The Saddest Thing I've Read In A Long Time

[DeepCleansingBreath]

I don't even know what to say, so I don't have much comment. My heart breaks for him, but I am so angry at his parents. Apparently, they were fundies and...just read the article and the note. Fuck, I can't stop crying thinking about this man...

 

Princeton Student Kills Self Over Childhood Rape...

[DeepCleansingBreath]

A poignant thought from a commenter below the story...

 

by johneusavage239 January 7, 2011 9:34 PM EST Yesterday, I emailed George Zeller's (Bill's father) church/cult (The Middletown Bible: http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/email/emailus.htm) inquiring whether George was born evil or was he taught?

 

Today, George (georgezeller@juno.com) responded: "Rom. 5:12; Rom. 6:23"

 

That's it. Nothing more.

 

Also today, George put out a statement to the media indicating that he would prefer to be left alone while he morns. Why morn if he disowned his son?

 

When Christian zealotry takes over to justify murder, rape, slavery, genocide (mostly everything found in the Old Testament)...

 

How come the Girl Scouts do not have this problem?

 

There is not one recorded incident of anyone killing a person after reading Girl Scout literature. But, what if there was? What if thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of? even millions were killed because of the interpretation of Girl Scout literature? The Girl Scouts would be banned.

 

Accordingly, why haven't certain groups that are referred to as religions?

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8601-504763_162-20027870-1.html?assetTypeId=41&blogId=10391704&tag=contentBody;commentWrapper#ixzz15Td3ULwn

 

[Margee]

THIS is more than sad.................................................

 

For once - Margee can't talk......................

 

 

[SilentLoner]

Here's his note. Damn...

 

I have the urge to declare my sanity and justify my actions, but I assume I'll never be able to convince anyone that this was the right decision. Maybe it's true that anyone who does this is insane by definition, but I can at least explain my reasoning. I considered not writing any of this because of how personal it is, but I like tying up loose ends and don't want people to wonder why I did this. Since I've never spoken to anyone about what happened to me, people would likely draw the wrong conclusions.

 

My first memories as a child are of being raped, repeatedly. This has affected every aspect of my life. This darkness, which is the only way I can describe it, has followed me like a fog, but at times intensified and overwhelmed me, usually triggered by a distinct situation. In kindergarten I couldn't use the bathroom and would stand petrified whenever I needed to, which started a trend of awkward and unexplained social behavior. The damage that was done to my body still prevents me from using the bathroom normally, but now it's less of a physical impediment than a daily reminder of what was done to me.

 

This darkness followed me as I grew up. I remember spending hours playing with legos, having my world consist of me and a box of cold, plastic blocks. Just waiting for everything to end. It's the same thing I do now, but instead of legos it's surfing the web or reading or listening to a baseball game. Most of my life has been spent feeling dead inside, waiting for my body to catch up.

 

At times growing up I would feel inconsolable rage, but I never connected this to what happened until puberty. I was able to keep the darkness at bay for a few hours at a time by doing things that required intense concentration, but it would always come back. Programming appealed to me for this reason. I was never particularly fond of computers or mathematically inclined, but the temporary peace it would provide was like a drug. But the darkness always returned and built up something like a tolerance, because programming has become less and less of a refuge.

 

The darkness is with me nearly every time I wake up. I feel like a grime is covering me. I feel like I'm trapped in a contimated body that no amount of washing will clean. Whenever I think about what happened I feel manic and itchy and can't concentrate on anything else. It manifests itself in hours of eating or staying up for days at a time or sleeping for sixteen hours straight or week long programming binges or constantly going to the gym. I'm exhausted from feeling like this every hour of every day.

 

Three to four nights a week I have nightmares about what happened. It makes me avoid sleep and constantly tired, because sleeping with what feels like hours of nightmares is not restful. I wake up sweaty and furious. I'm reminded every morning of what was done to me and the control it has over my life.

