less discuss the irony.

And so the theme of death, so prominent in so many TW songs, even for a whole album. I don’t cognitively identify with it yet, but I feel deeply with Pau’s obvious feelings around it, and how she feels in Black Holes when (I think) she’s actually feeling for others addicted to drugs.

@unseen, have you thought about what you might want to say to Pau, if it ever seemed like she’s deeply troubled by the prospect of death? (I know she’s already talked about it, and a possible afterlife, to some degree.) If she ever considered and followed through with suicide for some reason — and I’m not implying that there’s any reason that she would, I am certain it would destroy a lot of fans, too.

Lyrics to Breathe

[I added the commas, because she emphasizes the last word or phrase, IMO giving it deeper impact]

The water’s getting way too cold
I thought it’d learn to keep me warm
But it’s reaching down my throat
And it’s freezing all my bones, still

I try to reach over the endless waves
Can’t call for help, so I’ll just call my name
But not even I can hear
I’ll just disappear without, a trace

Is it so wrong, wrong
To want to be alright?
Perfect in pain
It’s the same all the time

I try my very best to stay afloat
But there’s something down there that just wants me, close
And I beg myself to breathe
But there’s nothing within reach, now

Is it so wrong, wrong
To want to be alright?
Perfect in pain
It’s the same all the time

https://www.letssingit.com/the-warning-lyrics-breathe-fsc17kz
LetsSingIt – The Internet Lyrics Database

[UnseenParticipant]

PopeBeanie wrote:

@unseen, have you thought about what you might want to say to Pau, if it ever seemed like she’s deeply troubled by the prospect of death? (I know she’s already talked about it, and a possible afterlife, to some degree.) If she ever considered and followed through with suicide for some reason — and I’m not implying that there’s any reason that she would, I am certain it would destroy a lot of fans, too.

I would think that if someone is “deeply troubled by the prospect of death,” they would be among the last to consider suicide. Why leap directly into that which one fears? Suicides consider death to be a remedy, do they not?

I really don’t know what to tell anyone considering suicide beyond the burdens they’ll be handing their survivors. Their sense of guilt for not seeing it coming and wondering if they played a causal role, the practical and legal cleaning up that follows any death, whether natural or suicidal. Often, suicides do it because they feel they’re a burden on loved ones, but committing suicide doesn’t make things easy for those they leave behind. Probably the opposite.

What are your thoughts?

[UnseenParticipant]

Never mind. The above reply didn’t show up shortly after I saved it so I wrote another one here, and when I saved it, the reply I thought lost suddenly was there. So, I deleted the one I wrote here.

• This reply was modified 4 months, 3 weeks ago by  Unseen.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

I thought about suicide in only one period of time, back when I was suffering from social anxiety so badly that I stopped going to work, and depression set in. The day I drove out to jump off a cliff (literally) became a comedy of errors, getting a random flat tire on the way, during a miserable rainstorm. I.e. I couldn’t even get to the cliff, and I might not even have found the edge of cliff in the increasing darkness in the evening. (When I told my wife this, she was angry and just said “Well you didn’t do it, did you?”, like it was a insignificant topic. It just added to my personal tragedy/comedy.)

Anyway, things progressed to where she finally gave up on me completely and left, which was a good thing for her, and I’m happy for her. I instantly became officially homeless, which surprisingly enabled a cascade of physical and mental health benefits to kick in and lead to a total recovery after seven years of mental health therapy. Sharing living space with six other ex-homeless vets for a year woke me up to the realization that I could actually help others in spite of my personal problems, and I’ve never felt suicidal urges since that first day I met those veterans.

Your paragraph about how suicide would affect family is very relevant, especially since it was my daughters who stepped in for a week to drive me around and get signed up for care. They saved my life, at least in terms of capacity to find happiness. And in terms of “purpose”, too, as it’s my goal to give back to society.

So as far as possible remedies, my instinct is to talk about how others in one’s life matter, especially in terms of just being available for someone to talk to, and helping them also find more people willing to listen, and gain from those other people’s thoughts, too. Almost always, my first goto when it comes to realizing how I should treat myself with empathy stems from imagining how I’d treat others with my inborn feeling of empathy. And this should include plan and purpose, in the context of both self and others. I just had NO idea that help and caring people existed and were locatable, before ten years ago.

I think that at least one friend of mine would have killed himself by now, had it not been for caring about a family member he loves, and a community/audience of people that he interacts with a couple days a week or so. His most challenging issues have to do with dealing with physical pain. Pau may be still dealing with an emotional pain. I don’t want to speculate further on that, so I can only speak to it in generalities.

[UnseenParticipant]

A bit of an aside, but I had a 2 year experience with clinical depression, but never toyed with the idea of suicide. It more or less coincided with unwisely getting involved with an unhappily married woman. I hoped she would leave her situation for me, and I tried to steer her in that direction. She had a habit of cutting the relation off but coming back to it. This happened several times and, along with unemployment, contributed to my depression.

To anyone who equates depression with sadness, I say that no, it’s not being sad. It’s a lot more like being lost. Lost in a deep dark forest with no way out.

In the end, several things happened that brought me out of it. First, I got help from a therapist working for Lutheran Family Services. She agreed to keep it nonreligious. After several visits, when I came in and told her I had this insight: “When you try to control someone, they control you.” In psychological jargon, that situation is called “enmeshment.” At this point, she invited me to end therapy, which I did.

I was not out of the woods just yet. The most fruitful thing you can do to get out of depression is to stop being a leaf floating along in its stream. In other words, do something. Seeking therapy was already part of that. Here’s the next part which worked for me: I treated my depression like it was a bothersome person who was very critical of me. In my mind, I told negative thoughts to go away. Eventually, they did.

The last thing I did was to finally end it with the woman. Since she couldn’t end it and make it stick (she kept coming back), I ended it with finality.

I’ve been free of anything beyond ordinary depression ever since. My instances of depression since then have been brief and transient.

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