[Dark] Depression/Suicides within the fandom (The revival)

@hype  
s’alright, but I enjoy not being a full-on tar lung
 
e cig 👌

@Gentlecolt  
@hype  
This is all some pretty terrible advice. Addictions are a great way to deepen misery and empty pockets.

@Cirrus Light  
say what you will but once I discovered cigarettes everything was a hell of a lot nicer
 
reefer is for chumps though

@hype  
It’s not a matter of if they ruin your health in terrible ways, it’s only a matter of when. It’s nothing more than a coping mechanism that’s far worse than many others, like working out or baking food, except unlike the others it’s a lot more expensive and pays off with poor health and addiction rather than great health or delicious food, which in turn means more misery and limitation.

@hype  

 
I mean, if you hate having a good old time..
 

@Conflik9929  
@Gentlecolt  
@Background Pony #A0F4  
@hype  
@Gentlecolt  
@Cirrus Light  
@hype  
@Gentlecolt
 
In the comments to >>1381469t (deleted), there was an excellent comment on this topic:
 
@British-Heavy-Metal-Dude  

 
I’d say just go to a shrink and get a prescription for antidepressants. It’s probably even cheaper, doesn’t run a lot of risks that drugs do, and instead of creating spikes of pleasure that become the purpose of life, they’ll actually make your entire life better, instead of just moments of it that become an unhealthy addiction to those moments where everything else is even sharper pain.

The first cut is wasnt painful. I was curious how hard is it to cut myself. I just tried it to know why people do that. I didnt feel pain because of the adrenaline and the “shock”. I made 3 cuts because it was not bleeding.  
I drew a little pony with the blood. I felt that I am a terminator/I control everything. Good feeling. But I dont need that despite my deep depression. Im a harder than that.

@Cirrus Light  
But working out can very quickly become an unhealthy addiction…
 
I used to work out for 4-5 hours every other day at heart rates of 170÷… at first it was very pleasurable but that pleasurable feeling pretty much just went away after doing it for a while
 
 
@Cirrus Light  
They help.. but they by no means cure the depression… But maybe it’ll be enough to get my life back on track

@Rainboom Dash  
Antidepressants or drugs? Because the people who get sucked into a strong addiction cycle are almost always depressed people who use it to feel better. After all, a high is so much more potent when life outside the high is painful, and that’s how vicious cycles start. Free Will really shouldn’t have a price, but rather than simply selling it you’d be paying to lose it.
 
But hey, no pothead, a lot more money, and I’m envious of how in-shape you probably are now. After the major surgeries and stuff I’ve had I’m in terrible shape. Not badly overweight, just… weak at the endurance game.

@Cirrus Light  
It was before i started taking anti depressants
 
I… Was in shape… I’m trying to get back to the previous shape I was
 
“Weak at the endurance game” well… It’s not hard to get back in shape :P
 
I went from working out 30 minutes every other day to working out 60-90 minutes in just a couple weeks

I will say that anti depressants do help though
 
I used to not take any (when my depression wasn’t quite so severe) and I felt like I needed to work out 5 hours a day every day…. Of course my body would only let me work out every other day and it annoyed me… I’d get this super calm and carefree feeling for 24 hours after working out… It was amazing.. anyway then I started taking Celexa and the need to work out just.. went away
 
Anyway.. now I’m currently taking 40mg of Celexa and am switching to Lexapro to hopefully take the side effects away (tiredness and dry mouth)
 
I will say… This anti depressant was a life saver… Literally
 
On 20mg I felt the need to cut myself… At 30 I didn’t really care what happened to me and took 350mg of Concerta.. all it did was raise my heart rate to 130 and made me feel super calm
 
At 40mg though.. I feel so much better

@Rainboom Dash  
I wish I could say that. Exercise to me is just a grueling chore. Ugh…

@MethidMan  
The more you work out the easier it gets
 
When I was only working out 20 minutes every other day it was really hard and unenjoyable… but now that I’m working out 60-90 minutes it’s really easy and enjoyable and feels reaaally good

 
So I’ve always wondered, how do really depressed people typically respond to physical comforting?
 
I mean, I’ve been in pretty deep at times myself, and I always thought a comfort snuggle would be really good, maybe like half the pain, but not make it all better, but maybe give a chance to cry it all out and fall asleep in a warm embrace, maybe waking up feeling a good deal better.
 
But I’ve never had the opportunity to really experience it to know for sure. It’d have to be someone close of course, and that you know respects and loves you.
 
How would it differ if it’s “just” a friend as opposed to a romantic s.o.? Would that even matter?
 