 

I've never been able to stop thinking about what happened to me and this hampered my social interactions. I would be angry and lost in thought and then be interrupted by someone saying "Hi" or making small talk, unable to understand why I seemed cold and distant. I walked around, viewing the outside world from a distant portal behind my eyes, unable to perform normal human niceties. I wondered what it would be like to take to other people without what happened constantly on my mind, and I wondered if other people had similar experiences that they were better able to mask.

 

Alcohol was also something that let me escape the darkness. It would always find me later, though, and it was always angry that I managed to escape and it made me pay. Many of the irresponsible things I did were the result of the darkness. Obviously I'm responsible for every decision and action, including this one, but there are reasons why things happen the way they do.

 

Alcohol and other drugs provided a way to ignore the realities of my situation. It was easy to spend the night drinking and forget that I had no future to look forward to. I never liked what alcohol did to me, but it was better than facing my existence honestly. I haven't touched alcohol or any other drug in over seven months (and no drugs or alcohol will be involved when I do this) and this has forced me to evaluate my life in an honest and clear way. There's no future here. The darkness will always be with me.

 

I used to think if I solved some problem or achieved some goal, maybe he would leave. It was comforting to identify tangible issues as the source of my problems instead of something that I'll never be able to change. I thought that if I got into to a good college, or a good grad school, or lost weight, or went to the gym nearly every day for a year, or created programs that millions of people used, or spent a summer or California or New York or published papers that I was proud of, then maybe I would feel some peace and not be constantly haunted and unhappy. But nothing I did made a dent in how depressed I was on a daily basis and nothing was in any way fulfilling. I'm not sure why I ever thought that would change anything.

 

I didn't realize how deep a hold he had on me and my life until my first relationship. I stupidly assumed that no matter how the darkness affected me personally, my romantic relationships would somehow be separated and protected. Growing up I viewed my future relationships as a possible escape from this thing that haunts me every day, but I began to realize how entangled it was with every aspect of my life and how it is never going to release me. Instead of being an escape, relationships and romantic contact with other people only intensified everything about him that I couldn't stand. I will never be able to have a relationship in which he is not the focus, affecting every aspect of my romantic interactions.

 

Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

 

Relationships didn't work. No one I dated was the right match, and I thought that maybe if I found the right person it would overwhelm him. Part of me knew that finding the right person wouldn't help, so I became interested in girls who obviously had no interest in me. For a while I thought I was gay. I convinced myself that it wasn't the darkness at all, but rather my orientation, because this would give me control over why things didn't feel "right". The fact that the darkness affected sexual matters most intensely made this idea make some sense and I convinced myself of this for a number of years, starting in college after my first relationship ended. I told people I was gay (at Trinity, not at Princeton), even though I wasn't attracted to men and kept finding myself interested in girls. Because if being gay wasn't the answer, then what was? People thought I was avoiding my orientation, but I was actually avoiding the truth, which is that while I'm straight, I will never be content with anyone. I know now that the darkness will never leave.

 

Last spring I met someone who was unlike anyone else I'd ever met. Someone who showed me just how well two people could get along and how much I could care about another human being. Someone I know I could be with and love for the rest of my life, if I weren't so fucked up. Amazingly, she liked me. She liked the shell of the man the darkness had left behind. But it didn't matter because I couldn't be alone with her. It was never just the two of us, it was always the three of us: her, me and the darkness. The closer we got, the more intensely I'd feel the darkness, like some evil mirror of my emotions. All the closeness we had and I loved was complemented by agony that I couldn't stand, from him. I realized that I would never be able to give her, or anyone, all of me or only me. She could never have me without the darkness and evil inside me. I could never have just her, without the darkness being a part of all of our interactions. I will never be able to be at peace or content or in a healthy relationship. I realized the futility of the romantic part of my life. If I had never met her, I would have realized this as soon as I met someone else who I meshed similarly well with. It's likely that things wouldn't have worked out with her and we would have broken up (with our relationship ending, like the majority of relationships do) even if I didn't have this problem, since we only dated for a short time. But I will face exactly the same problems with the darkness with anyone else. Despite my hopes, love and compatability is not enough. Nothing is enough. There's no way I can fix this or even push the darkness down far enough to make a relationship or any type of intimacy feasible.

