Okay, I know that this will sound silly, but I’ll use my cat as an example.

She does nothing but sleep, eat, shit. She’s rather defensive of her personal space, and often hurts us for that. 3AM she woke me up with loud noises because she wanted to play. The floor, my clothes, my keyboard, there’s cat hair everywhere, and without her I’d probably need to clean a fraction of what I do.

Would I get rid of her? FUCK NO. Because even if she’s annoying, I still love her and I want her around. It would be certainly better if I didn’t get those annoyances but hey, nobody is perfect. And she gives me happiness on the small things, like when she headbutts my leg or “mrrown-wown?” at me.

It’s perfectly possible that you are in a similar situation as my cat. Except that, as a human being, you understand that you’re hurting people, and you can reflect on your behaviour and change it for the best of the ones around you. But it’s still perfectly possible that you’re underestimating the positive impact that you have in their lives. And at the end of the day, we all are like this, our social interactions are usually a mix of positive and negative.

Because killing yourself would also hurt people, likely way more than your life ever could. I’ve struggled with something similar myself, and my conclusion was that if I truly felt bad for hurting people, the only moral answer is to try and do better and improve.

Often I would resent having people who cared about me, because it would be so much simpler if there were no-one who’d miss me, or be hurt by my death, but it’s too late for that because I have a bunch of wonderful people in my life who care about me, even if I don’t understand why. Sometimes I wish I’d never met them, because that would make things simpler.

A few times, I’ve had the idea that a compromise is to withdraw from these relationships and sort of wean them off of me. There’s a word that captures this approach, decathect: “to withdraw one’s feelings of attachment from (a person, idea, or object), as in anticipation of a future loss.” The logic of this approach was that if I can’t be a good person who deserves the love of the people I love, I could at least reduce their exposure to someone shitty like me.

It didn’t work out, because as I withdrew, living became more untenable and caused me to inadvertently hurt more people. It was the worst of all worlds - I wasn’t really living, but it was still hurting people similar to if I’d just died.

Quarantine doesn’t solve this and neither does suicide. Especially not suicide, which is often a selfish craving in situations like this. I don’t say that in a judgemental way, just straight up, suicide is the simpler option for people like us. It appears deceptively like justice, and there’s a nice closure to it. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider selfish options when you’re struggling with life, but it isn’t solace or closure or justice or any of those things we wish it was. If it were so simple, you’d probably be dead already.

It sucks, and I’m sorry, but there is nothing that can undo the harms of the past. Sometimes putting in the work to do and be better can lead to some healing, but also sometimes bridges get burned and you’re trying to be better for the sake of people you’ve yet to meet. If you do truly believe yourself deserving of something so drastic as suicide, then surely the better “punishment” is to continue living through and past the consequences of your actions. Redemption exists in the better world that you stand to be a part of building, by being one more person trying to be better.

Unfortunately, it is as simple as just “do better in the future”, which is frustrating, but makes sense to me - if suicide is a not simple, but easy solution to the problem of harms caused, then redeeming yourself through life is simple, but fucking difficult.

I don’t know if it’s worth it. Sometimes I find myself thinking “I should have killed myself two years ago, and this wouldn’t have happened” when I fuck something up, and then suicide now is tempting in a “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now” kind of way, even though that’s twisting the analogy to hell. The world will not be made better by your absence - if you have any sense of duty to the world or your loved ones, then it’s necessary to live with the weight of your past mistakes and move past them. Dying just puts that burden with everyone else, condemns them to a life of wondering "what if I had done Xyz differently.

For what it’s worth (very little, I’m a random internet stranger who has no knowledge of you or your circumstances), I would rather be friends with someone who has hurt me, but knows they’re fucked up and making genuine, continuous attempts to improve than someone who is completely apathetic and hasn’t hurt me particularly, but by fluke only. I think that our actions matter much more than our (stated) intentions (especially in situations where there’s a pattern to behaviour - I have unfortunately lost a few friends in this way), but I do think the intention counts for something. The fact you feel bad about what you’ve done means something. The challenging bit is to prove it. It’s not easy, and it might not even be possible to do such high levels of self improvement, idk even in my own case. I do know that it’s always worthwhile to try.

