Your ending makes more sense for the movie!
I think also a bunch of wounded arrive. It is trying to point out the futility of despondency on a battlefield and how death, sex and love are all intertwined there. Or something. It’s been a while.
While I don’t believe I’d ever be able to follow through, this is exactly how I think of it. It’s a kind of strange comfort, tucked away in a remote corner of my mind. Although once your thoughts have pushed you into that place, wouldn’t you then be also “cornered”, left with no more choices but that one?
This is a very dark thread. A subject that makes me very uncomfortable to talk about, and yet I feel it important to be having this discussion, even if only to provide a place for anyone to go to if they feel the need to talk to someone about it, whatever that reason may be. It just may turn out to help someone when they most need it. They may either be needing of help, or may want to be one of those that can provide help. I think this thread has great value, even if it’s just reading the stories of others who have been there.
In the book, they give him a sedative in the form of a “black capsule”. After he passed out from the drug, Trapper John tied a blue satin ribbon around his penis (nicknamed “The Pride of Hamtrack” based on its size and Waldowski’s home town).
When he regained consciousness the next morning, Painless, obviously proud and holding a blue ribbon in his hand, informed them, “I don’t know where I’ve been, but wherever it was I sure as hell won first prize. How about a game of poker?”
I guess the movie version was a bit different.
When I was in the army in Korea, they called me “Hot Lips” Hoolihan. #metoo
Actually he thinks he is committing suicide, Hawkeye gives him the “black” pill and he takes it and lays down to die. (cue song). About the time the pill is to wear off Hawkeye talks a nurse into raising him from the dead, so to speak.
res-ERECTION.
Yes, I went there. Had to do it friends. Had to.
:) 345
I loved MASH but I got super depressed by the melody as a kid. So I’d plug my ears to try and not hear it. I had no idea there were words to it, and it is oddly not surprising they were depressing. I can’t listen to it now, a bit too much for how I feel.
Regarding suicide itself. It is unbelievably devastating and I think about the amazing people who were so loved and forgot. My God my heart aches for them and their family. Just ask when feeling insiginifant or alone because the loss of that person is too much bear. I"m leabing this thread tearful. please nobody do this. please don’t. there arent enough good guys in the world
A friend of mine took his life last year.
We played Pathfinder together every week for about 2.5 years, after doing Barcrafts together once a month or so for another year or so before that. He was a wry, smart, quiet guy who’d shock the room with the perfect one-liner or joke when there was a lull in conversation, then lapse back into silence. He loved gaming and cooking and his great big goofy-ass dog and his convertible.
He also had a number of, shall we say, unusual tastes. Some of which he never publicly came to terms with. One of which was humilation-style BDSM play. He got into a relationship with a spectacularly cruel and unsafe dom who ripped out his heart, broke him down as a human, and then dropped him like a bad habit.
My buddy never really recovered from that. He wound up getting a restraining order taken out on him and losing his job here. He took an Uber out to the airport one day and flew to San Francisco and tried to throw himself off the bridge after posting an expose of what had passed between him and his ex. Cops stopped him and put him in holding for 3 days. He eventually came out and hung out with us, sheepish and depressed, but seemingly glad to be alive. He took another job in Massachusetts to get away from it all a few months later. Tried to take his life once or twice and was saved by friends, though none of us back here knew about that. He was quiet on the net, saying he preferred to focus on himself for now, but he hinted at some big cool new programming project on twitter. I even set a calendar notification for it.
Then one day, he flew back to NC and killed himself downtown just after setting his FB profile picture to a black square and posting a status saying “I’m sorry.”
I. . . never really wound up processing what happened very well. That he’d had this whole secret life, tearing at his soul and eating away at him, killed me. That he had suffered so much without us ever being able to help killed me. And that he’d gone away, pretended to be doing okay to push us all back, and then ended it all out of nowhere killed me.
He was a good fucking dude and the world is substantially worse without him in it.
A good friend of mine suffers from one of the most severe cases of fibromyalgia the doctors here have ever witnessed. She used to be in the military, had a kid. Wound up medically discharged when the disease set in, alongside other disorders: PCOS, depression, anxiety. Her parents adopted her daughter from her when she couldn’t care for the kid anymore. She moved far away, to here, and became friends with all of us.
Every single day of her life is hellish suffering. Every part of her body aches, burns, tears. When it’s humid, it’s worse. When it’s cold, it’s worse. When she eats almost anything aside from white bread and water, it’s worse. Some days, it’s just worse because fuck why not. Drugs do nothing. Therapy does nothing. Diet does nothing. Exercise is impossible.
