and i lost my hope in everything

UNEDITED / CONTENT: SUICIDE, SUICIDISM, SANEISM, ABLEISM, COPS, ETC...

over one year ago, i started writing more honestly about my experiences feeling/thinking/being constantly suicidal, and of previously being homeless. many things brought me to this. one was the change of usa's "national suicide prevention lifeline"'s phone number to a faster national phone shortcode: 988. now more than ever, it's faster to, when you're crying and opening up about your deepest darkest thoughts and feelings and traumas, get the cops to come to your home against your will and become incarcerated (i.e. involuntarily "hospitalized") and treated demeaningly like a prisoner, especially if you don't "behave".

the day 988 rolled out — july 15th, 2022 — i panicked. i knew i had to do something. i worried about my last ex, who was chronically suicidal, who stabbed me in the back shortly after i broke up with them even though i still supported them immensely, an event that caused the worst suicidality (i'm starting to hate that word) of probably my *entire* life, that has still yet to dissipate, over 2 whole years later. i've lost my desire to eat ever since, which you *know* means things aren't good. even when i prayed to God to kill me years ago, even when i literally was attempting to kill myself, i would cave because i got hungry. i am a person of color, after all (lol). i couldn't even starve myself properly when i had an eating disorder, because i didn't like being hungry.

i blocked out everything before 2016. but honestly, i first blocked out everything before 2004, and then everything before 2008, and then everything before 2012. mango, something about leap years, eh? but i also blocked out everything before 2015... and everything before 2023... and... and you get the picture.

i used to want to live, even while severely depressed and suicidal, more than i do now.

and there is no amount of people telling me they love me that will prevent my desires for, and impulses towards, killing myself. i realized something recently — and i'm not going to speak for anybody but myself — that perhaps, being suicidal is a disconnection from reality.

the reality, is...

it *might* get better.

but. it's *not* for certain, that it *will*.

especially if you're poor or homeless, and disabled.

but as i write that, i realize that on the other side, being suicidal is the deepest connection *to* reality.

staying alive in this world, as a suicidal human being, is impossible for *so* many suicidal human beings, in this world that hates suicidal human beings.

and life is hard if you're a poor human being in this world. and even billionaires are mortal, no matter how much in denial of that they are, no matter how much they try to contradict and contract against that certainty.

it's even impossible for some suicidal rich people to stay alive.

i've done a lot of great things in my life that i forgot. i've written beautiful writing while sleeping on couches and being in utter denial about my own situation. i've received love letters from people way older than me who love my writing, telling me i saved their lives with my writing, when i was secretly suicidal and 21. other people of color thanked me for teaching them a lot about racism, when i was secretly homeless and constantly imagining myself shooting myself and 25.

i didn't care about my own life when i planned to shoot myself in 2016. i really didn't. and i don't really care about my own life now, either. i know my work is important. i don't *feel* that way, at *all*, but i logically can imagine that it's true. that's the result of years of daily gaslighting, in the accurate sense of the term. being lied to and insulted every day until you're not really sure of your own narrative, even though you quite truly still know the objective facts about what happened.

so, usa's national suicide prevention lifeline changed to 988, on july 15th, 2022. and i made a quick post about it, because i was panicking. i was panicking for all the suicidal people who might die because of the change. not necessarily because they’d kill themself. but because maybe a cop would kill them first.

i was worried about my last ex. not because i wanted, or want, them in my life. but because yes, i *do* care, just on principle. i care about *all* suicidal people. i don't want people to suffer. and, constantly suicidal people? they're *my* people.

i wanted to not write so stream-of-consciousness. but once again. i've done a lot of great things in my life that i forgot. i think i've somehow been in even more pain in the last year, when not much happened, than i ever *have* been.

i guess all i know is that i need to write.

and that most people don't really care about you. not in this world, anyway. most people only really care about themselves. and i didn't. until recently. i can kinda see why y'all like it so much. at least i make an active effort to try not to be cruel. i *don't* think that's true for most people.

