I exchanged the last of my U.S. cash for NT dollars late last month, so I'm officially looking at the end of funds, i.e., the supposed end of my life. I suppose I should put a disclaimer here (or trigger warning? spoiler alert?) that this all is only a reflection of current thoughts and not necessarily a projection of future action. My primary truism regarding suicide still applies that if I'm not doing something right now, it's fair considered I'm not doing anything at all. And I'm not doing anything right now, I'm blogging.
I have about three month's worth of funds left with no more "buffer" (that was the last of the U.S. cash) and no intention or desire to do anything about it. I know I've blogged this many times before, projecting how long I have left in terms of funds running out, and all of those times funds have come through, all those times I still had that buffer of U.S. cash. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote about it before, was I being dramatic? Crying wolf? Maybe I was testing myself, practicing what it might feel like to face the end of funds?
That last one sounds like something my subconscious would do, and if that's the case I think the practice paid off. All those times before I don't think I did so well. I'd feel anxious and desperate despite how disparate that was to my philosophy; basically getting caught up in the emotions of particular circumstances – exactly what mindfulness practice trains not to do. Now, this time, it's supposedly fer reals, it's serial; no buffer, no reserve, no reprieve, no miracles, no savior, no windfall, no stuffed mattress, no cartoon safe filled with NT cash falling through my ceiling. The cash will be gone in a few months, and when the cash is gone, the cash is gone. That means no mo' money. Great! Faboo, that was the plan. No point to those previous reactions, better to just prepare.
This is a big deal. It's nothing to be dramatic about, but I also don't want to downplay that it's a major marker signaling the end of my current life path. John's blog was mostly about his experience with terminal cancer and dealing and doing his best to live with it, but then he reached that point, that marker in the last month that signaled it was over (even though it might not have been so clear to him at the time) and there was no more treating or dealing with the cancer, no more fighting it. It just became about the non-stop, excruciating pain and managing it with military-grade the best big pharma painkillers until the end. For me, no matter what mind games I played with myself, no matter what neurotic dysfunction or flaky waffling I wallowed in, the end of funds, running out of money was always, always, always endgame.
That was the plan. No matter what paltry, lame excuses I made to live on, no matter how many times I tried and chickened out, the plan was to constantly make life decisions that would funnel me to the point where I would reach the end of my funds and there would be no surviving the decision of suicide at that point. Ironically, it was my parents who foiled the plan for so long by providing base funds (which they thought were supplemental to my income because in their minds they simply couldn't conceive of me being unemployed as I have been for the past decade) that kept me not only alive, but reasonably, relatively comfortable.
Chronic suicidal ideation is survivable in a similar way that bipolar, schizophrenia, PTSD, etc. are survivable. Those, of course, aren't death sentences per se, whereas if suicidal ideation becomes acute, survivability goes down because that's its nature. But if it remains chronic that means there are still mental mechanisms leaning towards living embedded in the consideration and contemplation of suicide and living with it becomes possible.
I did and was all that but then I added a "fail-safe" (or its opposite, "success-danger"?), a few extra lines of code in the software of mental mechanisms that guaranteed that someday I would succeed in committing suicide instead of just living and getting by with the suicidal ideation. I basically sabotaged chronic suicidal ideation so that it wasn't survivable. The plan was that I set up the conditions so that I would have to commit suicide (by agreement with myself) when I had no more support (money) for living. And I'd never be desperate or motivated enough to make the money myself to survive. I learned about myself that no matter what job I landed or stability or satisfaction I found, it wouldn't last. I'd get bored, I'd sabotage it, I'd come around back to suicidal ideation and nothing anyone has done or said or been to me has changed that.
Little of this is actually new aside from hitting that marker of exhausting my buffer of U.S. cash. The "chronic suicidal ideation" concept is still a relatively new revelation that I'm not through mulling, but all of the suicide stuff otherwise is not. So I think it fair to quickly fill in the rest of the suicide philosophy that I prefer to approach it positively without despondency and recognizing that all things are impermanent anyway. I choose to view it positively as part of my path and that there is something to learn from it. Better that than be all negative about it, right?
It also helps having a system of belief that includes reincarnation and doesn't put that much ultimate importance on any single bodily lifetime. Each lifetime is important, but for me the importance is measured in what's learned and spiritual progress made. Dying is not an ultimate end. I agree with the belief it's just the end of a body and not the end of a "person" or the energy or the path/journey it's on. How we die and the mindset we're in when we die is key to future manifestations and not human morality or judgment (except to the effect that they affect our mindset).
If a "trigger warning" was warranted, I hope it's more to trigger living mindfully. If you're suicidal and don't believe in reincarnation, don't be an ass and just don't do it, throwing away your shot. Whoops, there goes the trigger warning.
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