Why don't you hate yourself?

I've been thinking lately about self-love and how I don't have any. I never have loved myself, probably because I can't even find a way to like myself. My personality has a hundred dorky defects, but my body...

I hate my body and can't think of a time--even in childhood-- when I felt otherwise. Weight = horrible, body shape at any weight = horrible (I was, quite literally, born with a big ass. My mother loves to tell this story and how the obstetrician commented on it). Hair = bad. Skin = blech. Overall appearance = humiliating evidence of the cruelness of nature.

I'm lucky that there are people who like me, but I am not among them. I have a hard time finding anything likeable.

I want a biological redo, from brain to cracked heels. Then, I would like a new personality and an emotionectomy. I want to be focused, disciplined, very quiet, free of brain anomalies, and invisble in front of mirrors.

Anyway, I can't imagine how I got this way, but I'm sure it's because I'm a moron who makes all the wrong decisions. I can't imagine how it's possible to not feel this way. How do people achieve that? Why aren't most people like me? What is it about them that makes them comfortable with themselves and why don't I have whatever quality that is? I'm not alone in my dislike. I don't think there are very many people who like me. Why is that? Oh, because I'm a fat, awkward, dork. Sigh.

What you hear

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

--May has spoken

I used to be funny

I used to be funny, but lithium got hold of my sense of humor and ran it out of town, along with half of my best vocabulary words and puzzle-solving skills. In place of that, lithium left me more fat than I'll ever need. I'm not sure this was a fair trade.

I keep thinking it would be nice to have one day in my life where I could wake up, go through my day, and turn in at the end of the evening without once ever having had to remember that my brain is gooey and I have an illness that is not only deeply stigmatized, but scares people on principle. Ah, wouldn't that be swell. Alas, taking medication kind of negates the willfull suspension of disbelief in this case.

It's a cold, gray rainy day today--much like a late October day on the East Coast. The kind of day that prompted me to move to a sunnier, drier climate.

Would it be OK if I just ran away from home and parked my butt on a beautiful, secluded beach somewhere? I only have $22 in the bank right now, so unless I ride my bike, I'm not going anywhere. Besides, running means leaving everything behind, and it would suck if my husband got stuck with my financial obligations. Nobody should inherit that disaster. See? I can't even fantasize about my own freedom without being smacked down by responsible thoughts. Can anyone be more boring that this?

On an unrelated note, earlier today, I had to walk to the other side of the building where I work, and to get over there, you have to go outside and then back in through another door. There was a cop car parked at the curb, maybe eight feet from the door. I froze. In order to get in the building, I had to come within a few feet of the side of the cop car. I couldn't make my feet move. Finally, I just turned my head and concentrated on the brick wall of the building, went in the door and didn't look back. It took another minute for my heart to stop racing.

I need help.

Truly anonymous

I'm not sure why I keep my thoughts here, in a blog. I should be filing these things on a flash drive or in a 3-ring notebook. I'm pretty sure my words live in total obscurity, a cyber spilling of my soul that remains totally anonymous and unread--wherever.

I thought writing would make me feel better, but it hasn't. There are five people in my life who know about this blog, and three of them told me, "Tell me when there's something there I should read. I'm just not going to remember to check in and read your blog on my own." As far as I know, the other two people have totally forgotten about the existence of this portal into my brain.

If a blog goes unread in cyberspace, does it exist at all? More important, do I still have to proofread?

Please make it better

Pushing through life. Effort. It takes so much effort to get through the day lately. I'm exhausted. I'm sad. Really sad. I don't feel well physically. I think I've made a more-than-reasonable attempt to clean up my life, but I'm still not getting my return on investment.

A while back, I got a pedicure and the nail tech was gonzo Jesus-happy. She had just read the latest Oprah-endorsed inspiration fest, The Secret. She insisted that if I would just accept Jesus into my life (sorry, not taking any deity applications right now) and focus on what I want to bring into my life, it would happen. If I just click my heels together three times and understand that I have the power, all will be right in my world! Norman Vincent Peale was right!

Um, it's not working. Despite the doctors, the therapist, and the ungodly amounts of medication, I still have bipolar disorder. I keep visualizing my brain being free of this defect, this burden, but I must be doing something wrong because my hard work and eager anticipation of positive results has yielded nothing so far. Nothing. OK, minor improvments, but not enough to declare the effort a success.

