A lot of self-harm requires sustained actions and calculation, it doesn’t have to be impulsive. And of course she couldn’t leave a note for her mother, the entire point is she needed to disappear.

Really rare to let you ride in the front seat. I remember I was 9 or 10 and came home (latch-key kid) and someone had broken into our apt. Called the cops and they drove me to my grandmoms. Guess where I sat? In the back of a paddywagon. I thought it was fun. Family was pissed.

I guess Disney never made a movie about The Prodigal Son, so the idea that parents are more willing to forgive transgressive behavior if you ghost them for awhile is not as familiar as I assumed.

I appreciate your point of view. I’ve made light of extremely low points in my life, pretended to laugh it off, acted like everything was in my control and that I wanted to drop out of school, barely go to a low-paying job, lay in bed for days crying and eating nothing or eating nothing but junk - and been extremely…

She probably had major dissociation. Depression will do that. You don't matter, your circumstances aren't real, etc etc

Yah I ran away from home at age 16. Like, for 2 hours one night after a giant fight with my parents who wouldn’t let me travel abroad alone.

I guess what I’m saying is, if she had killed herself instead of hiding in an apartment, would we be so judgmental? Would we critique the tone of her suicide note? This is, to me, pretty obviously a form of self-destruction and self-harm. And the tone just sounds to me like a refusal to admit anything is wrong, and…

I don’t know why people are assuming her mother would’ve been helpful or supportive had Kidd been honest with her about what she was feeling.

Not everyone handles pressure in the same ways. I dropped out of my ENTIRE LIFE just like this in 1994. My parents looked for me for two weeks and I was safe and sound... on the other side of the country.

When the deadlines mounted in college and my will to meet them disappeared completely, I would play a game. The idea was to find the perfect illness or condition that met the following criteria:

which also included a side of mansplaining NYPD officer

A kid I knew from boarding school also did this, disappeared and it appeared there was foul play involved, but in actuality he was hiding out. Can’t fully speak to his state of mind, but from everything I heard it definitely sounded like he was under a lot of pressure, external and internal.

I love it when guys defend other guys by talking about *their* own friendship as evidence for why the guy must not have beaten his female partner. It’s like white guys saying “my white friend has always been great to me, there’s no way he’s racist!!”

Yep. Someone in the original post was all “do not do this, it’s damaging” and I’m like “dude, been doing it for years, my tits are still attached, chill.”

The Road to Wellville (IMDB) is, as I recall, a pretty good recap of the madness that was The Sanitarium. It’s largely fictionalized of course, but you still get a sense of how fucking weird it was. It’s a comedy, and I dated someone once who thought it was the funniest movie in the world (probably because of the poop…

These thoughts were crazy in 1850. Why blame the ills of the world on the genitals of little girls?

The whole Kellogg Clan were weirdo turn-of-the-century new-ageists. Willfred, or Will, as you call him, was coauthor of the “Urantia Book” which is, among other things, the most important religious tome for this Sedona, AZ cult called The Aquarian Concepts community. I could say more...

Everytime I get the urge to “sin myself” I grab a handful of Frosted Flakes and hurl them down at my erect member, while screaming “IT’S NOT GREAT, YOU ARE NOT GREAT” That usually does the trick.

Nope. Different brands calculate it differently. There is no One True Bra Size.

Well, I’m convinced. I’ve been doing something similar with Ace bandages for years and years but the idea that you can stop halfway through and adjust or remove it is a game-changer.