I’m in the middle of a psychotic break (since November 2024, and yes, the collapse of the US is a factor) and off and on suicide watch.
Here’s an exchange I’ve actually had (more or less, paraphrased) more than twice these last three months:
🥼📋👓🩺: In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself? (Another version is “How recently have you thoght about ending your life: a) less than a year, b) less than a month, c) less than a day, d) today.”)
🐰🎩🫖☕: Oh sure. Every day. Hourly.
🥼📋👓🩺: What!?
🐰🎩🫖☕:Yeah. For me this is Tuesday. The brain is always considering heading to check-out. I have a numerical scale of one-to-ten for suicidality the way we do pain assessments.
🥼📋👓🩺: I…see?
🐰🎩🫖☕: It’s fine! Ambient unlife stuff is at a S-3, like “shit I need to get to bed so my boss can scream at me early tomorrow. If that bus careened through this crosswalk, that problem would be so resolved.”
🥼📋👓🩺: …This is normal for you?
🐰🎩🫖☕: Routine. At S-5, I may look around for wandering death opportunities. I don’t talk to anyone about it until about S-6 and start having fantasies of getting proactive, at which point I might tell my therapist if she isn’t squeamish. (A lot of therapists are hair-trigger and will start threatening involuntary committal with any noise of suicidal ideation)
🥼📋👓🩺: Maybe you should…
🐰🎩🫖☕: It’s gotta be an S-8 or S-9 before I’m going to inconvenience a hot-line operator or crisis counslor. By then I’m looking at chemistry sets on Amazon. A fun game is trying to cross a hundred busy intersections in two hours. I’ve won so far.
🥼📋👓🩺: You can’t just…
🐰🎩🫖☕: You can’t just charge death head on. A million years of evolution will drop you before you commit. You gotta sneak up on Death. Icarus, not Heracles.
I’m in the middle of a psychotic break (since November 2024, and yes, the collapse of the US is a factor) and off and on suicide watch.
Here’s an exchange I’ve actually had (more or less, paraphrased) more than twice these last three months:
🥼📋👓🩺: In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself? (Another version is “How recently have you thoght about ending your life: a) less than a year, b) less than a month, c) less than a day, d) today.”)
🐰🎩🫖☕: Oh sure. Every day. Hourly.
🥼📋👓🩺: What!?
🐰🎩🫖☕:Yeah. For me this is Tuesday. The brain is always considering heading to check-out. I have a numerical scale of one-to-ten for suicidality the way we do pain assessments.
🥼📋👓🩺: I…see?
🐰🎩🫖☕: It’s fine! Ambient unlife stuff is at a S-3, like “shit I need to get to bed so my boss can scream at me early tomorrow. If that bus careened through this crosswalk, that problem would be so resolved.”
🥼📋👓🩺: …This is normal for you?
🐰🎩🫖☕: Routine. At S-5, I may look around for wandering death opportunities. I don’t talk to anyone about it until about S-6 and start having fantasies of getting proactive, at which point I might tell my therapist if she isn’t squeamish. (A lot of therapists are hair-trigger and will start threatening involuntary committal with any noise of suicidal ideation)
🥼📋👓🩺: Maybe you should…
🐰🎩🫖☕: It’s gotta be an S-8 or S-9 before I’m going to inconvenience a hot-line operator or crisis counslor. By then I’m looking at chemistry sets on Amazon. A fun game is trying to cross a hundred busy intersections in two hours. I’ve won so far.
🥼📋👓🩺: You can’t just…
🐰🎩🫖☕: You can’t just charge death head on. A million years of evolution will drop you before you commit. You gotta sneak up on Death. Icarus, not Heracles.
🥼📋👓🩺: < 🎩 gibbering noises >
+1 for all of us who got the “how often” question and knew they couldn’t answer honestly.
edit - it’s “wondering”, not “wandering”. this is just my attempt to get you to kill me instead :P