 

So I watched as things fell apart between us. I had put an explicit time limit on our relationship, since I knew it couldn't last because of the darkness and didn't want to hold her back, and this caused a variety of problems. She was put in an unnatural situation that she never should have been a part of. It must have been very hard for her, not knowing what was actually going on with me, but this is not something I've ever been able to talk about with anyone. Losing her was very hard for me as well. Not because of her (I got over our relationship relatively quickly), but because of the realization that I would never have another relationship and because it signified the last true, exclusive personal connection I could ever have. This wasn't apparent to other people, because I could never talk about the real reasons for my sadness. I was very sad in the summer and fall, but it was not because of her, it was because I will never escape the darkness with anyone. She was so loving and kind to me and gave me everything I could have asked for under the circumstances. I'll never forget how much happiness she brought me in those briefs moments when I could ignore the darkness. I had originally planned to kill myself last winter but never got around to it. (Parts of this letter were written over a year ago, other parts days before doing this.) It was wrong of me to involve myself in her life if this were a possibility and I should have just left her alone, even though we only dated for a few months and things ended a long time ago. She's just one more person in a long list of people I've hurt.

 

I could spend pages talking about the other relationships I've had that were ruined because of my problems and my confusion related to the darkness. I've hurt so many great people because of who I am and my inability to experience what needs to be experienced. All I can say is that I tried to be honest with people about what I thought was true.

 

I've spent my life hurting people. Today will be the last time.

 

I've told different people a lot of things, but I've never told anyone about what happened to me, ever, for obvious reasons. It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you. I don't blame anyone in particular, I guess it's just how people are. Even if I felt like this is something I could have shared, I have no interest in being part of a friendship or relationship where the other person views me as the damaged and contaminated person that I am. So even if I were able to trust someone, I probably would not have told them about what happened to me. At this point I simply don't care who knows.

 

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I'm capable of.

 

So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

 

I'm just a broken, miserable shell of a human being. Being molested has defined me as a person and shaped me as a human being and it has made me the monster I am and there's nothing I can do to escape it. I don't know any other existence. I don't know what life feels like where I'm apart from any of this. I actively despise the person I am. I just feel fundamentally broken, almost non-human. I feel like an animal that woke up one day in a human body, trying to make sense of a foreign world, living among creatures it doesn't understand and can't connect with.

 

I have accepted that the darkness will never allow me to be in a relationship. I will never go to sleep with someone in my arms, feeling the comfort of their hands around me. I will never know what uncontimated intimacy is like. I will never have an exclusive bond with someone, someone who can be the recipient of all the love I have to give. I will never have children, and I wanted to be a father so badly. I think I would have made a good dad. And even if I had fought through the darkness and married and had children all while being unable to feel intimacy, I could have never done that if suicide were a possibility. I did try to minimize pain, although I know that this decision will hurt many of you. If this hurts you, I hope that you can at least forget about me quickly.

 

There's no point in identifying who molested me, so I'm just going to leave it at that. I doubt the word of a dead guy with no evidence about something that happened over twenty years ago would have much sway.

 

You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever. More than a few spent a large part of the session reading their notes to remember who I was. And I have no interest in talking about being raped as a child, both because I know it wouldn't help and because I have no confidence it would remain secret. I know the legal and practical limits of doctor/patient confidentiality, growing up in a house where we'd hear stories about the various mental illnesses of famous people, stories that were passed down through generations. All it takes is one doctor who thinks my story is interesting enough to share or a doctor who thinks it's her right or responsibility to contact the authorities and have me identify the molestor (justifying her decision by telling herself that someone else might be in danger). All it takes is a single doctor who violates my trust, just like the "friends" who I told I was gay did, and everything would be made public and I'd be forced to live in a world where people would know how fucked up I am. And yes, I realize this indicates that I have severe trust issues, but they're based on a large number of experiences with people who have shown a profound disrepect for their word and the privacy of others.