I'm tired. I'm sad. I'm so fucking busy, I can't seem to come up for air. How many people have said to me, "just keep busy. Don't think about yourself so much. Find something worthwhile to do." I believe I fit the definition of busy. I'm sure I'm doing things that are worthwhile to someone. I'm still sad, though. Still exhausted. Still finding it hard to connect with the world.

I went to the doctor a few days ago. I've had a sore throat for three months, but last week it was so bad, I could barely swallow. I felt like I was being poked in the neck with a sharp stick. I felt that perhaps it was just going to go away, but when it didn't I finally admitted it was time to see my family practice guy.

Here's what happened. He told me I'm not sick, but I am fat. He checked my neck and said it wasn't swollen, it was just fat. The doctor told me to exercise. I told him I'm too exhausted to exercise. He told me I'm not exhausted, I'm depressed. And fat. He was really focused on the fat thing. I pointed out a weird and uncomfortable skin eruption covering my throat and part of my chest. The doctor checked it out and said it was a fungal infection that I got because I'm fat and that if I weren't fat, my skin would stay cooler and not be so prone to rashes.

The doctor went on to tell me that I need to exercise. Not just exercise, but put in an hour a day of "heavy, sweaty intense aerobic exercise." This is equivalent to telling me I should make the trip up Mount Everset on a daily basis. I explained to the doctor that he had given me the same advice about four years ago. At that time, I joined the YMCA and literally tried to work my ass off. Instead of just envisioning a better me, I worked. I put in 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer every day. Every once in a while, I cooled off by putting in another 30 minutes on the rowing machine. Four days a week, I grunted my way through Body Pump classes. When, after 18 months, it appeared that my new body wasn't emerging, I sought the services of a succession of personal trainers, but to no avail. Eventually I realized my body wasn't going to change, plus I had to accept that I had been soundly defeated by my moods, and I commenced a life on anti-depressants and mood stabilizers.

I have no empirical evidence that vigorous exercise, positive thinking, or psychotropic medications will change my body for the better. Could my diet be better? Yes, but in my own defense, my diet is better than that of most Americans. I eat too much fat and sugar but I believe I would feel even worse without these things. I don't eat fried food, snack foods, meat, most dairy products that contain fat, donuts, bagels, chips, fast food, or much crap at all. I do, however, hear the siren's song of chocolate, peanut butter, cheese, cookies, and low-fat ice cream. These things bring me comfort.

I hate exercise. I don't enjoy it and never have, no matter how positive an attitude I've tried to maintain, no matter what activity I've tried. In my opinion, exercise ranks just one notch above algebra and eating portobello mushrooms. I have been known to just burst into tears in the middle of a workout because I was that miserable.

The cherry on top of this mess is that I am homely. I'm not plain, I'm not just unattractive, nor are my looks unique or a little off. I...am..ugly. Fat, ugly, really bad hair, little eyes, huge forhead, acne, little chin, and a weird shape. On top of that, I am depressed, prone to irrational mood swings, a compulsive talker, and often a flaky idiot.

I have tried to pursue a life of self-improvement, but age just makes me even worse every year. So, can somebody else please fix this for me? Take these burdens and make them go away. Knock me out and wake me up when I am no longer fat, ugly, awkward, or afflicted. I can't do it any more, even if it is against medical advice to give up.

Giving up is looking pretty appealing right now.

The mushroom conspiracy

Once upon a time, I ate meat. I enjoyed hamburgers, bacon, turkey, chicken, ham and the occasional lamb chop. As time went on, though, I found that my body seemed to be rejecting meat. I ate meat in increasingly smaller amounts, but continued to have severe digestion problems.

My problem had a name: Pancreatic Enzyme Deficiency. The solution was to stop eating meat. I can tolerate fish a couple of times a month, but no more. I would skip it entirely, except I might die of food-texture-deprivation; besides, I need the Omega 3s.

Being a vegetarian is not that difficult, nor does it require as much imagination as most people think. There are plenty of things to eat and soy is my friend. A typical week at my house includes yogurt, pasta (including tortellini, ravioli, and lasagna), pilafs, eggs, Boca products galore, eggplant, soup, bean dishes, and plenty of fruit and vegetables. I expect just as many choices when I eat out, but I rarely find it. Instead, I am faced with the reality that is The Portobello Mushroom.

