81–90 of 146 posts
I went to a boarding school in high school. Being a relatively nice school, we had campuswide wireless and and the last two years of my education there, we were also allowed to have our laptops in the dorms. So when I discovered MyTunes which allowed every single student in the dormitory to access each other's music, it was an instant hit. Pretty sure everyone with a laptop and iTunes had it installed and there was o…
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The sad part is that there are people who can keep confidences. There are counselors who would keep his confidence. There are friends who would keep his confidence. I'm convinced there's probably even a girl out there who could love him enough for who he was to help him understand that even though the darkness was present her love was for him and was willing to deal with it's presence. If anything, this letter, and a…
This whole thing has been making me think: It'd be expensive as hell and not covered by medical insurance, and it sounds crazy, but I wonder if talking to a lawyer would've helped. A study I can no longer locate found that talking to any intelligent person who shows an interest is comparable to a professional therapist; and lawyers generally take the privacy of their clients very seriously.
So the lawyer may have kept his confidence, but may have had the option to disclose.
Unfortunately, not the steel trap that Bill was looking for.
A lot of this letter described what I felt like up until just a few months ago. I have also had experience with physical and emotional violence (no rape though) and felt absolutely worthless most of my life. One year ago I decided to seek out a therapist, which was one of the hardest things ever to do for me. Therapy has been painful at times, sometimes leaving me completely in shambles. But today I can say that I'm…
He tried to trust people at Trinity but they spread his secrets. He knows that doctors and counselors have allowances for when they can disclose information. He probably floated personal information his whole life to people to see if they could be trusted. I bet each secret came back to him from another party. He couldn't find a person to trust so he didn't disclose his ultimate secret.
He only wanted 1 person. He could deal with 1. Maybe years later 2 people, but for now just 1. Not 1 in an anonymous posting online. Not 1 in a chat room. 1 right in front of you.
The problem is that there isn't 1. Some people can deal with that, being open and all. For some, the quest for 1 is the goal, and realization that there isn't 1 is hard to take. It doesn't help.
I read a lot of me in that letter. I am 29 now. Will I make it to 30? Yes. 35? Maybe. 40? ...
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I wrote this, then decided that you must be trolling and thought better of it. Then I thought better of thinking better of it... --- There's something that we need to understand about depression, suicidal depression: a depressed person can commit all their intellectual powers to rationalizing the awful feelings they have about themselves and the future. Someone sufficiently sharp can make an almost impenetrable cage…
There's something very deeply troubling about your comment, though--the idea that reasons and logic don't matter. That's plain irrational dogmatism, and the fact that it's dressed up to support a relatively uncontroversial conclusion like "suicide is always wrong" doesn't justify it. I'm not saying Bill Zeller was right to commit suicide--who can know that?--I'm saying there's something wrong about your reasoning her…
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If you ever see an injustice being committed without the perpetrator being caught and punished, keep this in mind. I know I will be.
> If you ever see an injustice being committed without the perpetrator being caught and punished That's the majority of them. Sadly.
A lot of this letter described what I felt like up until just a few months ago. I have also had experience with physical and emotional violence (no rape though) and felt absolutely worthless most of my life. One year ago I decided to seek out a therapist, which was one of the hardest things ever to do for me. Therapy has been painful at times, sometimes leaving me completely in shambles. But today I can say that I'm…
Bill wanted to tell someone, but only one person. The problem is that you can't tell one person because everyone has someone else that they will tell. Someone always has a higher allegiance to another than you. Maybe it is different for married people, but then we get a chicken and egg problem. How can you find a partner to marry when issues like this, kept secret, keep you from having a long-term relationship? He tr…
This is true, but I think that it would be possible to find a counselor that would not disclose any information, even if they were technically allowed to do so. Furthermore, it seems possible to me that such secrets could be partially disclosed to a counselor in a way in which there would be no incentive for that counselor to pass along the information to another party.
Not having been in this kind of situation before, I can't imagine how horrible it would be to harbor such a secret for a lifetime, and perhaps for Bill the sheer weight of it made it impossible for him to tell anyone. But, I would just like to try to make the point that there are viable options other than keeping secrets bottled up.
As for your final comment, I sincerely hope that you can find the help that you need to make it through whatever it is that is distressing you.