 

People say suicide is selfish. I think it's selfish to ask people to continue living painful and miserable lives, just so you possibly won't feel sad for a week or two. Suicide may be a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but it's also a permanent solution to a ~23 year-old problem that grows more intense and overwhelming every day.

 

Some people are just dealt bad hands in this life. I know many people have it worse than I do, and maybe I'm just not a strong person, but I really did try to deal with this. I've tried to deal with this every day for the last 23 years and I just can't fucking take it anymore.

 

I often wonder what life must be like for other people. People who can feel the love from others and give it back unadulterated, people who can experience sex as an intimate and joyous experience, people who can experience the colors and happenings of this world without constant misery. I wonder who I'd be if things had been different or if I were a stronger person. It sounds pretty great.

 

I'm prepared for death. I'm prepared for the pain and I am ready to no longer exist. Thanks to the strictness of New Jersey gun laws this will probably be much more painful than it needs to be, but what can you do. My only fear at this point is messing something up and surviving.

 

---

 

I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they're dead--one with less hatred and intolerance.

 

If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

 

They live in a black and white reality they've constructed for themselves. They partition the world into good and evil and survive by hating everything they fear or misunderstand and calling it love. They don't understand that good and decent people exist all around us, "saved" or not, and that evil and cruel people occupy a large percentage of their church. They take advantage of people looking for hope by teaching them to practice the same hatred they practice.

 

A random example:

 

"I am personally convinced that if a Muslim truly believes and obeys the Koran, he will be a terrorist." - George Zeller, August 24, 2010.

 

If you choose to follow a religion where, for example, devout Catholics who are trying to be good people are all going to Hell but child molestors go to Heaven (as long as they were "saved" at some point), that's your choice, but it's fucked up. Maybe a God who operates by those rules does exist. If so, fuck Him.

 

Their church was always more important than the members of their family and they happily sacrificed whatever necessary in order to satisfy their contrived beliefs about who they should be.

 

I grew up in a house where love was proxied through a God I could never believe in. A house where the love of music with any sort of a beat was literally beaten out of me. A house full of hatred and intolerance, run by two people who were experts at appearing kind and warm when others were around. Parents who tell an eight year old that his grandmother is going to Hell because she's Catholic. Parents who claim not to be racist but then talk about the horrors of miscegenation. I could list hundreds of other examples, but it's tiring.

 

Since being kicked out, I've interacted with them in relatively normal ways. I talk to them on the phone like nothing happened. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I like pretending I have a family. Maybe I like having people I can talk to about what's been going on in my life. Whatever the reason, it's not real and it feels like a sham. I should have never allowed this reconnection to happen.

 

I wrote the above a while ago, and I do feel like that much of the time. At other times, though, I feel less hateful. I know my parents honestly believe the crap they believe in. I know that my mom, at least, loved me very much and tried her best. One reason I put this off for so long is because I know how much pain it will cause her. She has been sad since she found out I wasn't "saved", since she believes I'm going to Hell, which is not a sadness for which I am responsible. That was never going to change, and presumably she believes the state of my physical body is much less important than the state of my soul. Still, I cannot intellectually justify this decision, knowing how much it will hurt her. Maybe my ability to take my own life, knowing how much pain it will cause, shows that I am a monster who doesn't deserve to live. All I know is that I can't deal with this pain any longer and I'm am truly sorry I couldn't wait until my family and everyone I knew died so this could be done without hurting anyone. For years I've wished that I'd be hit by a bus or die while saving a baby from drowning so my death might be more acceptable, but I was never so lucky.

 

---

 

To those of you who have shown me love, thank you for putting up with all my shittiness and moodiness and arbitrariness. I was never the person I wanted to be. Maybe without the darkness I would have been a better person, maybe not. I did try to be a good person, but I realize I never got very far.

 

I'm sorry for the pain this causes. I really do wish I had another option. I hope this letter explains why I needed to do this. If you can't understand this decision, I hope you can at least forgive me.