I can't stand portobello mushrooms, let me just get that out there. My loathing aside, I still find it frustrating that in the world of The Forgotten Vegetarians, that one, token meatless dish at most restaurants is something featuring these mushrooms. Why? Why can't there be a nice pasta dish or vegetarian soup? I crave those things. Other people crave those things. I can honestly say that never in my life have I felt a hunger pang and thought, "Wow. I could really go for a big slab of fungus on a bun. Or marinated. Or grilled. Or served over rice." Blech.

I believe the portobello mushroom lobby is working in cahoots with the restaurant industry to convince the chefs of the world that vegetarians not only loooove these mushrooms, but they're really the only thing we expect to eat when we're away from home. God knows, I won't eat them at home.

People, we must rise up and fight this fungus proliferation. We must demand more choices. Woman does not live by portobellos and salad alone! Speaking of salad...Have you perused the salad menu lately? Chicken tortilla salad. Cobb salad. Chef salad. Chicken with roasted tomatoes salad. I always thought I could count on salad as a backup meal, but when did chicken become a vegetable? I know chickens are stupid, but they're not vegetables. I would also add that people who eat chicken are not vegetarians.

Let's squash this mistaken belief that vegetarians live on portobello mushrooms. Freedom from the fungus!

One more reason to hate my body

I don't think I'm imagining this, and that's worse than if I were. I seem to be emitting some bizarre, hard-to-define body odor. Nothing helps.

I smell like dirty laundry. Sometimes I just smell like toast, but mostly I smell bad. I hate my body to the fuckin' core already, so it seems unfair that it found a way to be even more repulsive.

I have impeccable hygiene. To address my problem, though, I've stepped things up a bit. I now shower with anti-bacterial soap. It's anti-bacterial hand wash, actually, and it contains extra cleansing grains that "pop" additional anti-bac ingredients onto the skin when you lather up. I scrub myself tingly in the shower due to my fervent desire to exfoliate any remaining cells that might decay on my skin and contribute to the weird, weird smell.

I use a potent antiperspirant/deodorant, and I use anti-bacterial super-drying powder on any part of my body that might sweat. Outside of myself, I am diligent about doing laundry. I won't wear anything twice, even if I only had it on for a couple of hours and I did nothing during that time. With all of the laundry I'm churning out, I dread seeing the next water bill.

On the plus side, my husband says he doesn't smell a thing. He insists I don't smell like anything at all, whereas I find the smell of our bed sheets to be almost intolerable after sleeping on them for only two or three nights. I read somewhere that taking medications like the ones I do can actually not only make your olfactory senses hypersensitive, but also skew the accuracy of your sense of smell. Oh, God, is it really all in my head?

Just to be on the safe side, I started taking probiotic supplements earlier this summer. I read somewhere (OK, many places on the Internet) that if your intestinal homeostasis is disturbed, your body doesn't break down food or toxins very well, and scary smells escape through your skin. My gut has calmed down, but I don't smell any better.

To my horror, I just read that many anti-depressants, as well as more complex drugs like Lithium, are known culprits that can trigger this weird condition. It means people think you're not only disturbed, you are also too off-kilter to tend to your own hygienic responsibilities. Ack.

I am so gross. I just become more disgusting with every passing day. I may be forced to become a recluse in the interest of shielding the world from the many things that are just too unpleasant about me.

It doesn't seem fair that in trying to find therapeutic ways to make myself more tolerable to be around, my body continues to find ways to sabotage any attempt I make at being socially acceptable. Forget normal.

Say what?

We humans are an interesting lot. We form opinions about things, and even if we think we don't express our beliefs, they come through when we're not paying attention. It happens to everybody.

This afternoon I had a one-on-one meeting with a colleague. We got into a discussion about adults with learning disabilities and special needs. I mentioned a student who had endured gran mal seizures as a child and teen and had incurred brain damage as a result. She has made remarkable progress at school, and although she was almost unresponsive to us a year ago, she's perfroming better than the other students in her class now.