Just some thoughts I’m kinda curious about.
 
Of course everyone is different, but often there’s a sort of general trend.
 

 

@Cirrus Light  
I wouldn’t know what its like to have a friend or loved one comfort you like that, but it sure looks nice.

@Cirrus Light  
Pinkie Pie conforting Twilight is my new favourite thing.

@Background Pony #A675  
@EmployeeAMillion  
…Now the thought is making me feel a bit more lonely and sad at the realization that I don’t have a Ponks to snuggle me…

@Cirrus Light  
If you have a dog, that’s a decent substitute. At least you won’t feel awkward about giving it kisses. :p

@Cirrus Light  
Part of me wants to have somebody that I can snuggle with. Theoretically, I would love to have somebody who would let me lean on them (literally and figuratively) and tell them all of my secrets, but in reality, I do not like being touched. When I was at the worst phase of my depression, my counselor had to tell my mother that I was considering suicide. That night, my mother hugged me and said to me that she could “cope with many things, but not the loss of her son”. I had to resist the urge to pull away because I do not like being hugged, especially by surprise.
 

 
||I have been having a lot of negative thoughts. Lately, I have been contemplating my own gender identity, which I am unsure of. If I could take a pill to immediately switch my gender and sex without any negative consequences, I think that I would take it, but the intensity of these thoughts fluctuates, so I cannot even tell which gender identity is ‘me’. Also, even if I decide that it would be better to be a woman, I would still probably go through sexual reassignment surgery and hormone therapy. I am afraid of having my genitals irreversibly changed, possibly losing the ability to orgasm, and of being an easy target for bullies when I appear androgynous.
 
I also have had a lot of thoughts that I am incompetent and will never find my place in the world.
 
Call me insane, but I sort of want to go back into the depths of my depression so that I can experience passion again, but at the same time, I want to be completely happy. I want to be able to tell if my thoughts about my own gender are ‘fake’ or not.
 
I have been having thoughts every day for the past three weeks that I am going to kill myself, though I do not actually want to do this. I keep convincing myself that I will do it, but I can never bring myself to try to do it because I am afraid of pain and death. I am so crazy for saying this, but:  

I keep telling myself that I will finish high school, waste time in college, and live a bored, lonely, and confused rest of my life, and that the only solution is death. I am not currently thinking about self-harm, but I have been plagued with these thoughts lately.
 
School is stressful. My gender identity is stressful. Driving is stressful. My future appears stressful. Most of my “friends” are stressful. I finally felt cured, and then my depressive thoughts came back. I feel calm emotionally, but mentally, I am just as bad as I was in the worst of my depression.||

@Background Pony #F27B  
Your in much better shape then me,I didn’t even had a mother

@Background Pony #F27B  
Lemme come clean to you, I’ve had the same kinds of thoughts. I’d love to be able to be more tender and accepted in that way, to be loved for being a pretty woman in a dress, just so happy and cute and lovable just for being me, so I could be all pretty with a flower in my hair and it wouldn’t be weird, to be more physical and huggy around people, and generally have a girly bliss. I remember at 3 I preferred not to wear pants around the house (a diaper’s enough pants, right?) and a really long shirt, instead - basically like a dress - it just felt so much better.
 
So I’m no stranger to the concept, but at the end of the day you are what you’re born as, so reassignment surgery, wanting to be called “her” instead of “him”, all of it - is doing nothing in my mind but escaping the plainly obvious truth. I am a male. It’s written in every cell of my body and nothing will ever change that, sans technology that’s many centuries off - and even if that technology happened in my lifetime, I’d only be running from the truth.
 
The issue isn’t what little strands of acids in your cells’ nuclei read - XY or XX - the issue is how you perceive yourself.
 
There’s a serious issue in the U.S. (not sure what nation you’re from, though, but probably more than half here are from the US? At least a majority most likely) with male culture - physical touch is seen as inherently sexual for us, having emotion is taboo, and if a male talks about “intimacy” most people assume sex.
 
As one woman who guised herself as a male for several months to learn about the male world put it - it was sad to her, how much male culture focused on the physical act of sex and how little it touched on the real emotional depth of intimacy. Our culture is emotionally lacking, and it shows in suicide and crime rates.
 
But what you are does not make who you are, and cultures change as people do. The weight of the problems I mentioned isn’t actually as bad as it may sometimes seem, and you’ll see this when you move on to college, maybe even a trade school. It’s far worse in High School than in college. ( this comic pretty well sums it up)
 
I’m from Alabama, perhaps one of the most Southern and “macho man” cultured places in the States, and even there, people were surprisingly accepting of grown men with gentle hobbies. I remember my SCUBA instructor at one point mentioned how some car factory unionized workers had opportunities for knitting classes, and rather than be scathing, he just kind of shrugged it off with, “I may not understand it, but whatever floats their boat, I guess.”
 