 

Bill Zeller

 

---

 

Please save this letter and repost it if gets deleted. I don't want people to wonder why I did this. I disseminated it more widely than I might have otherwise because I'm worried that my family might try to restrict access to it. I don't mind if this letter is made public. In fact, I'd prefer it be made public to people being unable to read it and drawing their own conclusions.

 

Feel free to republish this letter, but only if it is reproduced in its entirety.

 

 

[Overcame Faith]

Terribly sad and so needless.

 

At the very least, I hope the rapist(s) is/are identified and brought to justice.

[Eugene39]

Today, George responded: "Rom. 5:12; Rom. 6:23"

 

That's it. Nothing more.

 

Totally agreed that some fundamentalists have a horrible mindset when it comes to dealing with suicide - personal experience talking. Don't know if you knew him or if maybe you've had lots of problems with depression yourself, so it hits close to home, at any rate, please accept my sympathies.

 

 

[DeepCleansingBreath]

No, I didn't know this person (just came across the news story), but I wish I could have. I am not so naive as to think I could have comforted him, but I would have liked to...I don't know....hug him? Help him? His story and the letter are disturbing on so many levels.

 

I just can't even...breathe...or think straight...knowing I used to believe there was a God and simultaneously believe that things like this happen to people. To children.

 

I am almost 100% sure there is no God at all, but if there is, and you watched someone go through this...FUCK you.

[BrotherJosh]

Not many words to say about something like this...Obviously, his family doesn't really give a flying fuck from the way they have reacted. He was obviously extremely hurt and tormented, I hope his friends are able to find comfort and healing in a situation like this. I don't offer any condolences to the family.

[Knetti]

I think it speaks a lot for how much pain he felt that his suicide note was so long. While I haven't had it nearly so bad as he has, some of what he said I was able to identify with. I really wish someone could have helped him.

[OpheliaGinger]

No, I didn't know this person (just came across the news story), but I wish I could have. I am not so naive as to think I could have comforted him, but I would have liked to...I don't know....hug him? Help him? His story and the letter are disturbing on so many levels.

 

I just can't even...breathe...or think straight...knowing I used to believe there was a God and simultaneously believe that things like this happen to people. To children.

 

I am almost 100% sure there is no God at all, but if there is, and you watched someone go through this...FUCK you.

 

As someone who has lived with depression, I can tell you that just simply being there to listen goes a long way in helping someone.

[Overcame Faith]

I just read the entire suicide note. He was telling all who cared to read his last message why he was driven to take his own life. And in so doing, he told his deepest secrets and bared himself for all to see, but only after his death. The terrible secret, what caused his agony was being repeatedly raped as a child.

 

He described how the sexual abuse affected him, and it was profound. He developed what he called a "darkness." He referred to the darkness by the male pronoun, he or him, depending on the context. He apparently saw the darkness as something like a living entity within himself with its own separate existence and evil control which contaminated those with whom he became intimate. His relationship with women always involved this entity known as the "darkness." Here is a chilling excerpt of what he went through:

 

Relationships always started out fine and I'd be able to ignore him for a few weeks. But as we got closer emotionally the darkness would return and every night it'd be me, her and the darkness in a black and gruesome threesome. He would surround me and penetrate me and the more we did the more intense it became. It made me hate being touched, because as long as we were separated I could view her like an outsider viewing something good and kind and untainted. Once we touched, the darkness would envelope her too and take her over and the evil inside me would surround her. I always felt like I was infecting anyone I was with.

 

He had a terrible fear that he was going to kill someone. Here is what he wrote:

 

I feel an evil inside me. An evil that makes me want to end life. I need to stop this. I need to make sure I don't kill someone, which is not something that can be easily undone. I don't know if this is related to what happened to me or something different. I recognize the irony of killing myself to prevent myself from killing someone else, but this decision should indicate what I'm capable of.

 

He did not know whether what he referred to as the evil inside of him which made him want to kill someone was related to his having been repeatedly raped or not. I certainly don't know the answer to this, but he ultimately had two reasons for his suicide. They are set forth in this quote:

 

So I've realized I will never escape the darkness or misery associated with it and I have a responsibility to stop myself from physically harming others.