My colleague mentioned that her class tutor has Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. She said he's learning a new job at the supermarket where he works and as long he stays on his medication (for what, I don't know) and lives with a lot of structure, he's "highly functional."

She went to say, "Treatment and therapy can really do wonders. My sister-in-law is bipolar and she's working as a cashier now. She started as a grocery bagger, but she's been able to handle the new job very well."

I kept my mouth shut, but I thought, "A cashier? Is this all that people with bipolar disorder are believed to be capable of? Cashiering as an accomplishment?"

I was tempted to blurt out that I had bipolar disorder and I had left cashiering for even harder things more than 25 years ago. It's really amazing what we bipolars are capable of. Must be the drugs.

Revelations

Things you might not know about me:

• I am afraid to drive. (but I do it anyway. I just don’t turn left.)
• I’m a vegetarian.
• I detest portabella mushrooms.
• I love puppets.
• I have to look at the keys when I type and I don’t use my thumbs.
• I’ve never had a broken bone.
• I’ve never been hospitalized.
• I think shooting stars are the best.
• I am a terrible housekeeper, but I don’t care.
• I find swearing to be profoundly satisfying.
• I believe I would die from sadness if I couldn't have cheese. Cheese makes my day worthwhile.
• I organize my weekly wardrobe every Sunday, right down to the underwear and jewelry, and then I hang up the outfits in chronological order.
• I’ve never had a martini.
• I am so deeply, deathly afraid of police, I doubt I would be able to report a crime if it meant having to speak to a cop.
• I have three secrets that my friends, family, and spouse don’t know.
• I once sang the Oscar Meyer Weiner song on the radio.
• I am not at all ticklish. Not even a little.
• I actually enjoyed the movie, Showgirls. More than once.
• My wedding was so unusual it was on the evening news.
• I adore hand drums; I own no fewer than four djembe drums and at least a dozen small percussion instruments.
• I never believed in haunted houses until I lived in one.
• There is not a day that goes by that I don't wonder if, when the day comes, I will die from suicide or natural causes. As long as I have options, death doesn't scare me.
• I own several dozen wristwatches, but only five have working batteries at any one time.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

There's a reason why airfare to Phoenix is so very inexpensive in August. It's called heat. Never have I felt such seriously brutal heat.

Whose brilliant idea was it to establish a major city in the middle of the desert?

Actually, I had a wonderful and lovely time in Arizona, but that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the reason I was there. I was there to visit a friend, a friend I barely knew according to conventional measures, yet chronology and geography aside, I realize I've known her on the soul level for quite some time.

I met my friend on the Internet. The amazing thing about the Internet is that it continues to make the world more accessible. My friend and I met on a forum where we were discussing the nature of hope and the concept of trying. We took up writing long, soul-searching email messages wherein we discovered that we had laid the foundation of a spectacular friendship.

When it came time for me take a vacation, there was really no decision to make about where I would go. It wouldn't have mattered had my friend lived in Maine, Alaska, or Arizona. With the possible exception of Alabama or Mississippi (humidity), I was going to go wherever she was.

After a week in Arizona, I realized that spending time with the right people is what's most restorative about vacation. The location is almost irrelevant when you're in good company.

My vacation was fabulous.

Vicarious hair and other parental nonsense

When I was a little girl, my neighborhood nickname was "Mag the Hag." I earned this nickname in part because I had long, white blond hair that was usually a tornado-like mess. My mother had always dreamed of having long, flowing blond hair herself, but since nature had given her thin, fragile, black hair, her next best hope was my hair.

It's tough to have long hair when you're a little kid. Stuff gets tangled in it, it's a lot to manage, and in the days before instant conditioner or even a decent creme rinse, the after-shampooing comb-out was nothing short of child abuse.

My mom was beleaguered by the household duties of a 1960s housewife, which included raising the four kids she had borne in a span of only five years. Having a daughter with high maintenance hair was not a very practical choice, but my mother's desperation for good hair was bound to be vicariously experienced through me. Except...we had very different ideas about what makes hair beautiful.

My mom had enough to do during the ins and outs of a normal day without having to put too much effort into fixing my hair. This meant that ninety percent of the time, she pulled my hair back into a high ponytail and sent me on my way. On a special day, I might get braids (which she could never get quite right, as a boy who sat behind me in second grade pointed out repeatedly), and for holidays, there was the exotic and highly anticipated bun. With hairspray.