i'm not perfect, either. the messiness of human life scares me.

tonight, a stranger asked me, "so, you said you're constantly suicidal.

can i ask you a question?

what keeps you hanging on?"

i said: "i don't want to hurt myself. i don't want to hurt my body. and i honestly don't want to die. it's *other* people who suck, and i don't want to live in a world with them.

i'm actually very scared of dying."

but wishing for non-existence doesn't actually care about that, at least for me. andrea gibson wrote —

"your sister thought the hearse was a limousine
'til she asked where it was going
and then she knew for sure

that's what a word like heaven will do
but heaven wasn’t what you were aiming for
you didn’t think the other side would be better
you thought the other side would be nothing at all

imagine choosing nothing at all
imagine something
hurting that bad"

{ — the day you died because you wanted to, by andrea gibson }

i didn't know i was in pain. i am not the only one whom therapy doesn't fix (because human beings aren't things to be fixed). i am not the only one who hates the usameriKKKan psychiatric-medical-industrial complex. or 988. or the incarceration they call "care".

i don't know how i feel. i've actually never had anybody close to me kill themself. i think i imagined it, because *i* so desperately want to. and i know it seems "crazy" to write basically public suicide notes to people who are giving me money to support me. i didn't really give you informed consent, but this is an emergency, did you know? we are all shut up in our little individualist capitalist bubbles. it takes heartbreak to care for others, and it's painful. i get it, now.

so people like me, just sink to the bottom.

my parents never loved me, so i just need to think of a select few people, and imagine they love my work. and that will carry me through.

all i know is, the girl i held onto life for when i was 23, the girl i supported when i was 22 through her grief of her friend killing themself, the girl i told myself, i would not kill myself because i did not want to put her through that again.

all i know is, that girl, the week before i was secretly planning on shooting myself on my 26th birthday, she lied to me to try to manipulate me to go into """mental" ""health"""care""" against my will. the funny thing is, if she'd just talked to me like a human being that day, and asked me about it, i would have went in willingly. sitting on the bench outside of the """mental" "health"" urgent "care"", the white woman worker asked me if i wanted to go in. the voice in my head talked to me. i said no.

i didn't want to go in because the girl lied to me.

"i hear a voice in my head," i said, matter-of-factly.

the white woman worker asked me what the voice said.

"it tells me to drink water and take care of myself," i said, because it did.

"that's good," she said, and she let me go.

the girl i once considered one of my best friends then left me at a motel in downtown san francisco with my two suitcases. i didn't even have a cell phone at the time. she did not offer to help me pay for the motel, so i struggled to get cash out at the ATM while literally hearing loud voices in my head, some of which were actually extremely violent and menacing. i was *not* okay. (i say this, because hearing voices doesn't necessarily mean somebody's not okay!) she said she would check up on me later. she didn't. she ignored the calls from the psych prison in seattle on my own birthday, the day i planned to shoot myself. a few weeks before that, she had just interviewed me for her school project on "asian-american mental health". less than a year before that, she had fundraised for "suicide prevention".

i almost died the day after she left me at that motel. i was completely nonfunctional, wandering around san francisco, all the hotels didn't have rooms, or i was confused, i didn't have a phone, all the motels near the airport were closed the front desks were empty the rooms were all full. the voice now screamed in the voice of the white male ""anti-racist" "feminist" "ally"" and paid full-time with benefits ""professional" "activist"" who called the cops on me, 2 months earlier. the voice said that if he bumped into me on a random street corner in san francisco, he'd call the cops on me again. the thing is, he almost definitely *would* have. even though i grew up in northern california, often going to san francisco on the weekends and taking BART as a teenager without my parents, and he was a motherfucking white boy rich tech transplant.

and i knew that calling the cops on a "mentally ill" trans person of color, especially someone who’s homeless, meant possible murder, at the very least police brutality. so i was rightfully scared that white boy was trying to kill me.