 

He could not live with the misery associated with the "darkness" which robbed him of any kind of life. But on top of all of that, which was terribly painful, I'm sure, it sounds as if he was afraid he was some sort of murderer at heart who had to be stopped before he took someone else's life.

 

I never met Bill Zeller and know nothing more about him than what he wrote in his final message. But I believe he searched deep within himself to write what he did and that he was being as open and truthful as was humanly possible because he wanted others, anyone or perhaps everyone, to understand why he was going to do what he was about to do.

 

He was not a potentially evil murderer who had to be stopped. That kind of killer would never for a minute entertain the thought of killing himself to protect his potential victims. Though tragic in that it contributed to his death at his own hands, he was a gentle person who wanted to ensure that no harm came to others because of what he felt was this "evil" inside of him.

 

I believe the evil he felt inside which was pushing him to take a life was directly related to the "darkness." That is, being repeatedly raped as a child is what caused both problems that led to his suicide. What I believe he felt inside of himself that he referred to as "the evil" was a desire to kill the "darkness" which he saw as almost another entity living inside of him. I believe that he mistook the desire to kill the "darkness," or more precisely, his rapist(s), with a desire to kill someone else.

 

This was a terrible tragedy. I wrote this only because I felt like Bill Zeller deserved at least to have someone think about what he must have gone through and to try to make some sense of it.

[Super FZL]

Where is justice when you really need it? Where is benevolence when you really need it? Reading the story and a fraction of his suicide note has put tears in my eyes...and I'm not prone to crying often.

[ireckinso]

I know I'm posting late but I just read this and it hit me pretty hard.

 

I am an outgoing, fun loving, smartass person but I have had my bouts with depression. I committed suicide three years ago. I was legally dead for at least eleven minutes from what I was told. The EMTs who first responded brought me back. I was out or comatose for three days after and they were worried that I would suffer brain damage. After testing, spending weeks in a hospital, going to groups they finally came to the conclusion that I had not suffered brain damage and was fit to rejoin society. I have never discussed this with anyone and had a very difficult time talking to my closest family and wife about it.

 

My point is that I know people look down on those who commit or try to commit suicide. They say they should get help, or they could have talked to me, and so on. Honestly when you are in that spot where doing it becomes a reality there is no other option in your mind at that time.

 

I feel terrible for this man. We have lost as a society with his death.

 

I have read some other posts that seem like some people are dealing with depression, please don't let it get to this point. I think of what I would have missed out on, things do get better.

[ShackledNoMore]

Here's his note. Damn...

 

Thank you for reposting the note here, SL. This choked me up. It is truly tragic.

[Galien]

The saddest part was that he did not feel he could share his pain with anyone. If he had been able to he may still be here. Rest in peace Bill, its probably the first time you ever had any.

 

 

[SleeplessGhost]

It is sad but I almost feel like I understand him. I have tried to take my own life several times for much the same reasons he has described, but I always chicken out at the last moment. I spent years in therapy... But I don't know if they fixed me.

 

Before you all start worrying, I am not planning to commit suicide. I have a wife and daughter that depend on me (I don't care if it is a "selfish" reason, it's what I have to hold on to)

[foolish girl]

[Galien]

It is sad but I almost feel like I understand him. I have tried to take my own life several times for much the same reasons he has described, but I always chicken out at the last moment. I spent years in therapy... But I don't know if they fixed me.

 

Before you all start worrying, I am not planning to commit suicide. I have a wife and daughter that depend on me (I don't care if it is a "selfish" reason, it's what I have to hold on to)

 

I am glad you are still here and I bet you family are too. This past year marks the first year in the last 35 that I have not felt suicidal. Yay! One of the main reasons I left christianity is because the bible says god will not give you anymore than you can bear.

 

BULLSHIT

And all those with depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress and sucidal ideation said AMEN!!

