That was predictable

Yesterday I wrote a rather long blog post titled “So, a week is gone, and another one is here ^[1]“. Since then I have received a handful of emails from people who were concerned by my references to suicide in that post.

Firstly, I should point out that I have no intention of committing suicide. Admittedly, people who have tried to commit suicide at least once are statistically more likely to try again than those who haven’t tried at all, but I don’t actually want to try again. I have a number of reasons for that, but I think the memory of how ill I made myself and how lousy I felt afterwards will be enough to dissuade me for quite a while.

Secondly, yesterday’s blog post should have contained at least three more paragraphs to spell this out. I decided not to include them because I got stuck whilst writing the second of those paragraphs, couldn’t decide exactly what I wanted to write, and came to the conclusion that they weren’t really on-topic anyway.

The basic gist of the paragraphs was that a few weeks ago a friend of mine wrote a rather long blog post which reminded me slightly of what I had written. It was basically a summary of where they believed they were in life, why they weren’t happy with their position, and what they thought they needed to do in order to move on. When I read it, I became concerned that they were close to suicide. It turns out that they weren’t, but I was concerned anyway.

Because my blog post reminded me of their blog post (although they didn’t actually mention suicide in their blog post), I came to the conclusion that people reading my blog post may become concerned for my welfare, even though I didn’t intend on making any rash decisions, or intend on alarming anyone.

It looks like I was right. I alarmed a few people, and all because I couldn’t make a few extra paragraphs make sense.

I’m sorry if I concerned you; that wasn’t my intention and I want to make it clear that you have no need to be concerned.

I should also thank the people who were concerned enough to write to me. It is very moving to know that there are people out there who, even though in reality they barely know me, are concerned enough about my well-being to write to me and offer their support. Thank you.

In a way, I’m glad that I couldn’t work out what to do with those paragraphs yesterday. If I had worked it out, I wouldn’t have seen one of the better sides of human nature, which is something I think I really needed to see.

Samuel