Outline
Introduction
- Vlog 5 takes a look at the third type of topic I'd like to discuss: life experiences
- Three types of topics:
- Abstract: Love, Happiness; Vlogs 1 and 2: Happiness and Self-Actualization
- News and Media: Talking about the stories or our reactions to them: Vlog 3: Casey Anthony, talking about our reaction to the outcome of her case.
- Life Experiences: Suicide is very much a topic of life experience.
- Life Experience is a rich topic for Being Human because it relates directly to Human Experience, from it we can glean a lot about our nature.
- Trying something new with this vlog
- Recording in “segments”
- Piecing segments together will create “cuts” in the video
- The hope is that this will improve the quality of the video since I can re-record lacking parts, but it will also give a different feel. Share your opinions!
Disclaimer/Warning
- My life experiences are pretty personal to me, but I'm a fairly open personality
- Still, I won't take kindly to having my life experiences mocked or made fun of, keep it polite please
- I realize there are “trolls”
- In the future, should I build up a viewer-base, I'd love to share life experiences from others that I feel relate to the Human Experience.
- Same rule applies to the above, mocking other people's experiences is still not cool
Talking about Suicide
- Suicide is a very sober topic, won't be a lot of laughter and excitement in this Vlog
- Suicide relates to the Human Experience because the experiences that we have with it can show us a lot about the value of life, even when it's not valued.
- My own story is one which is several years in the past, back in the early days of High School, so close to 8 years ago at this point.
- Our society has an odd quirk about overreacting to things in order to make sure we don't under react. As a result, I had a lot of people, when I told them about the experience, freak out and tell me I should seek help, etc...
- This experience is in my PAST, it is no longer a problem I deal with
The Story
- Tell my story...
Background
- Had few to no friends in High School, definitely didn't have close personal interaction with others. Fighting with father nearly constantly. Grades miserable for an overachiever such as myself. Life was “awful”
- Awful only in how I perceived it. I was still living in America, with all of my needs being seen to, which, comparatively, is better than most of the world. So, I was doing pretty well. But how we see the world is what creates our reality. If we see a sucky world, we live in a sucky world.
- No matter what happens, the way that we see things shapes how we feel about them.
Breaking Point
- After a particularly nasty fight with my father I began to consider a dark and brooding thought: I'd rather be dead.
- This was not the first time I'd considered the thought, but it was the first time it had pushed itself forward so keenly in my thoughts, settling in the forefront.
Situation
- I didn't have access to a knife without raising some eyebrows. I didn't have a gun. I didn't really have many solid ways of killing myself.
- I DID have a pair of scissors, but they didn't cut through skin the right way.
- Ultimately, deep inside, I don't think I wanted to die, I was too afraid of its unknowns.
- Instead, I stabbed my arm repeatedly with the scissors, until my entire arm was covered in blood, it drenched my pants and the floor. I remember dumbly thinking “my pants are ruined”.
- My arm felt weak and buzzed incessantly, but none of the wounds I made were particularly deep or dangerous.
- I remember crying, stabbing myself, crying. I took care of the wound in the end, washing it all off, and I cried a lot more for what I had done, for what I had wanted to do but was too afraid to finish.
Consequences
- In the end I failed, I never ended up killing myself. I may have tried one other time, but the result was much the same.
- The most frightening aspect of the suicide attempt wasn't the attempt itself, I was far too afraid to go through with it. It was the darkness of the thoughts that took over my person when I tried.
- It's sort of hard to explain, unless you've felt it, but that feeling, the thought that you would be better off dead, it's absolutely terrifying.
- Those who attempt suicide are often accused of not considering how their actions will affect others. This is untrue, many of them leave suicide notes, often times apologizing for their act. I felt this too.
- When I considered dying, I thought about everyone it might affect, and how it might impact their lives.
- Despite my considerations, I was able to, illogically, conclude that the world would be better off without me. This only further scared me. Ultimately, it holds some truth: we're somewhat dispensable, but thinking that way doesn't do us any good.
Moving Past
- Getting over suicide isn't necessarily about finding value within ourselves, but, rather, in the life around us.
- The answer is not in convincing ourselves that we shouldn't die because of how important WE are but because of how awesome the world is.
- Whether or not I'm here tomorrow, life will continue on and it will continue being amazing. If I take my life, I miss out on the opportunity to experience that awesomeness.
- It's like waiting in line for a roller coaster after walking around for hours at an amusement park. Whether it takes 10 minutes, half an hour, an hour or hours, we still do it because we'll enjoy the ride.
- If we let it, life will give us far greater and more lasting opportunities to enjoy it than a roller coaster ever could.
Conclusion
- When we begin to enjoy life, THAT is the key to finding value in ourselves. Because we begin to think about how we can make life better for the world around us, how we can contribute.
- By choosing life, I took steps forward to making myself a better person.
- Suicide is giving up on life, if that's the place that you're in, you just need to look around more and see how awesome life can be. Laugh, smile, play. It's all there, you just have to choose it.
- Thanks for watching Vlog 5.
- Let me know your opinions of the new format.
- Take care!