 

[BigVaden]

It really sucks that his 'darkness' as he called it was accompanied by his uncontrollable reluctance to tell anybody. I mean, I understand why he felt that way (as much as I can anyway, having never gone through similar experiences), but I do know that if one of my family, friends or even acquaintances told me they were feeling like this I would stop at nothing to get them to see that life doesn't have to be fucked up and cold.

 

[Margee]

It is sad but I almost feel like I understand him. I have tried to take my own life several times for much the same reasons he has described, but I always chicken out at the last moment. I spent years in therapy... But I don't know if they fixed me.

 

Before you all start worrying, I am not planning to commit suicide. I have a wife and daughter that depend on me (I don't care if it is a "selfish" reason, it's what I have to hold on to)

 

I am glad you are still here and I bet you family are too. This past year marks the first year in the last 35 that I have not felt suicidal. Yay! One of the main reasons I left christianity is because the bible says god will not give you anymore than you can bear.

 

BULLSHIT

And all those with depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress and sucidal ideation said AMEN!!

 

AMEN GALIEN!

[Kyle]

No, I didn't know this person (just came across the news story), but I wish I could have. I am not so naive as to think I could have comforted him, but I would have liked to...I don't know....hug him? Help him? His story and the letter are disturbing on so many levels.

 

I just can't even...breathe...or think straight...knowing I used to believe there was a God and simultaneously believe that things like this happen to people. To children.

 

I am almost 100% sure there is no God at all, but if there is, and you watched someone go through this...FUCK you.

 

Well said

 

 

It is sad but I almost feel like I understand him. I have tried to take my own life several times for much the same reasons he has described, but I always chicken out at the last moment. I spent years in therapy... But I don't know if they fixed me.

 

Before you all start worrying, I am not planning to commit suicide. I have a wife and daughter that depend on me (I don't care if it is a "selfish" reason, it's what I have to hold on to)

 

I am glad you are still here and I bet you family are too. This past year marks the first year in the last 35 that I have not felt suicidal. Yay! One of the main reasons I left christianity is because the bible says god will not give you anymore than you can bear.

 

BULLSHIT

And all those with depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress and sucidal ideation said AMEN!!

 

 

AMEN

[Onyx]

Dear Bill,

 

What you went through was terrible, may you rest in peace, may you have the peace you have sought so long.

I hope your girlfriend who was so kind to you, will remember you as the beautiful man you were in life, I hope she will keep the memories alive in her head, possibly of you smiling and laughing, away from the injust and evil darkness that was engulfing you for so intolerably long. Perhaps you gave her a flower and she loved you and your thoughtfulness in the months you were together. A flower and a beautiful woman is better than an overbearing God and 'family'. It should be a crime to trivialise and make crappy a life, it should be cherished and embraced but sadly, 'family' made that impossible for you. You are not a murderer, you are not evil, you are not worthless and you are not who the tormentors say you are. You are a life-preserver, you are kind, you are valuable and you are yourself. Vita brevis sed memoriam aeternam. Life is short, but memory is forever.

 

Love,

Onyx

 

P.S I never met nor knew you but you sound like a decent person with a wonderful dream.

[Yrth]

Thanks for reposting the note, I couldn't find it anywhere else. 404 error or some such.

 

I read the whole note. It's really a shame that he couldn't talk with anyone about it. Actually, it's a shame he didn't have an Ex-C account where he could have at least discussed / let it out anonymously. He's a programmer... why didn't he do that? Did he? Did we lose an Ex-C member? Any of that sound familiar? :troubled:

 

One thing that resonated with me was the bit about growing up in a house where love was proxied through a God he couldn't believe in. Sounds about right.

[hereticzero]

Wow, that is too bad he was so depressed he killed himself. It is a shame he never got counseling for PTSD, it may have made a difference. I believe that rapes among males are the least reported sexual assaults. I cannot imagine how many boys are molested every year but I be the figure is very high.

[SleeplessGhost]

I think that something like one in six boys are molested. That is a 11 year old statistic though...