If I hate (my)life and don't care if I die does that make me emo?
 

If someone were to put a gun to my head and I dared them to shoot, does that make me emo? Suicide is not something I'm contemplating but if I had the opportunity let it all go and took it does that make me emo? It's crazy yes, stupid most likely, but when you just don't care if you live or die, does that make you emo?

Hypothetical question. =x

It's funny when people act that way yet when the situation arises (very rare but it happens) they scream, cry like babies and soil themselves. People are in tune for survival, you'll fear death when it's staring you down, rather you believe you will or not. It's just natural not to feel like you would when you've lived a life of luxury, the realism of it escapes you entirely until you've actually come face to face with it.

What Forsety said.

Sounds like you need a little excitement - a little purpose - in your life. I may sound horribly chipper and cliché to say that you sound like a person without drive, but really.

I think you would change your tune if you were presented a situation where you had to decide between life and death.

I'm not one of the cool kids, and I'm too old to know what the trendy words mean anymore. I think emo is just a whiny prat who does it all for the attention. Maybe you are emo. But I think the question which needs an answer more is how are you going to change it?

I have a friend who lives two doors down from us and one day a buddy of his came over to his house at 1 am crying about how his wife left him and he had no purpose in life. My friend went into his house and came out loading a .36 Smith & Wesson. He put the last bullet in the chamber and offered it the guy and told him to shoot himself right there and then because he didn't want to hear it anymore.

Did he do it? Of course not. Because the guy was only doing it for attention and when confronted with the reality that he was being given the option and the means to carry out the sentence he so longed for, he backed out like a bitch.

Stew on that one for a while and come back if you think you won't do the same. Survival is an instinct, not an option.

If this shit happened when I was around something bad would've happened. I don't know what, but it would have been epic.

Anywho, what everyone else said, except with one vairation: Go buy a bottle, and go drive out to the middle of a field. Spend the night in a sleeping bag with nothing but the whiskey and your thoughts for company.

Wake up. Rinse. Repeat as needed.

Sounds to me like you're hung up on being labeled as something you don't think you are. Frankly, if you're not concerned about living any more, the last thing you should be worried about is being pigeonholed into some clique because of it. If you didn't fear death, it means you don't think you have anything to live for, or, you feel like what you are living for isn't cutting it, which is ridiculous. If you're like the millions of other lost people out there, you just don't *know* what your purpose is yet, or what you're fully capable of doing given the right chance.

If the life you're living is unbearable enough to consider death as an out, then it's time for a change. You don't have anything to lose, right? Before you say "It's too late for that!", just consider that it doesn't have to happen all at once. I'm not talking about moving or changing your name or anything like that, but re-structure your life so you can move past whatever gave you these feelings in the first place. Count up everything you want to keep: you're family, your friends, personal connections, whatever, and take them with you, but leave the rest behind. Can't get away from your problems? Limit your interaction with them. One day at a time is all it takes - small victories.

You said this was hypothetical, so it's nothing personal, but this all applies to anyone who may be thinking this way.

Emo? No. But asking it here in some lame attempt to be a tough guy, or scream for attention? Sort of makes you a prat.

I agree survival is an instinct. I'll never forget what happened during Hurricane Katrina. I was asleep in my bed, ignoring the storm outside until I heard a tree falling in my backyard and felt the house shaking. I jumped out of the bed, bracing the wall scared as hell, wanting not to be crushed by a tree falling through the roof. Whats funny was that tree barely landed on another tree, preventing it from reaching the house. It took three months for the city to come cut it down, I had trouble sleeping at night the whole time expecting them both to fall at any moment. My family is all I have in this world, and I often think about what I would do if their lives were in danger. If instinct caused me to cower in fear and run away I'd never be able to forgive and live with myself, only then would suicide be a serious afterthought. The reason I made this thread is because I find myself thinking a lot about death lately. Theres this lingering feeling that its coming and I anticipate it, hoping that its for me and not a loved one. Right now if I went to the doctor and he told me I had cancer, I might go home and celebrate.

Interesting story.

I'm not sure how old you are, Juju, but if you're anything like the rest of this board, you're probably an adolescent or there-abouts. If that's true, then it's only natural that you're starting to think about your own mortality. You're at an age where the childhood buffer zone is shrinking and you're considering the future, looking down the road at the rest of your life. Sounds reasonable to me, but it looks like you're coping with the finality of death by welcoming it, which isn't the ideal solution. I know you don't really wanna die, but unless you're hit in the face with something like a terminal illness I don't see any reason to accept a premature death as a legitimate way to rid yourself of your problems. You've still got a ways to go after all, and rest assured that if you really don't want to see any of your family hurt or dying, they don't want to see you that way either.

What makes you emo is dressing like a blind transvestite, listening to music that makes ears bleed and basing everything you do on advertising teenage angst.

I know a lot of happy people who have contemplated suicide at one time or another in their lives, so in my little corner of reality it's quite natural to feel like that for a time. It also says a lot about not actually trying to top yourself.

Why don't you do something with your life? People who "want to die" confuse me. Mental health issues aside, how can you not find something that you enjoy doing? How can you not meet people you enjoy being around? To be cliche, there's a whole world out there. And don't tell me that you have hobbies and have shit to do, because if you did, you wouldn't "want to die."

Find a hobby.

Well, wait a minute.

What if you were given the opportunity to die doing something really awesome. Like, for example, you die in a car wreck because you lost control on the autobahn at 180+ mph-- you lost control because you were too busy getting road head from some swedish supermodel while snorting coke off her ass-crack-- and you were driving like an SLR McLaren or a Ferrari F430. In other words, you didn't really commit suicide, but you liquidated all of your earthly assets to go on some really fucking wild binge. I could see myself doing something like that if I thought I had nothing else left for me. I would do all of the things that are otherwise considered dangerous, felonious or just things I really wanted to do. Like, maybe blow my wad on a nice hotel room in vegas, hire all the high priced prostitutes I could fit on a california king and snort the rest up my nose-- fear and loathing style, overdose like a rockstar.

