Chirp! Bark! Hey!

Memory Uploads And Suicidal Thoughts

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on March 5th, 2024.

This is a bad post about dying.

CONTENT WARNING: This entire post is about suicidal ideation, and how my source and memories are affecting how often I feel like I want to die. I vividly describe how I rationalize wanting to commit suicide as “good”, in a way that might be triggering to other people, because I need to put it into words to make a solid argument against my own thoughts. Please make your best judgement on if you're in a good place to read this.

So. Suicidality. I uh, need to talk about that. For myself if nothing else? Because it sucks and I feel it a concerning amount?

Like. When I'm overwhelmed, or distressed, or hate myself, my automatic thought is just, “I need to die. I need to kill myself.” And I know it's not healthy to be thinking that so much. But I feel like it's - less scary to me than to my headmates? Which is fucked up, actually.

So as a deviant hunter, one of the things I remember most is having the ability to upload my memory into a new body as I died. So when I died, I'd always return to Cyberlife Tower, and my handler would talk to me about what went wrong before I woke up but even if she was horribly disappointed in me, I would at least see her. I wouldn't be alone. I'd be safe and I'd be with her and I'd know my siblings would be coming back some time and I'd be home.

Dying hurts. Obviously. I never had any anesthetic any time I died. It hurt beyond words and I couldn't think of anything besides how agonizing it was and how I wanted it to just stop. And it always did eventually? Sometimes I'd go into shock or something, consciousness going blurry so the pain stopped before I properly died, but even if it hurt until I died, it stopped hurting after.

And I deserved the pain. The pain was horrible and overwhelming and agonizing and it had to be, it was part of my punishment for failure before getting to come home. Scream and cry and beg and vomit on the concrete and choke on it and suffer and suffer for daring to make a mistake. And only then I get to go home. Then she'll actually talk to me, because she knows I wouldn't go through that pain without needing to see her again, I needed to see her again.

...

And this is all a really, really bad rationale for dying here. I wouldn't be killing myself, I'd also be killing Max and Gavin. I love them, they have other people who love them, they love living and I usually do too, I can't just kill them in a whole murder-suicide because I can't stand the thought of fucking up and not being hurt for it. I can't see my handler again, she's fucking dead, I don't want to see her again, she abused me.

I won’t wake up painlessly and be pulled out of the horrible situation and be loved again. If I don't manage to kill myself, I'll probably horribly injure and traumatize us. We'd live with some kind of pain for the rest of our lives. It would hurt and traumatize everyone around us who fucking loves us. I don't want that. I really, really don't want that for us, or anyone we love.

And it's normal to fuck up. Everyone fucks up. Life isn't like my handler fucking said it was, it's not like Max's parents say it is, we have people who love us and we will always have another chance to get better at something. At least I've been told that. I deserve to live, even if I feel like I'm fucking up and will never be worth it. Because, come on, that's also not true.

So. If I fuck up and want to die, this is why I do that. And this is why that's a bad impulse and we will never entertain it.