Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: distressed
  • Music: The Barr Brothers, "Beggar in the Morning."

There are lines. Please stop crossing them.

When I posted about depression, I said that I was giving myself comment amnesty; I said that I might not (probably would not) read the comments.

Since then, people have contacted me via email (when they had it), via my old email (which I rarely check), via my contact form, via Facebook, and via my Tumblr, to give me their phone numbers, to tell me not to hurt myself (which I did not threaten to do), to provide crisis hotlines, to make suggestions about medication (which I did not solicit), and in one case, to threaten to report me to the police as a suicide risk if I did not update my blog immediately to show that I was still alive.

Please. Stop. "Comment amnesty" did not mean "work harder to make sure that your words, your well wishes, your specific need to engage with my depression will be heard." I try to keep open dialogs on this blog, and I usually appreciate communication, but right now, this contact is intrusive, and upsetting, and seems to prioritize the needs of the contacting person above mine. Please. Stop.

This is why I do not talk when I am sad.
Tags: depression, shameless plea
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  • 222 comments
...go 3 levels up... Expand

lenora_rose

January 13 2014, 23:13:13 UTC 3 years ago

Hmm. How about *this* then? In a society such as ours where suicide is not considered appropriate or honourable, and we are not raised to consider it as a viable recourse, rational suicides are considerably less frequent than impulse suicides. I doubt the number of rational suicides in our society is remotely comparable to that of WWII Japan, or the Roman Empire, or actions during the course of an invasion. And not *just* because we brand the impulse irrational.

(Just ended up close to two situations involving impulse suicide or self-harm during suicidal ideation in the last 4 months. Neither was rational, based on actual events in the person's life -- though one was in a painful situation, it was not one rationally resolved by her death. Know another person with frequent suicidal ideation. Again, not rational based on the actual events of her life.)

mackknopf

January 16 2014, 05:24:38 UTC 3 years ago

Dear Lenora,

I wrote a two-paragraph, thoughtful reply to your thoughtful post yesterday... Then Firefox crashed (probably too many open tabs), and I lost the piece. :(
Next time, I write it in a text editor/word processor and copy to LJ...

I will retype it as soon as I can, since I really wanted to respond!

Mack