Yesterday was not my favorite day.

Yesterday sucked.

After I posted, I began the process of organizing my possessions into Keep and Not Keep piles. The Keep pile has to fit into a Toyota Corolla, so most of my time was spent building up the other, thinking things like “this will be gone soon.”

It is actually much more difficult than I anticipated, even for the things I haven’t used in a really long time.

No! Not your Nintendo! Think about all the good times you’ve had with it! You’re giving away your childhood!

Add to this the fact that I had been fasting (water only) for 2 days, and the result was a state of consciousness that resembled something like a lucid nightmare. I tried desperately to think my way out, but it was like trying to stop a battalion of fear, using nothing but my official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range model air rifle of positive thinking.

The anxiety got so bad I went for a walk; tried to clear my head. While I was on that walk, I got a phone call: my roommate’s brother committed suicide.

To fully appreciate how hard this news hit me, there are some things you should know. First, my roommate is one of my dearest friends–we were friends long before we were roommates. Second, my roommate’s brother was extremely intelligent. Third, I also have an extremely intelligent brother, and one of my greatest fears is that he’ll kill himself. And lastly, I’m extremely intelligent, and fairly recently, I’ve talked openly to my roommate about killing myself.

So…yeah. I returned home. Suffice it to say my lucid nightmare reached new depths of pain that made selling my possessions feel like a Disney vacation by comparison.

Today I’ve been thinking about it. I can’t help but wonder how common it is for extremely intelligent people to end their lives. I also wonder if they do so for fundamentally different reasons. For example, is there a difference between people who think the game of life is too hard and I’ll never win versus those who think the game of life is stupid and pointless; I don’t want to play?

It seems common to assume that suicide is an irrational behavior, but I’m not convinced that’s always the case.

I read an article about existential depression in gifted adults, and it was suprisingly helpful for me personally.

I had more thoughts on the matter, but I just ate for the first time in 60 hours and I’m slipping into a sugar coma. Gonna go lie down for a bit.