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The Invisible People

Care is gatekept. Compassion is not available to everyone. It's reserved for people who can socialize normally. This is very difficult for normally-social people to believe.

There's a whole world of invisible people who have no connections to anyone and no way into the spaces that contain everything they need to be not just happy but alive. These spaces are controlled by the normally-social majority, who purport to see the world as mostly fair and to believe that every person in it is as capable as they are of getting help. Many invisible people have social disabilities and can't engage productively with anyone else. Others become victims of social systems that see their victimhood as impossible. 

I saw a YouTube comment that said, "Suicide is a serious issue. If you ever feel down, please reach out and talk about it to anyone around you." This advice presumes that people who are struggling with suicidal ideation necessarily have people to reach out to and can reach out to any of them at all and reliably get genuine care and productive help. In reality, many suicidal people are utterly alone. Some have around them only people who won't listen to them. While everyone fighting suicidal thoughts should definitely look for help, it's important to admit that many people who might consider helping are hopelessly and unabashedly selfish. It's common for those who need help to face resentment when they seek it.

Furthermore, mental health care structures are broken all over the world. Our societies, in general, encourage self-interest, insensitivity, and relentless competition. Care systems fail because they're built to remove the need for care rather than to meet it and because they're so preoccupied with deterring malingerers that they can't focus on people who genuinely need help. There is also in this the notion that people who want to defraud care systems don't need any kind of help, which bears reconsideration.

People fighting suicidal ideation often have nowhere to turn where they won't meet dismissal, derision, or incompetence. If dealing with thoughts of self harm were as simple as reaching out to a network of constant supporters, far fewer people would be as troubled as they are. The assumption that everyone has access to people who are caring and available reveals a misunderstanding that compounds the misery of everyone who's suffering. Many simply do not believe that an invisible population exists. This makes it so difficult for invisible people to find help that suicide begins to seem like the only option that confers any power to those who see not just their suffering but their very existence denied in the world around them.


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