She’s lost her job, her apartment, most of her money. Lost her kid and commission and family years ago (her parents are anti-healthcare Trump nuts who’ve disowned her now and pretend to the kid that they are her real family). Lost most of her friends, too, because unsurprisingly, living in constant agonizing pain doesn’t make you the most pleasant person to be around sometimes.
She’s still trucking on.
I’ve had a “bad back” since I was in 8th grade. What that means is that every day, I don’t wake up because I’m not sleepy anymore or because it’s time to get up. I wake up when the pain of rolling around in bed, desperate to find something comfortable for even a few minutes, becomes too much to handle. I take a fistful of NSAIDs every day just to keep the pain level enough to concentrate. As I write this sentence, it feels like someone is carving into the flesh of my upper back and upper arms with a hot, jagged, thick knife. It’s almost time for the second dose of Aleve for the day. Not just yet, though. Need to ride that horse through dinner prep so I can take other meds that are easier on my stomach before bed so I don’t lay awake feeling the acid churn and burn in my gut.
It’s gotten worse every year since I was 14 and there doesn’t really seem to be a positive endpoint for it.
At the end of last year, I made some really dumb fucking decisions that really seriously disrupted some of the most important parts of my life. I routinely make bad decisions taht I know hurt me and thus the people around me.
I’ve never once considered killing myself and can’t imagine the scenario where I would because of the guilt I’d feel, but I also know that every day, I make decisions that will kill me far earlier than life expectancy says I should go. I’ve got a partner of 14 years who’s head-over-heels for me, dozens of loving, wonderful friends, and a huge family. Every day, I drive myself closer to tearing all their hearts out when my heart inevitably gives up the ghost. Somehow, that thought isn’t enough to motivate me to do any better.
Oh hell Armando, I’m finally at a loss for words. So much to parse.
So sorry about your friend. And so sorry for your friend. It seems that he wasn’t 100% about the kink and maybe sorta… fell in love? Not something you do with a dom usually. Not unless you have a deeper friendship. I’ve known both types. In want to say more but not here. If you wish to talk PM me.
Love you much, man.
Seriously. Read an Armando post… didn’t expect to almost cry.
@ArmandoPenblade On more than one occasion you’ve brought me real joy with some of the shit you do. That’s hard to do with someone over the internet. I really hope you can find a way to escape your pain. Real, serious, daily pain is pretty much the only thing that I can think of where I’d want to actually turn suicidal ideations into reality. I wouldn’t wish that on pretttty much anybody. I’ll just be over here if you need me.
(Not actually me)
These stories are incredibly helpful. Please keep them coming. They are very much appreciated.
Something like that, yeah. Thomas was gay and exploring himself, mostly via the net and in private. He’d dabbled in this and that and never really found himself. He was crazy introverted and riven with self-doubt, so all of those was doubly hard for him. Learning about what all he’d been going through, oftentimes entirely alone, was rough for all of us who’d called ourselves friends. Felt like we should have been there and weren’t.
He’d have been 31 on the 14th of this month. Should have been, goddammit.
Love back, Rich. I might take you up on that PM sometime. Got a lot to do tonight.
The first part of your reply makes me really happy man. I know I can sometimes be a bit of a shitheel in P&R (and by some I mean all), but I do try to share happy, fun, and interesting stuff with y’all. I spend more time on Qt3 than anywhere else on the net and consider you guys e-family. So I’d like to think I can pay back in sometimes.
As for the pain, I know it’d get better if I took better care of myself. Probably the sleep apnea that ensures I wake up tired, groggy, and choking every morning (and plenty of times each night), too.
It’s really weird to know that there’s all these paths I could take that would make things better, and day in and day out, I just. . . choose not to. I have no idea why I do that.
So, to the larger point of these threads, @wumpus, I did try seeing a shrink about it all last year. It was pretty clear he could do some things that would help me. It was also clear that enabling him to do that would take work on my part. . . so I bitched out and stopped going and stayed stuck in the same rut and never got any better.
Be smarter than me. This may come as a shock to you, but it’s really not hard!
Possibly a dumb question, especially if you’ve discussed it here before and I missed it, but have you seen a doctor about it, and if so, what was their diagnosis and/or recommendations?
Severe back pain is among the worst. My girlfriend has it, and literally everything she does or does not do is based around it. And I end up suffering as well. She is a compulsive talker already, but when she is on her Hydrocodone, her compulsive talking goes through the roof. She can talk non-stop for three to five hours without me saying a word. If she asks me a question, and I don’t answer (because answering her would result in taking her down an entirely different path, only to later return to her original path(s), she’ll answer it herself and continue on. It’s maddening.
