Coveting Others Suffering

I recently had a family member confide in me about their health conditions. As they talked and cried about their pain and suffering, I felt envious.

Although supportive with words, the more they expressed their willingness to want to get better, the more covetous I became.

Yet I listened. I did feel teary-eyed but I don’t know if it was because they were in so much agony OR if I was thinking “ wow you are so lucky "



Something in me emerged and said things that were positive and compassionate. I surprised myself. Once we hung and I thought about the encouraging words I spoke.

Could the positivity conveyed to them, actually be me subconsciously speaking to myself.

Suffering from mental illness is different than suffering with physical illness.

Is this why our mental state can result in self harm? Do we need to have something intangible connected to the tangible?

I'm actually kinda fascinated by this thought process. Do you have a sense of where this feeling of envy is coming from? Like, what is it that makes you look at someone in pain and feel like they're lucky?

When you’re hurting mentally you feel like you should be punished and deserve all the bad. But those pains, although agonizing, are superficial if compared to the sufferings from a physical disorder.

Occasionally too cowardice to go through with self-inflicted attempted unaliving. So mostly I would pray for a God-stricken terminal illness to alleviate me from this life of misery but it never came.

Thus, I look at those suffering from terminal illnesses thinking they are lucky because they may have a more valid reason to pray that God would spare them from the constant suffering and reward them a natural death.

A death that I have invited but it hasn’t accepted my invitation.

The SI community usually express our inability to cope with evolving, healable circumstances like family dysfunctions, romantic relationships, money issues, job issues, lack of progress in other areas. And those are some reasons we say cause our SI.

Some days feel unbearable but circumstances change. Families heal, we find a mate, our income increases, we get a new job, etcetera etcetera.

We make progress and those changes shift our mood. It fluctuates between wanting to live OR not wanting to live in those moments.

Those who have unchanging health conditions are lucky because their pain doesn’t necessarily fluctuate. They’re in a constant state of knowing death is inevitably near.

Would the SI community still lust or marvel after unaliveness if we knew it was no longer in our own hands to decide our expiration date?

I can actually kinda understand this. A few years ago, i got really sick. Stress had finally just ravaged my physical health, and i became convinced i must have cancer or something. Kept going to doctors over and over, but they never found anything. The thing it took me quite a while to admit is that i was going there hoping one day they'd tell me i was dying. When i confessed that, my dad told me "I don't think you realise how bad cancer is." The thing i really wanted to say in response was "Yeah, i do actually. I don't think you realise just how badly i want this over with."

And one thing you do actually see is when people with terminal diagnoses somehow manage to go into remission, they don't feel relieved like you'd think. They get angry. Even kind of disappointed. Knowing death is coming for them gave them the chance to prepare for it, make peace with it, let go of all the things binding them to their life. So without it they're suddenly rudderless and drifting, with no sense of what to do with themselves or all this life they suddenly have left.

In a way, i suppose that's the cruel paradox of being chronically suicidal. You're not dying, but you're not actually living either. And for a lot of us who've been there, we still have things tying us down, but try as we might, we can't let them go knowing we're making an active choice to, rather than accepting something we can't change. We know the damage we're going to do with our choice, that it'd hurt people far worse than if we died of natural causes or some terminal illness.

In the end though, i'm glad i wasn't terminally sick, and that i had reasons to keep on enduring, because as hopeless as i felt, as little as i believed things could get better, eventually they did. Because as long as you still have the power to choose, things can get better. In that sense, we're the lucky ones.

I totally understand the relief that you felt after not being diagnosed with cancer. I am glad that you’ve held onto hope and are still able to add beauty to this sometimes un*beautiful world.

Even in this moment to converse with me. It actually challenged my self-awareness in my thought processes.


It’s like we waltz with death when the illusion is that we control the when. But when it is not in our control our desire shifts.

Reminds me of the thriller movie series SAW. The synopsis is that a cancer ridden guy kidnaps people who takes life for granted then makes them decide if they are willing to fight to live/fight to survive.

Thank you for your time.
I wish you the best.

Glad to hear this was a constructive conversation.
And thanks, i wish you the best too.

Years and years ago in school I went to a Social Studies class. In that class the teacher said there were only two kinds of heroes in the world: "Conquering Heroes" and "Suffering Heroes." I thought at the time and still do that it was too narrow a description. But still we humans look up to and envy those heroes. Both kinds of them, life is strange. Love