I hated ponytails. I thought they were uninspired and an insult to my inner princess. I dreamed of long, flowing hair that rippled in the wind. To help myself achieve this vision of hair beauty, I almost always tried to pull out the ponytail immediately upon stepping into the backyard. There were two problems with this, yet they never dampened my Rapunzel-like aspirations. The first problem was that my mother put my hair up using regular rubber bands. They were a bitch to get out unless you could see what you were doing, which I could not. After making a snarled mess of my hair with the stubbornly stuck rubber band, I would usually abandon my attempt and go about my day, unconcerned about the cotton-candy shaped blob of hair on the back of my head, complete with twisted-up rubber band dangling in the knot, too embedded to fall out. I opted to ignore that which I could not see in favor of enjoying the long strands grazing my cheeks in full cooperation with my dream of seraphim's locks. From an outsider's perspective, I can see where Mag the Hag may have seemed appropriate at the time.

My mother was exasperated by my stubborn insistence on trying to get my hair out of the ponytail, and around the start of fifth grade, I was allowed to get my first salon haircut. I had the majority of my hair cut off into what was then known as a pixie (let's hear it for Mary Martin, liberator of all little girls being forced by their mothers to have long hair).

My mother didn't totally throw in the towel for a few more years, as she started bleaching my now-changing hair color back to blond starting when I was about 12. Highlights were still a relatively unknown technique in the hair world, so Mom, Nice 'N' Easy and I had a standing appointment in the bathroom every eight weeks or so. My mother was willing to give up on the length of my hair, but when it came to the hormone-induced end to having a blond-haired daughter, Mom wasn't going down without a fight.

I always felt that my hair was mine and nobody else's, although Mom disagreed. My mother wrung her hands in anguish as I eventually eschewed blond hair, and then proceeded to change my hair to every color that L'Oreal makes--and a few they don't. My hair has been very long, layered, straight, permed, short, extremely short, avant-garde, mainstream, and just about anything else you can think of. Except pink. I never had pink hair. Not on purpose.

I am in my 40s now, and my mother still gives me grief about my hair. She had to concede that I wasn't going to wear makeup, not even "just a little lipstick before going out." Maybe she decided to pick her battles, and as her own hair hasn't aged well (not that it has ever, in 72 years, had the chance to be gray), she's still holding out hope that I can get away with long, blond tresses. Moms. They always have so much hope for their children.

My mom didn't leave her vicarious aspirations at the end of a hairbrush. Oh, no. My mother always wanted to be a dancer, so I took tap and ballet lessons for five long, painful years where I succeeded only in demonstrating my unconquerable lack of coordination. On my sister's 12th birthday, a piano showed up in the house in the middle of the party. I asked my mom, "My sister going to take piano lessons? I thought she wanted to learn the flute." My mother gave me that patient, condescending look that only mothers can give and said, "Well, you're both going to take lessons."

I was confused. I looked my mother in the eye and said, "But I don't want to learn how to play the piano. That's boring." My mom, for whatever reason, wouldn't take lessons herself, and so I was forced, for seven long, long years to sit at the piano every day wondering how this practice time was fulfilling my mother's dream of playing the piano. I think my parents had envisioned evenings of the family gathered around the piano with me taking requests and providing live entertainment. They hadn't factored in my complete and total lack of interest in playing this instrument, let alone the absolute absence of talent or natural ability on my part.

What a disappointment I must be to the Gods of Vicarious Fulfillment. I was a totally withdrawn dork in high school, firmly distanced from activities and the popularity that comes with them. I didn't become a dancer or theater star, I failed at all athletic pursuits I was forced to endure, I continue to refuse to bleach my hair, I haven't touched a piano in almost 30 years (nor do I want to), I'm seriously fat, I didn't marry JP but when I did marry, I eloped(!); I refused to have children, and I gave up a lucrative and trendy career to work with disadvantaged immigrants.

Sorry, mom. You tried, you really did, but unfortunately for you, I did succeed in one thing you wanted: I learned to think for myself and stick to my guns.