But at least all of her talking distracts her from her pain, and I’ve learned to tune most of it out while doing other things, and (hopefully) pick up on key words or phrases so I’m not totally ignoring her. Her pain causes her to sleep very poorly, and years of Hydrocodone use has made it virtually ineffective for her. Her doc (thankfully) refuses to put her on anything stronger, for she’d only become immune to those things as well.
I’m not exactly sure of what is wrong with her back, but it has to do with the disks L4 and L5 (I think - could be different numbers), and the cushion things being gone. Surgery has been discussed, fusing the disks together, but the doc has been very reluctant to do it, for fear of making things even worse. She’s talked suicide at times because of it (not seriously I think, but I worry), and she’s already seeing a psychiatrist and a psychologist. She’s tried antidepressants, but had bad reactions to all of them.
Her inactivity has caused her to gain roughly 100 pounds over the last 10 years. She’s taken to ordering tons of health and beauty stuff from HSN, and that damn channel is on continually, and my house is filling up with all that crap.
I have problems too, but every time I try to talk about one, she’ll diminish it by saying, “Yeah, but at least you don’t have my problems, so be thankful.” Which is true, so I shut up about it, and listen to another multi-hour diatribe about something.
All that to say that, yeah, back problems suck. Really bad. I love her, and wish I could help her, but feel totally helpless. Mostly, I wish I had more patience with her. I sometimes lose it after listening to her for so long. We’ve talked about it, she’s aware of her talking problem, but seems unable to stop herself. Kind of like what I did just now. Apologies for going on so long on this tangent.
So back to my original question: What do your doctors say?
No. No and no. The only one that could be there for him was him. You can be a friend or an enemy. You can be a wall or a door. An individual is a person. What they do is theirs. What they leave behind may be happiness or sadness. What they do belongs to them, And only them. Your part is only the memory. That’s the part that keeps him alive. Memory is the thing that keeps a soul in flight. Remember his best. Keep his soul high. Make his memory beautiful. And remember the good you did.
I’ve had X-Rays, CAT Scans, and even an MRI 2 years back. The general consensus is “there’s a bundle of muscles in your lower back that are locked in a permanent and horrifying knot, causing cascade failure up your back’s various spinal support muscle systems.” (Exact terminology is not accurate; I apologize to all doctors I just gave seizures to with that summary). There’s no scoliosis, bone spurs. Even when I developed actual sciatica a couple of years back, the issue there was with the padding between one set of discs and not more widespread than that. In short, my back muscles are weak, and thus failing to support each other properly, causing all of them to hurt from over-work all the time.
They’ve recommended stretches and weight loss, basically, and everyone agrees prescription painkillers are a bad idea (I’m clinging onto the last few Tramadols from a 30-day supply I got a year ago when I had a really nasty flare up), since the pain is more or less permanent.
For the weight loss, I’m a little dubious. My back hurt long before I was fat. I’m sure losing weight would take some of the strain off, but whatever the underlying problem is wouldn’t go away.
And to be honest, right now, I’m in bad enough shape that I can’t even manage half the stretches they suggest without just rolling around on the floor like a fat ball of lard or falling over,so I usually give up on them in short order.
I feel you on the “sick partner struggle,” though, man. My gf’s grapples with severe bipolar II disorder, anxiety, and for the last several years, some really bizarre, alarming, and scary physical ailments no doctor can nail down a cause for. At the worst of things, she got kicked out of grad school, lost all her jobs, and couldn’t get out of bed or feed herself for days at a time.
In that span, we lost a lot of patience with each other that I wish every day we could get back. It feels like some essential component of our relationship withered and died, and it’s so much easier for us to snap at each other, see malice in each other’s actions, or just generally be impatient and unkind with one another. It’s painful and sad and awful, and with both of us grappling with weighty issues, it never feels like there’s time to make things better.
So, needless to say, reading what you write feels very familiar on both ends, insofar as I get to live with the physical pain and also the feelings of relationship frustration and anxiety. I’m obviously not in any good place to offer you advice since we haven’t managed to rise above, so instead, here’s a very genuine e-brofist of empathy :(
I understand intellectually that you’re not wrong. I’ve also spent most of my life being the guy everyone depends on, turns to, and looks to for advice, solace, and care. It’s a role I happily take on; helping people feels good and hopefully makes the world a little better day by day. To have someone I was that close with take their life over issues I was so unaware of for so long feels like a failing in that role, in that mode of being, in myself as a friend.
I understand I’m not directly responsible for anyone’s life but my own, but sometimes knowing and feeling are different things.
Of course, all that makes it feel a little like my mind’s trying to turn his death into something about me, which is the last thing I want. But I think it’s a story worth sharing in a place like this, even if I’m still not entirely sure what I meant my overall post up there to convey.
Sorry for hijacking in here tonight :(