Going through it.
It's been a rough few weeks. One of my main reasons for not killing myself for a long time was that my dad and I had a sort of reverse suicide pact, where we promised not to kill ourselves while the other party is alive. I would get close and then think about how it would affect him and I'd find a way to keep going. But he's not around for me to let down anymore.
So I put a gun in my mouth a couple nights ago. But I remembered I promised several people that if it came down to drinking again or killing myself I'd give drinking a shot, even though I think I'd rather die. So I did neither and started taking antidepressants again. I'm really averse to it for a lot of reasons that I don't really feel like elaborating on, but it's probably a less bad idea than the alternatives.
I mentioned it already but I've been sort of doing triage with my vices -- indulging in the less volatile/critical stuff so I don't relapse in the serious stuff. Which basically just means being a hikikomori neet weeb again, instead of a homeless drunk.
Whisper of the Heart is a good movie. The Cat Returns is a good movie. Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko is a good manga. Tonight I'm going to watch the Tomo-chan anime and eat chinese food, and hopefully get in a good enough mood to lift. If anybody has recommendations for romcom slop manga in that vein, I'm looking.
Update:
Bupropion is alright.
I definitely feel less, which is good and bad. I think the process of grieving is effectively on hold indefinitely, which is bad because grieving is good. But also I haven't shot myself, and it's easier to do stuff now. And I've started actually liking things for the first time in a long time. I've been playing music again, even some stuff in major keys for once, and said yes to some tentative plans with friends and family. I'm secretly still planning on killing myself eventually, but like ten years from now instead of ten days, and the list of things I'd like to do first has grown a little. Which is good enough.
I'm kind of blown away by how supportive some people have been following my dad's death. People I would never have expected it from. I'm reminded of the Nick Cave quote:
It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people. It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world, of its very soul, to understand that it was crying out for help. It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope.
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, [...] keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.
Been spending some time with some old friends and family, trying to nurture those relationships, trying not to withdraw and isolate. A friend of mine is going through a tough time and asked for advice, and I put him onto one of the books I never shut up about (Complex PTSD: From Surviving To Thriving by Pete Walker) and he read it in two days and said it changed his life, which is pretty much how I feel about it as well. So that sort of tore down a wall between us and we've been able to actually be there for each other in a way I never expected, which is nice. And another friend isn't able to be there in the same way but he's someone I share a lot of interests with, which is nice. And a couple others I've been able to help make positive changes, which is nice.
I've been working on cutting out the vices I allowed myself to indulge in to get through it, chiefly comfort eating right now. Last few weeks I was the heaviest I've ever been, but also the strongest I've ever been, which is an interesting feeling. Just finished my first extended fast since August, I'm hoping to do a 72 or 96 each week until Thanksgiving, maybe longer if it seems viable. Logging data and giving it time. I'm just about finished going through the SMART Recovery workbook and creating separate sections in my notebook for each vice, in order of severity of consequence, which I recommend to anyone trying to quit anything. I'm thankful I drew a hard line and didn't let myself relapse into alcoholism or womanizing. Honestly I'd recommend this strategy of mindful triage of vices as a way of getting through serious trials as well -- e.g. eating too much instead of drinking too much. I realized talking about it at a meeting that my drinking got so bad because I had cut out so many other things, so learning from that and intentionally doing the opposite has become something I'm proud of.
Might keep watching weeb shit for a while though, I watched the Bocchi The Rock recap movie and it looks better than I expected it to be. Speaking of, if anybody knows about a chinese cartoon that deals with actual music theory @ me. I had hoped there'd be some in Blue Giant. Kids on the Slope maybe? My Lai in April? Who knows.
My dad spent most of his life stuck in one rust belt shithole for complicated but legitimate reasons and didn't get to take a real vacation in twenty years, so I'm planning on taking his ashes to all the places he wanted to go, and the places I wanted to take him. Today in researching that, I looked up the route taken by Robert Pirsig in another book I never shut up about, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, and discovered that not only does it happen to run right past the mountain I climbed last year -- which is insane because the book features mountain climbing and is part of what put the idea in my head -- but the mountain he describes climbing in the book happens to be roughly eighty miles from the one I climbed, which has me pretty chuffed at the moment. Especially because I've been wanting to go back there and climb the mountain next to it, and this is a damn good excuse.
Life's funny sometimes.