Irony

In case you missed it before, let me recap my feelings about suicide. Suicide is a fundamental right of being human and it's a personal choice. Just as some people choose to live, others find that their most appropriate option in life is to leave it behind. Unless you've been there, it's easy to underestimate exactly how much pain has to be accumulated in a person's life to make leaving more appealing than staying.

There are many, many people who believe it is their duty to do anything--anything--to stop another person from committing suicide. I say, why is it anyone's business? Do a Web search on "suicide prevention" or "suicide support" and you'll see what I mean. Where does this attitude come from that deems it appropriate to "save" someone from suicide? Why is there an arrogant assumption that only people who are unfit to think for themselves would consider suicide? They say things like, Life is a gift not to be wasted. Life is not a gift; it is biological happenstance and we do what we can for as long as we can once we get here. Still the words keep coming: Hang on, there's hope, you just need to see another day, things will look better when you're not so emotional, you just need to talk about it, blah, blah, blah. Talk about it? In this country, you'll actually get hauled away by the police if you so much as discuss the possibility of ending your own life (trust me on this).

People who feel adamant about interrupting the life/death path of another person are asking the wrong questions. and pursuing the wrong answer. The issue isn't about what you're doing to stop someone from committing suicide; the issue is this: What are you doing to help eliminate the intolerable pain and suffering from the life of the person who is contemplating suicide? Suicide isn't about death nearly as much as it is about pain and stopping pain.

It is cruel to stop someone from committing suicide when in the end that action will only serve to make you feel better but without easing the horrible burden of suffering of the person who wishes to die. Why don't people get this? Why does anyone feel they have the right to stop a suicide when they haven't done much, if anything at all, to alleviate the pain that brought on the desire to die?

I truly, passionately believe that if you can't help me slog through Hell, then you haven't paid the price of admission to discuss my final options. Screw you if you think you do. I know what it's like to feel abandonment. I know what it's like to realize that at the most painful, godawful time in your life, you are going down that path alone...very alone (see link). Don't act like you've been with me all along when you really just jumped out of the bushes at the last turn.

So, here's the irony. I've started to receive newsletters via email from a suicide prevention and support organization. Now, I spend a fair amount of time on the Internet and I certainly have visited my share of message boards and made extensive Google searches on topics of a personal nature. Never, ever have I compromised my privacy by doing anything under my real name. Never. Imagine my surprise, then, to find these e-newsletters coming to my work email address.

I am not a detective, but I can connect very obvious dots. In this case, I think it's safe to conclude that someone else signed me up for this "help." Un-fucking-believable. My immediate reaction is to be profoundly offended and outraged by the presumptuous, arrogant attitude of the person who, having taken stock of my deficits, thought they should "suggest" I need help. If I knew who this person was, I would say, "Where were you a year ago when I was seriously grasping for a lifeline? Where were you 18 months ago when I was actively planning my own death? Why do you think it's OK to imply I need help, yet you are such a coward, rather than just ask if I'm OK, you sign me up for something behind my back? Why can't you sit down, present your suggestion, and discuss it with me? Why do you think it's OK to comment on my life via anonymous suggestions? What's coming to my inbox next, Weight Watcher's coupons?"

After my initial outrage, I realized that irony snakes throughout this situation. Sending this newsletter to me is like buying a rosary for a monkey. It's poorly thought out and ultimately, a wasted effort. I'd have to say that I'm the last person who is open to the concept of "suicide aversion." No, no, no. I'm the woman who believes you get to choose how you die, just as you get to make all of the other big decisions that come with being human.

Both my husband and my therapist asked me if I really mean it that I wouldn't stop another person from committing suicide. My husband took it a little further and said, "What if it was someone you loved?" Well, if it were someone I loved, I would talk it over with them to make sure they understood the implications of the decision. If that person was really adamant about suicide and there was no way for me to provide comfort, then yes, I would respect his or her decision and step away. I would not, however, send anonymous email suggesting that the person needs an intervention.

I cannot respect the suggestions of a person who not only doesn't respect my right to choose, but who also can't look me in the eye or tell me to my face that they think my emotional health is somehow theirs to comment upon. This is not a case of someone showing concern or trying to be a friend. It's a case of someone blatantly passing judgment on me in a complex situation they are not equipped to understand.

Screw that.