anyway. i'm not going to tell you the *whole* story right now. i went off track again.

when i was 23, i didn't kill myself because i wanted to live for my friend, who already had a friend who’d killed themself, and i didn't want to see(?) her go through that pain again. when i was 25, she "fundraised for suicide prevention", interviewed me about "asian-american mental health", and then a few weeks later, lied to me and manipulated me, then dumped me outside a motel in downtown san francisco alone with my two suitcases when i was suicidal and wasn't functioning at all and hearing violent voices in my head and i had no cell phone and barely any money, and then lied about checking up on me again later, and then didn't talk to me for a month. right before i secretly planned to shoot myself.

who *wouldn't* be suicidal, amirite?

for 7 years, i barely wrote anything or existed online because i was scared the white boy would call the cops on me again, or do something to hurt me again, and i didn't have at all the money, social connections, resources, health, abilities, housing stability, financial stability, or social support who would help me if he did that — just like i didn't on the day he called the cops on me. also, a bunch of other whites called the cops on me for merely existing in public for years after that, in many separate instances (including this year, too!).

he knows what he promised me multiple times, and he knows that he broke his promises. nobody asks to be homeless and unwell. he probably made a performative tweet about Jordan Neely (Rest in Peace) a few months ago in may, just like every other fucking fascist saneist did. he probably did that, after calling the cops on a homeless mentally ill person of color asking him for help (that he himself promised to give), and turning all his powerful social connections against them, which led me to come very, very, very close to buying a [redacted] and shooting myself in public in san francisco.

in *public*.

honestly, i was going to do it near the ocean. i didn't think that that beach was going to be crowded, because i don't think it usually is.

i didn't think other people could see me, you see. i didn't know that if i did that, other people would even notice or care. i truly did not realize that until recently, and it *still* hasn't sunk in.

do i still exist? i don't want to.

i used to think i had atypically bad luck. i eventually realized it was ableism is saneism is ableism. oh, and you know. white supremacy, anti-asian racism, misogyny, transmisia, queermisia, Sinomisia, etc. too. a *lot* of *racialized* gender-based violence. and classism. and all of that other shit.

society treats my life like it's worth nothing. even if i had more social capital, my "opinions" and values are so "controversial" that i'm in danger by fascists anyway. i wish i could give up on this (mostly unpaid) job (of writing to try to fight for liberation), honestly. i always do. so maybe it's a *good* thing i took a nonconsensual break of 7ish years...

so, to recap:

i used to not kill myself for this girl, because i didn't want her to be sad again. then she interviewed me about mental health, and a few weeks later lied to me and manipulated me and then left me outside alone and homeless with no phone or money when i was clearly not functioning, the week before i secretly planned to shoot myself, and then ignored my calls for weeks and eventually told me she didn't even know why she tried to "help" me. she now pretends to care about homeless people and disabled trans people and not calling the cops, too.

moral injury.

stabbing me into my heart.

i'm selfish and a liar sometimes just like everyone else is sometimes.

that's unrelated, i'm just thinking about how human and messy and imperfect we all are. cliché, i *know*.

anyway, i still feel love for her. of course i do. i haven't spent christmas with a friend since 2013, i haven't had a halfway decent birthday since 2013.

people don't like "mentally ill" people. not *really*. you with the "mental health advocate" in your social media bio and even dating app profile — you'd donate *thousands* of dollars to a nonprofit-industrial complex entity, a million times over, in a million different lifetimes, before you'd even *consider* listening to the screaming crying homeless human being on the street. don't lie to me. :) [smiling face emoticon]

*note: this is not to say that you necessarily should — not because they're "scary", but because *i'm* afraid *you'll* fuck it up, and hurt them even more — unless you know for sure you know how to make the situation *better*, not *worse*. you don't necessarily need training, but you *do* need a lot of genuine compassion (not pity), anti-saneist values *and actions/behavior*, and knowledge about resources without being paternalistic. lived experience helps a lot, too. but no matter what you do, *do NOT call the cops.*

the way almost *everybody* has treated me, *truly* makes me feel like if i actually killed myself, a lot of these public "mental health advocates" and "leftists" and "activists" and "abolitionists" and "good people" would barely even care.

