Punched Out

Assuming I did not botch the task, by the time this posts I will have been dead via suicide for several hours.  Nope, that’s not a setup to a joke.[1]

Why would someone who is healthy, employed, has every outside appearance of success, and so on, take their own life? In my case the answer is simple enough: I was done, but my body wasn’t.  But that answer isn’t satisfying, so, for those who are aggrieved, upset, saddened, etc., let me do my best to try to explain.

And lest you imagine me some sort of sad human whom you should pity, I have never had that view of myself (aside from the occasional pity party, of course).  I did struggle with that self perception on and off as an adolescent and teen.  But since becoming a young adult I came to understand myself as a remarkably privileged human being.

Indeed, I have had nearly every conceivable advantage a human might hope for.  And I lived a rich, rewarding life of which I am, I confess, quite proud.

So, WTF!?!  Right?  Why would someone like that off himself?  Surely he was full of self pity, whining and crying, blah, blah, blah.

Perhaps I have deceived myself and that is the best account.  But it was not my experience.

As one last bit of prologue, I fear this post will be little more than a scattered set of thoughts.  Is there such a thing as a “suicide note” that makes sense to those who valued and loved the one who killed herself?  That seems unlikely. But perhaps some of you who are hurting will find something useful here.

Misfit

I didn’t “fit” in society.  That isn’t a problem of society.  Setting aside moments of petulance, I viewed it as a plain fact.  There it was.  What to do about it?  Ask society to adapt to me?  Hah!

Being a misfit manifested itself in two broad ways over the course of my life: (1) far too often I angered, insulted, offended and otherwise upset people, without expecting or intending to, and (2) I rarely felt that I was successful explaining my ideas, perceptions, understandings to others.

Yeah, I know: “Cry me a river!”  Nobody “fits.”  Everyone feels like an outsider.  Fair enough.  I am not trying to persuade anyone.  But for those of you interested in why I decided to end my life, it begins there.  This was a lifelong problem, and I while I certainly got better at reducing the frequency of both, daily interactions regularly reinforced each (admittedly, more the latter than the former, which was a blessing).

I began to get a handle on the fact that I experienced life differently than others in second grade.  While I certainly could not understand it as such back then, I basically observed class like an anthropologist might.  There were all these unwritten rules governing my classmates’ behavior, as well as a slew of them that governed my teacher’s interactions with us.  To be sure, our teacher had laid out some formal rules (e.g., don’t speak without raising your hand; line up in single file; sit still; walk on the right side of the hallway).

The formal rules were great: I knew what to do.  To be sure, I didn’t like many of the rules, and I struggled to figure out why some existed (e.g., sit up straight).  But several I could back out (e.g., walk on the right side of the hall).  And even if I could figure out why the rule existed, I knew how to behave: I could choose to obey or transgress the rule.

But the behavior of my fellow students often mystified me.  Why didn’t they pay attention in class?  Why did the teacher have to repeat herself?  How could they not understand that? Why did lessons have to move forward soooooo slowly?

But the real mysteries involved interactions outside of the formal classroom.  Why weren’t my classmates interested in the things I wanted to talk about?  Why did they want to talk about things that I found inane and uninteresting?

You might be surprised to learn that I was among the shortest of my classmates.  I was also horribly slow.  In short, I was a short, skinny boy who found social interactions curious and confusing and spent lots of time “in his head.”  Outside of a formal setting where the rules of behavior were clearly established I was shy.

I would figure out in my late 40s that I am borderline autistic.  Of course, in the late ’60s and early ’70s that wasn’t meaningful.  Had my parents or teachers known, there wouldn’t have been any useful resources for them to have done anything with the knowledge.

On Briggs-Meyer tests I score either INTJ or ENTJ, depending upon how I answer several questions: in a large group where I have no (leadership) role I am introverted.  Hand me a (leadership) role and the size of the group becomes irrelevant: I become extroverted.  In addition, as I become comfortable from repeated interaction in a group I switch from introverted to extroverted (primarily by filling leadership voids).

Both types are apparently unusual, each estimated to comprise around 2% of the population.  So, borderline autistic and I/ENTJ?  Yup: Misfit.

Here’s a quote from a description of INTJ’s that resonates with me.

People with the INTJ personality type take pride in remaining rational and logical at all times, considering honesty and straightforward information to be paramount to euphemisms and platitudes in almost all circumstances

Status Seeking Behavior

In Middle School, and especially 8th grade, I began to put together a useful way to understand the mystifying behavior of others.  Humans can usefully be understood as social creatures whom are constantly engaged in enhancing or protecting their rank among their peers.  As a recent post put it, quoting a researcher:

“Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction. It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bisons,” he wrote. “It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest and who is a cheat.”

I cannot convey how visceral was my distaste in pursuing such information.  As a social scientist, and a dad who watched his children develop, I came to understand why people do this.  But it remained something I could not stand and actively avoided.

Unsurprisingly, rejecting pursuit of the types of knowledge that are “key,” is not especially healthy.

https://willopines.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/punched-out/