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I for one, thought that it was quite positive thing and I respect his decision to take his own life. It was very well thought-out suicide note; I think most people are quite baffled by it because of the degree of author's rational explanations, extreme honesty and empathy for others in spite of his own pains. Also, he unintentionally perhaps shed light on programming which a lot of us could relate to, At times growin…
I for one, thought that it was quite positive thing and I respect his decision to take his own life. I disagree. Maybe it's possible to understand some of what he felt from his eloquent explanation, but I don't think suicide is ever the only solution. There will be other people reading this, who will be in similar situations. It fills me with so much sadness to think that there might be one who reads this and thinks…
What do you base this on? Wishful thinking about the capability of modern medicine? Or a belief that it's a person's duty to live through intolerable pain for the sake of others?
> It fills me with so much sadness to think that there might be one who reads this and thinks .. 'yep, that was the right thing to do'.
It annoys me that so many people will take a person who finally found peace from a life of intolerable pain, and have no thought but 'I would prefer they hadn't done that, to satisfy my abstract beliefs about right and wrong.'
I think the whole thing is very sad, but I feel very gratified to know that he is free of his demons forever.
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Bill wanted to tell someone, but only one person. The problem is that you can't tell one person because everyone has someone else that they will tell. Someone always has a higher allegiance to another than you. Maybe it is different for married people, but then we get a chicken and egg problem. How can you find a partner to marry when issues like this, kept secret, keep you from having a long-term relationship? He tr…
I'd like to respond to your assertion that "he knows that doctors and counselors have allowances for when they can disclose information." This is true, but I think that it would be possible to find a counselor that would not disclose any information, even if they were technically allowed to do so. Furthermore, it seems possible to me that such secrets could be partially disclosed to a counselor in a way in which ther…
To understand where Bill is coming from you really need to hop into his shoes. He tried to trust people but they violated that trust. Regardless of the reasons for doing that, they didn't keep his secret. What he told them was much less important to him than his ultimate secret. If they can't keep those smaller secrets, why can they keep the big one?
For better or worse all of the other things he told people were tests. Who can keep this secret? You, ok, I will let you in on a little more, then a little more, then a little more. But no one kept all of them, so no one could complete the journey to the last one.
Bill had no reason to trust a doctor. Everything in his life confirmed the exact opposite - no one is to be trusted, everyone will tell your secrets. Everyone always has that one person that they want to tell, but no worries, it's ok, that person won't tell anyone.
Yup, but everyone has that person. And unfortunately for Bill, he wasn't able to find someone to tell, and have their "one person" be Bill, thus keeping his secret between two, and only two, people in this world.
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I for one, thought that it was quite positive thing and I respect his decision to take his own life. It was very well thought-out suicide note; I think most people are quite baffled by it because of the degree of author's rational explanations, extreme honesty and empathy for others in spite of his own pains. Also, he unintentionally perhaps shed light on programming which a lot of us could relate to, At times growin…
I wrote this, then decided that you must be trolling and thought better of it. Then I thought better of thinking better of it... --- There's something that we need to understand about depression, suicidal depression: a depressed person can commit all their intellectual powers to rationalizing the awful feelings they have about themselves and the future. Someone sufficiently sharp can make an almost impenetrable cage…
As for finding a reason where he is wrong, I'd say his dismissal of the counseling community was a bit swift because I know the difference between a good therapist and a bad therapist; but really that's beside the point.
The bottom line isn't about the acceptance of some "objective" truth. The only thing that would have mattered is if you could have guaranteed to Bill that there was a way for him to fix the problem and feel better. If there wasn't a way, then it's cruel of you to think he should have forced himself to endure a tortured existence just because you have an axiomatic objection to suicide. The truth is no one can say for sure whether there was a better solution for Bill, but since he spent 23 years dealing with it and wrote a pretty compelling piece, I'm gonna take his word over yours.
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One thing you have to realize is that a counselor/doctor is not your friend, but someone that helps you solve your problems with professional advice (level of competency varies of course). Getting over any recurrent destructive mood is much like a war. First you need to go to war, then you need strategies, you need to work on it and there's going to be pain involved, with multiple battles won and lost. Going to couns…
One thing you have to realize is that a counselor/doctor is not your friend For a person dealing with trust issues, this sort of realization shatters any chance of progress, at least in my personal experience. I can't feel safe if I think I could say the wrong word and have the cops drag me off for questioning. That's why I never got anywhere with counseling. For a person with trust issues, it's extremely important t…