or, you know. they’d write some bullshit elegy, and *pretend* they cared.

or, maybe, you know, my ghost would haunt them. yeah, i think that's more accurate... hm..... okay y'all, don't worry. just in case i die, my ghost will haunt you! :) [smiling face emoticon]

don't worry. i'm not going to die today. i forgot that i existed. in 2015, in september, i *also* wrote about suicide. i came out about being suicidal publicly for the first time, outside of teenaged online journals in the walled garden of "friends only" posts in the golden age of the internet (the 2000s — i'm half-joking). but i ended it with a lie. i implied i was "over" it. but i really, really, *really* wasn't. a lot of people really liked that post. i don't even know what date i wrote it on. i didn't keep much records, for once, of dates in those years. i do *not* think that that is a good thing (for me and my passion for dates on the solar calendar and timekeeping and keeping factual logs of real *history*, anyway).

maybe everybody's forgotten about me. but i haven't forgotten them. i'm weird like that. maybe it's because i have unfinished business, or something. can't die/live until i take care of that, i guess.

i was happier before 2023. and i was happier before i started going to therapy regularly, in 2016. i was way, way, *way* happier before a middle-aged man labelled me with a "disorder" after talking to me for 5 minutes, a month before that. i was happier when my beliefs, my brain, my mind my heart my bodymindheart, was even more "in the clouds", than it is now. i was happier the year i attempted suicide every day, than i am now. i wonder why that is.

i think that part of me is missing, that's why. i knew i didn't have the money or social connections or clear-headedness to bail me out if something bad went down with cops while i was dissociating/dissociated. so i just tried to stop being myself. i beat myself down and forced myself down with violence and coercion and pain and threats and insults, just like my abusive father did. i did my best, and i think i *did* unfortunately have to do that, simply in an attempt to prevent further violence from others against me, sadly.

so what now?

i should probably try to remember what happened before 2016. i was happier when i wanted to shoot myself than i am now, trying to see "reality" the way most of you in this universe do. the people who read my work in 2010-2015 didn't just disappear. the past, and other people, and the people who hurt me, didn't just stop existing, just because i wanted them to.

sometimes, when i get the most most *mostest* suicidal, i feel like praying is the only thing that might change anything. but i'm too scared to talk to God these days. i'm scared of what answer i might hear back.

i can't deal with change. change is death, and death is change. sometimes, when i feel most hopeless, i think about praying. but i stopped believing in my own powers, my own magic, in 2016. i was punished for my magic, just like any good child character in a feel-good family movie is. my magic is honesty, and me screaming and crying just means i'm more honest than you are.

sometimes, when i feel most suicidal, i think about praying. but i stopped believing in the power of love in 2016. that was the worst thing that's ever happened to me.

i thought about not publishing this tonight. but hey, this might be the only thing that saves my life. being honest about all of this. it took me years, obviously, to start talking about it.

sometimes, when i feel most suicidal, i want to talk to gOD.

oh, i remember now another reason why i quoted andrea gibson earlier.

"that's what a word like heaven will do
but heaven wasn’t what you were aiming for
you didn’t think the other side would be better.
you thought the other side would be nothing at all.
imagine choosing nothing at all.
imagine something
hurting that bad."

i stopped trying to kill myself after i tried to stop believing in God. i stopped trying to kill myself after i realized i could no longer be *certain* that there *was* an "afterlife".

i stopped trying to kill myself after i stopped believing in a guaranteed afterlife.

i was still *suicidal*.

i'm still *suicidal*.

but i stopped *trying* to kill myself.

i don't want to die; i just don't want to live here.

show your solidarity. support me monthly.

/