If life were a game where you lose if your net impact on the world is negative, then it’s not game over yet. If you die, that’s it, you get taken by the score screen and you’d probably not be too happy with what you’d see there. And yeah, it’s possible that you could decide against suicide and live a long life and die of old age, and still lose the game, if the net impact comes out to be not great still, but as long as you’re alive to read or think about these words, there’s still hope of making it through and levelling up enough that you can rack up the positive impact points. Hurt and help don’t cancel out like points in a video game do, but it’s hard to not think of “net impact” when contemplating dying in this manner. This might not vibe with you, but for me, it was and still is insanely motivating to know that there is still a non-zero chance of me winning this game, and what’s more, the possibility of winning is exclusive to paths where I continue living (even if often, I would rather be dead), and trying to be better (even if often, it feels like it’d be better for others if I were dead). Suicide offers control, the ability to decide how you lose the game, but it will always be a loss.

Whatever your struggles or your circumstances, I wish you the strength to steer into calmer territory, and the wisdom to recognise change. It feels weird to give advice when this is very much something I still struggle with, but this is me trying to be better. I might not feel especially hopeful about my own journey, but I do believe what I’ve said here, that meaningful change is always possible

I reject the premise of your question. Human judgment is inherently biased and cannot be implicitly trusted. I believe it is likely that you hurt people from time to time, as everyone causes such pain and injury from time to time. However, I distrust the idea that you cause nothing but pain. An absolute conclusion like that would require absolute, unequivocal, objective evidence to prove, and I have zero reason to suspect you are some sort of omnipotent being capable of acquiring such evidence.

The most likely conclusion from the available evidence is that your ability to recognize your own value is somehow compromised. A rational course of action when you cannot trust your own senses is to reject those senses. If you can’t trust yourself to fairly evaluate your own actions, you can reverse the process. Identify an action that does not cause harm, but rather, helps someone, somewhere.

For this exercise, it is important that the action be small. The smaller the better. You aren’t trying to save the world here; you are trying to recalibrate your ability to recognize the value of your actions. Any idiot can see the “good” in saving a baby from being torn apart by a rabid dog. Not everyone can see the good in picking up a piece of litter. Not everyone can see the good in kicking a rock off a sidewalk, so a kid doesn’t trip on it. Not everyone can see the good in pushing in a chair, or wiping the water off the counter in a public bathroom.

Go perform a tiny, objectively good act, right now. The smaller the better. The least significant act you can possibly imagine.

One of two things will happen: either you will see the tiny, positive value in that act and recognize that you don’t just cause harm; or you will not see that act as “good” (or “good enough”) and you will objectively know that your sense of personal value is not properly calibrated.

It’s really easy to think that you’re a burden because of x, y, or z when, in reality, the people around you don’t notice or care about x, y, or z.

It’s also possible that the people around you are actually burdening you by ignoring your needs, and you happen to feel guilty because you’re being manipulated.

If you have undeniable proof that you hurt other people significantly, and a random stranger would agree that there’s no justification for the harm you caused, then see a psychiatrist. It seems to me that you have good intentions but have something that’s stopping you from being your true self. A psychiatrist and/or a therapist can help you remove those barriers.

Suicide devastates a lot more people than you realize, so if you want to do it for other people, you shouldn’t do it at all. If you want to do it for yourself, I think you should give yourself another shot by starting meds and seeing a therapist. It’s wild how much of a difference it makes.

If you want more info on mental healthcare, check out HealthyGamer/Dr. K on YouTube and Twitch. His medical input is US-centric, but he’s a really good resource.

Because, looking ahead 2 or more years, you might be in a completely different head space. Time has a strange way of completely changing your life for the better. Stick it out and look forward to the future

Purely philosophically, that something happens/exists doesn’t mean we have to do anything about it. I’m sure that’s not helpful, but like…there’s optimistic nihilism.

Optimistic nihilism views the belief that there is no underlying meaning to life from a perspective of hope. It’s not that we’re doomed to live in a meaningless universe–it’s that we get the chance to experience ourselves and the universe we share.

So, you hurt people. Okay. Do what you can to genuinely apologize and make amends. And if that means confronting yourself about how you perpetuate a cycle of hurting others and shaming yourself for it, then do that to break the cycle.

Because if you just so happen to be a joy to everyone around you, then why shouldn’t you just live for as long as you can to share that joy?

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Because there is the possibility of learning to live in a way where you aren’t hurting them.

Withers, is that you?

May I ask in what way you think you’ve hurt others? Hopefully they know you are as human as they are.

Your life is valuable as well. And you can live it without hurting anyone.

Step one - stop doing it. If you are hurting someone, move as far away from them as you can. Yes you will lose them, but that’s inevitable.

Step two - create a new life for yourself, away from any people or situations that caused problems before.

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