I find that yes, jerks will be there, but in large part people are actually rather reasonable and tolerant, so long as you’re tolerant to them and don’t go out of your way to bother them.
 
Gentle and sensitive men do exist, and they’re especially well-received in intellectual circles - the phrase “gentle men” or “gentlemen” is one of respect, not derision. It’s perhaps a little harder to be a sensitive guy than a sensitive girl, but you’ll find people are surprisingly open to it.
 
Finding people who will accept you for it is pretty important. Using Facebook and google, or even just looking around on campus and going to events, it’s not too hard to find your niche of like-minded people in college (sometimes even in High School, though less often). Start with a shared interest, such as being a brony or whatever hobbies you have.
 

 
But, I suppose I’m getting way off-topic here…
 
Back on-track, I think I’ll just decide to say; accept yourself. There’s a lot of people who say accepting yourself means getting a gender change, but I don’t honestly understand that. Accepting yourself is, well, accepting yourself, not forcing yourself into something else.
 
So what if you like more feminine things, or being gentler or prettier or kinder or softer - that doesn’t mean you’re a girl, it means you’re a real man. Often the farce of macho man is nothing more than cowardice hidden behind a wall. No person doesn’t have feelings, and the greatest people are those who can come to accept that fact, and be at peace with those feelings without going to war with themselves or their body.
 
Being a man doesn’t define who you are. You define what it means to be a man.
 
If the world says it’s holding a bayonetted gun and pointing it at people, and you don’t feel that way, then the world is wrong about you - you’re not wrong about yourself.
 
The bravest men aren’t the ones who hold guns and point them at unarmed people. The bravest men are the ones who will approach a gun, unarmed, and do this to them.
 

 
Manhood doesn’t change you, doesn’t define you - you define it.
 

 
As for “making it”, with regards to wealth and jobs and education - you will. You’re not a good judge if you won’t, and community colleges aren’t as hard as you might think. I found my own community college was easier than my high school.
 
And even if you’re brilliant - I, who study general relativity for fun, and have memorized dozens of equations and know orbital mechanics intuitively and can give discourses on rocket science from memory - I often doubt my own ability to “make it”. Even people who obviously will make it have those anxieties, so you’re in good company with those fears, and they certainly aren’t as rational as you might think. Just keep on plowing on with determination and you’ll make it.
 

 
Oh, and as for being cute…
 
Even male stallions with strongly masculine muzzles can have their own brand of cute.
 

 
Again, what you are does not define who you are. Sunburst as a whole is a great example of a relatively gentle, softspoken, and sensitive man.
 
I’d actually recommend re-watching The Crystalling. Sunburst is just such a great character at being a male with emotion that isn’t being unnecessarily or cheaply angsty.
 
As much as feminists complain about women’s representation in media, honestly I think men have very poor representation when it comes to people like myself - and if you’re anything like me, have ever wondered about things in a way similar to myself, then probably somewhat like yourself. But Sunburst is an amazing break from that. He doesn’t have a ridiculously, unrelatably tragic backstory, nor is he unduly angsty or unreasonable about something small. Rather, his concern and angst are something very real and relateble - he didn’t live up to what he hoped to be, he felt like a failure for missing his high goals - and his response to it was also very real and something we can relate to very well - he tries to cover it up as much he can, completely bury it - until Starlight finally pushes so hard he can’t hold it down anymore. All-in-all, he’s so much more real than anything I think I’ve ever seen anywhere else in a male character that touches on real, sensitive, and deep feelings that many men experience and worry about.

@Cirrus Light  
That… hit close to home. I have wanted to wear pretty dresses and skirts for quite a while now, but I have just been too afraid of what other people think to do it. I am from Alabama as well (southern Alabama, if you are curious), and I have even seen that comic before. I see myself as female no more than I see myself as a male, and I have planned the gender reassignment because I am afraid of socially wearing a dress or skirt, not because I completely desire to be a female. Also, I seem to dislike so many males at my school that I have issues making friends with them. I have plenty of male friends, but most of them make me feel anxious from talking to them, so I have also considered the transition so that I can fit more into the female crowd. I just do not know what I am willing spend the rest of my life doing, but I hope that I find something in college.
 
I really did not think that anybody would understand what I was going through, and your response was both empathetic and supportive.
 
Thank you.

