Breaking the Habit

Watching "The Bridge" on More4 about people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge probably wasn't a good idea.

I'm capable of thinking some extraordinary things about myself. Suicide is a good example of this. I've been fascinated, if that's the right word, by suicide for most of my life. It's not really an interest in other people's suicides (which I feel is always tragic, and it troubles me that these people feel such pain, so hopeless that they take their lives) it's more an interest in the concept of killing myself... yet it's not really thinking about actually doing the deed in a planning sorta sense (much as I whinge here often enough about how pathetic and hopeless I am, I have much to live for). I'm really going to struggle to actually explain what I mean. Do other people ever think about it? I really have no idea.

It has occurred to me, on and off, that life would be a whole lot easier if I wasn't living it. Yet I have no reason not to, beyond the fact that life is complex, difficult and I really don't understand so much of it. I find it darkly amusing to suggest that the only reason I'm still here is the embarrassing prospect of having to explain myself in the afterlife: "why'd I kill myself? Dunno really... I just couldn't be bothered with living". It's a pretty poor excuse for bailing out. It's not really true of course... but there is an element of apathy there. And maybe that's more depressing than anything else. I could probably make so much more of my life than I currently am, I just don't put the effort in.

I could probably whinge on for a long time about the state of my life and the way I live it.. and most of it wouldn't even be true. Some of it I'd kinda believe, much of it I'd mostly not believe but say it anyway. I'm not sure I understand why. I'm not quite sure why I talk myself down as much as I do either... I talk myself out of taking any real risks, making any real changes, and I talk myself into thinking things are much worse than they are. I don't imagine I even get close to the short of despair "jumpers" must feel... but I don't what they must feel. I don't know, in all honestly, what the inside of anyone else's head looks like at all. I'm inclined to believe I'm the only person on the planet that thinks the way I do, that everyone else is somehow reading from a different set of rules and life makes perfect sense to them. But maybe everyone else feels that too.