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The miserable thread

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Triplets

21:58 / 11.12.07

Fuck, Stoatie, that's shit.

As soneone who has, in the past, had to half-accompany, half-force someone to a crisis centre I know what a rock and hard place that kind of action is.

And if you're feeling there's more you could have done or if you should have seen this coming, stop it right now. You did the best you could.

Condolences, dude.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:58 / 11.12.07

Thanks everyone. It seems like she'd managed to put space between herself and pretty much all her friends by the end, including her mother (who's a really sweet old lady, and is, as you can imagine, in bits).

The really stupid thing is that I can't stop thinking about her dog- she had this little terrier which I used to walk for her sometimes (this is how I knew her), and if when I went to pick the dog up she was having a bad time of it, the dog would always be reluctant to leave, and wouldn't be happy until we got back, like she didn't want to leave her when she knew there was a problem. Apparently her mother has cleared it with the vicar for the dog to attend the funeral on Monday. Poor little thing.

Tsuga

23:37 / 11.12.07

Ah, god. I'm sorry for you, too. Really it just sucks all around. While rationally and morally I feel that suicide is ultimately an individuals' personal right, I can only think of a few ridiculously extreme circumstances beyond terminal illness where it's actually a reasoned decision. Pretty much any time someone is seriously thinking of it, they need help of some kind, and it's good that you tried. I'm sorry she couldn't get out of it. It's just terrible to second-guess yourself afterwards, and so hard to not do it.
Ugh.
I hate it. Sorry, man.

Olulabelle

20:04 / 14.12.07

What is going to happen to the dog now?

That's just heartbreaking. Dog things in general being somewhat heartbreaking at the moment owing to the fact that mine has just been run over. I've come here to be upset about it rather than carrying on in the Worst of 2007 thread.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:20 / 14.12.07

Oh shit, Lula, that's awful. Best of luck to doggy.

Her mum'll probably take the dog. It gets worse, though- apparently the note she left blamed her family for not helping her enough, so her mum's in an even worse state than you'd imagine. The funeral's on Monday, which is going to be weird- especially given that another dog-walking friend of mine has been charged with taking the dog to the funeral dressed in black ribbons. I'm really not good with funerals at the best of times, but I think this is going to be a really bad one. How am I supposed to celebrate someone's life when she obviously hated it so much herself she had to make it stop? What's to celebrate about that?

Haus of Mystery

21:37 / 14.12.07

Damn that's rough. Sorry for you and everyone concerned.

Haus of Mystery

21:44 / 14.12.07

And I wouldn't worry about celebrating anything. Just be there for each other, and her family at the funeral. It's all you can do.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

23:22 / 14.12.07

Yeah, sometimes funerals don't need to be about celebrating the life that's over as such. Sometimes it's just as important to say goodbye one last time.

Tabitha Tickletooth

06:17 / 15.12.07

I hate funerals too, Stoats. Maybe sometimes they're just something to get through - hope they help someone in some way and accept that they aren't going to help you. Your being there might be one of the ways they help someone else, of course. It's because you are such a good friend.

Lula - what you are going through is awful. I really really hope he can get all the help he needs. My dog suffered from serious health issues for much of her life and I was absolutely fucking amazed by the advances in vet treatment over about 10 years. It is truly staggering what they can achieve in treatment and healing now and how committed dog doctors are to saving and protecting every life. I believe your dog is going to be back to his old self in no time and I'm believing it very very hard.

Disco is My Class War

11:48 / 16.12.07

Ah, I came to the miserable thread feeling miserable, but now I realise that there are much worse things to have happen than what is happening to me. Stoatie, sorry for your loss -- I think it's really hard when someone commits suicide after you've tried to help them, you're always going to wonder whether there was something more that you could do. But it sounds like you did everything you could, and that you obviously cared for your friend. Good luck with the funeral.

And Lula, sorry to hear about your dog. I really hope he's okay. I think if my cat got run over I would be a total mess; it sounds like you're doing pretty well, under the circumstances.

I'm a long way from home, I'm coping with a difficult language barrier and being alone a lot. Today it all just got too much and I crashed. I miss home.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:17 / 17.12.07

The funeral was today. It was beautiful, and horrible. I've been to angry funerals, indifferent funerals, melancholy funerals and "ah well, he had a good innings" funerals, but I think that was probably the saddest funeral I've ever been to.

I fucking hate funerals. I fucking hate people dying, and I wish they'd stop fucking doing it.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

22:00 / 17.12.07

Damn straight. Let's get up a fucking petition.

Katherine

07:52 / 08.01.08

I'm ill again, I believe it is probably from the manager who crawls in even when really sick. Why do people do this? All that happens is you end up sending off more people ill.

My throat hurts, I can't swallow without hurt and I'm hot and sticky.

Triplets

15:20 / 08.01.08

That sucks. To be fair to your manager (if we're assuming ze's the corporate typhoid mary), ze's probably under a lot of pressure to come in to work from hir bosses. I know at my job there's a greater amount of cashiering staff who can be called in to cover than there is managers/asst. managers.