@Background Pony #F27B  
You’re very welcome. I’m just glad my shot in the dark landed somewhere good ^^;
 
You know, I actually hung around the girls’ group my whole time in high school. I was just ridiculously shy and quiet, very much a loner, but at lunch, I felt a lot more comfortable sitting with the group of girls than the group of guys, even though they were sort of my friends. I dunno what it was, I just felt more comfortable around them, and yeah, one thought I was creepy (though that’s probably mostly due to a bad joke I made about having a shrine to her rather than associating with them), but for the most part they weren’t too scathing of it. I think they slowly caught on to it, and they even invited me to an outing or two after a year or two. I was just so shy and quiet, though, and the school was known for being very cliquish.
 
I got to know one of them pretty well as a friend, even.
 
It was a weird time, though, and I had next to no social skill.
 
Fast forward to college, I was halfway across the country, but feeling a bit emboldened by the thought that I was around people more like myself, I started a brony club. I was a member of a facebook group of “Mormon” bronies, and a few of them went to my university, so I chatted them up on FB and made a “BYU Bronies” facebook group. I was so socially awkward and shy I couldn’t say “hello” to anyone, but I got more desperate to grow the club, and felt a bit more comfortable around bronies, so I approached anyone wearing anything pony. One of them - I dashed after him at the last second as the elevator doors closed - later became like, my super BFF (so much so that I’ve had a person or two wonder if we’re gay, lol, but nah, we both find girls way too cute for that). Fast forward some-odd 5 years and now there’s over 300 members to the facebook group and I’ve more or less maxed out my social circles (ie, I don’t have more time to spend with large groups of people whom I know all of well) and am pretty decent at the whole social thing. I’ve even run a roleplay campaign everyone enjoyed.
 
That being said, they still don’t know my dark secrets, heh, but that BFF does, and that’s enough for me. I’ve never publicly worn a dress or anything - I think it’d be more embarrassing than it’s worth, and I’ve come to accept that what the dress represents is really what I’m after. It’s nothing more than a manifestation of those desires to be allowed to be cute and likeable and emotional, so as I come to terms with those, it’s really not much an issue any more.
 
Again, Sunburst is a great articulation of all these things.
 
…I still love capes, though, hehe. Got a Renaissance cloak from a Renaissance fair and often wear it to roleplay events. Also a long black peacoat that serves much the same cozying function a dress would, and looks rather dapper, I do say.
 

 
I’ve also largely settled on an identity. I’m an intellectual. Some of my favorite role models are people like C.S. Lewis, Roger Penrose, Albert Einstein - the gentle nature of the scholar. Ultimately, comes together to something a lot like Sunburst. Love that character.
 
Also you’ll find that the term “bro” actually has a usage very similar to when girls say “gal pal”…
 
You just gotta be kinda relaxed and have fun with it. And eventually you’ll come to realize that, well, other men are also emotional beings, they’re just about as shy at showing it as you are, only they turn to other methods for comfort, such as creating some farce (like a macho man sort of thing), and get to love their farce so much it becomes halfway real… sometimes.
 
But yeah, other guys are also pretty much in your same boat - have emotion, but afraid and not sure how to show it, and find ways around showing it. Also like to be silly and have fun sometimes. They just do it in different ways.
 

 
(this is especially apparent in STEM peoples, imo. Something about engineers…)

@Background Pony #F27B  
But, hey, I go to a religious university that is rather opposed religiously to crossdressing, so maybe other universities won’t be as much against it.
 
But I find once I accept I’m an emotional being and learn to like my self-image as honest and endearing, and that I define masculinity, it doesn’t define me, then the desire to seek feminimity(?)* is pretty much gone.
 
*technically “feminism”, but that’s come to have a different meaning…

Wow
 
I told my parents that I wanted to go to BABScon and they are like “you need someone to go with you” and I’m like “why, I’m 22 years old” and they are like “you don’t have any experience travelling alone” and I was confident I could do it by myself but now I’m not so sure…
 
I mean.. I never have gone somewhere by myself before… Heh… I’m fucking 22 years old and have never gone somewhere on my own before… I might as well kill myself… There’s…. Lots of things that I should have done a looooong time ago that I haven’t… Heh… I’m so fucking stupid and incapable… I should just go kill myself
 
Who am I kidding… I could never create anything good.. I can’t draw… I can’t sing… I’m fucking 22 years old
 
I mean for freaking sakes
 
I’m at work right now and taking a break but I have to get back to work… But my energy levels are dropping… Heh… HEHHEHEHEHHFJCJEJCNDJENCNDJDN