Ironically, I refused to go in today to cover someone's sickness (but only because it would have cost me money to go and do 3.5 hours work)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:23 / 18.01.08

That "hating funerals" thing?

One of my best mates from school (who I hadn't seen in a few years, but who I'd just got back in touch with on Facebook) got killed by a car a couple of days ago. Fuck.

Closed for Business Time

12:31 / 18.01.08

Haysoos... Hope you're alright dude. Methinks you've had more than your fair share of death-related crap of late. Fingers crossed for a turn to the lighter and brighter side of things for you and yours.

jentacular dreams

12:42 / 18.01.08

Shit stoatie. I'm sorry.

Papess

12:43 / 18.01.08

That is terrible, Stoats. I am sorry to hear that and I am in full agreement with Nolte. You need some light, happy news in your life, dude.

*huggles*

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:51 / 18.01.08

I'm so sorry, Stoatie.

Spaniel

12:57 / 18.01.08

That's balls, man

grant

14:07 / 18.01.08

Along the same lines, LiveJournal keeps reminding me that it would be Julia's birthday next week.

Jack Fear

14:16 / 18.01.08

God, that's fucking horrible.

There's just one last favor I'll ask of you,
See that my LJ is wiped clean.

grant

14:39 / 18.01.08

Yeah, actually, I remember helping Bob Pratt's family out with his web affairs after his death -- there's definitely a need for some kind of posthumous internet *something*, I think.

Damn animated cake.

jamesPD

09:12 / 22.01.08

I only really discovered J.G. Ballard a few years ago, and now I hear he has cancer. Several recent events have been cancelled, due to him being 'seriously unwell', so perhaps these are his final days.

Ballard is courteous and genial in a slightly donnish way. At 77, he takes his time assembling his thoughts, but they remain unflinching and provocative, expressed with the verbal tics of his colonial background. But time, the malleable stuff of his science fiction, is running out. After being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2006, he sat down at his electric typewriter – “The computer age came too late for me” – and rapidly wrote his autobiography.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

21:59 / 22.01.08

Ah. That is sad, indeed.

Essential Dazzler

11:50 / 04.02.08

I'm still absolutely gutted I missed the final quarter of the Super-Bowl last night because I was throwing up. Hearing friends (who before the final quarter couldn't care less about American Football) rave about how awesome it was doesn't help.

Feverfew

14:50 / 04.02.08

Throwing up in general, rather than during the Superbowl, isn't fun at all. Are you better now?

miss wonderstarr

12:47 / 06.02.08

This shouldn't be miserable but falls somewhere between here and Happy thread. Perhaps you can encourage me to position it (mentally) more in "Happy".

A literary agent has written to me saying she enjoyed my novel so far, though has some reservations. The reader who reported on it before she got round to my work found some "quite strong" problems with it. However, this doesn't seem to have put her off, and she is asking me to make an appointment to come in and see her (ie. assuming she will have finished reading it by then).

Could people perhaps remind me that this kind of response is basically good and that maybe 1% of novel MSs submitted on spec to agents result in the agent saying "come in and meet me", because all I can focus on is the negative aspect of the email and though part of me knows this is quite encouraging, I just feel like I must be teh FAIL somehow ~ or that I am going to go to her offices for her to reject me.

miss wonderstarr

12:50 / 06.02.08

PS. with reference to my ongoing narrative earlier in the thread, my eye is still deformed (or that is the word I would use) following an assault and two major operations, but what are you going to do. Counselling helped for a while, but wore off. You either carry on living with it, or top yourself: maybe 10% of the time I don't think about it. So it's just a low-level constant-background unhappiness but, like I say. What can you do.

Eloi Tsabaoth

13:03 / 06.02.08

No agent would waste time on calling someone in to reject them. I don't mean that you're being immediately accepted but there's something good there that she likes. It's a very positive response.

miss wonderstarr

15:50 / 06.02.08

Thanks ~ I can objectively see that's true. She wouldn't waste her time asking me to arrange an interview, in advance, unless she saw real potential surely. You know how it is though... creative writing is so hard to break into properly, and such a minefield of rejections, that you start preparing yourself for bad news automatically.

Whisky Priestess

16:06 / 06.02.08

Maybe she wants to talk about a rewrite or see what else you've got up your sleeve? You've got more than one finished novel, I seem to recall?

Also: I am afire with curiosity cos I have a couple of friends who are agents and it might be them ... so who is it? PM me if you don't want to say in public!

miss wonderstarr

17:17 / 06.02.08

Weell the backstory is that she read my last novel and liked it enough to meet me (at my request, that time ~ I sort of parlayed a positive rejection into a meeting, so her asking for an appointment is an improvement on that). She told me then that she felt the next novel would be "the one". She obviously does have some faith in me (told me "you can clearly write", &c, at last meeting) but as I'd obviously like to have this novel published, the stakes seem high and I suppose I am just preparing myself through pessimism.

miss wonderstarr

17:17 / 06.02.08

If someone can direct me to a better thread for this, please do!

Whisky Priestess

13:19 / 08.02.08

Writers' Helpdesk is the place, baby ... or that old agent thread, but you started that one, didn't you?

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