There are plenty of ways you can get around the whole self-preservation instinct, drugs and various other physical stimuli can trick your mind into thinking its survival is not at stake.

When I was fifteen I felt the same way, jujube. Looking back I know Sass' advice is correct - it's easy to feel like you have nothing to live for when you're not really doing anything. There's several ways to get out of this. The laziest is to ride it out, but you may find yourself way too old for this shit by the time you feel better. You could take yourself out of your own comfort zone, like Frank and beaner are suggesting - you could just develop new hobbies or persuits, like Nall is saying.

But if all you want is an answer to your question, yeah, you're emo, and you're not going through anything that no one else went through.

That's right, it's natural for everyone to get down about themselves every once and a while. Whether you're discouraged about the way your life is going, or if you went through a bad experience, or you just had a big loss, sometimes we want an escape. This can be accomplished in two ways: adaptation (change) or forfeit (suicide). The thing is, change takes time and effort to accomplish, while suicide is a relatively quick and effortless solution. In a way, death is the easy way out, but it has the unfortunate after effect of, well, killing you, so that's it, no second chances. Just consider for a minute that you're worth a second chance. The opportunity is there, you just have to seek it out. Life is all about effort, and while it may not be entirely true to say that you get back all of what you put into it, the more you work for a better life, the better yours will be (and the more you have to live for).

For now, make your purpose in life finding your purpose in life. The absolute worst case scenario would be that you just never find anything, but even then you could say you tried, and that's the least anyone can do.

It doesn't exactly make you emo automatically. I mean, I have a friend who's been through really hard times and she's stereotyped as "emo" but on the inside, she's not, well at least that's what I think.

There's has to be something in life that you enjoy or else...why would God have even created life? There's some purpose and life isn't just day by day horrible events passing by and such...I mean really, one day someone says they hate their life and the next day they say they love their life. You know, it might not just be that you're thinking that you might emo; it might just be a strange mix of emotions that make you think like that. Your mind is vulnerable to many things so it doesn't really mean that you are 100% emo. No, it wouldn't be like that.

I agree with the sentiment entirely. People who are really wanting to die never mention it, they just go do it. (I'm not saying anyone here should, but...) That said, women usually make the attempt as a cry for help - men just kill themselves and end it.

Do you cut yourself? Do you bitch about how awful life is to the point that it brings down everyone else's mood? If you said no to those then I'd say you're not emo. You've probably just having a depressing moment, everyone gets depressed sometimes.

Also I think most real emos would shit themself if they had a gun to their head.

Hmm odd that I find this thread at the exact same time I am feeling a bit down. Makes me wonder how many people my age are getting this depression.
I'm sorry if it might offend anyone but if a counselor answered my depression with finding God or praying more often...I'd just never talk to them again. I am passed the stage of suicide though but that doesn't mean I would fight death if I was dying.
Ok I am getting of track...to answer Jujubee's question.

I agree with DarkMageOzzie. It just a depression. A lot (if not all) of people think about killing themselves or dying.

I have recently gone through ten tons of shit in my own life.

Just because he wouldn't care if he died doesn't mean he wants to do himself in. I felt the same way.

What I think is that so long as we're alive, we have desire. If our desires come to and end, or we find ourselves in a place where we feel we can no longer fulfill our desires, we might feel we have no more fuel in our souls to keep living.

It's entirely difficult to detach and start over also. Sometimes impossible. All I can say is you can either do what lurker said and ride it out, or just try and find a new way to make your desires attainable.

1.) Caring about what other people think is a major source of unhappiness. Why worry if you are emo or not? It is not productive.

2.) If you ever get to a point where you decide you would like to die, please be kind and find someone who would like to kill a human being, and let them take care of it. That way, you both benefit.

3.) Continuing the trend of unsolicited advice in this thread, if you are consumed with apathy and lethargy, you might try a potent stimulant (e.g. adderall, cocaine) to see if it makes you feel desire again.

4.) I think a major component of being emo is talking about it. So as long as you keep your thoughts to yourself, you should be okay.

My dad knew a guy who whined constantly for years that he wanted to kill himself. Nothing ever came of it of course. Until they found him in his flat, after having stabbed himself in the gut. Admittedly that is a one in a million case, especially these days where attempted suicide is an accepted conversation topic amongst the teenage demographic.

GO TEAM FUTURE

I think you just need to find some outlet to channel your inner frustrations, pain or dissatisfaction. Take story writing for example. Just write what you feel through your characters. Let them act on the drama and consequences. 90% of my stories are about death. I feel suicidal very often, but I have depression. Nothing I do has been able to give me a sense of belonging or even meaning. But, why don't I just find death? I can't. I'm too afraid to kill myself 'cause I think too much about it. That probably doesn't make sense. Emo is ambiguous now. It's a word that has been used, misused and then used again for different descriptions. It's out of hand. Just forget about it. If you hate your life and don't care if you die, then that gears more towards the lines of apathy, passiveness and emptiness.

I'm not sure if that makes him hardcore like Henry Rollins or hardcore like Fallout Boy.

Whatever it is, he's An Hero, that's for sure.

That depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? But all in all, I don't really think it does; emo's more teenagers trying to be something they're not, and whinging and crying the whole time.

In all honesty though, I'm sure you'll find that when the opportunity arises you'd much actually rather still keep your life. I've had death brush past me a couple time (accidents, not intentional) and it damn scared the shit out of me. The notion of living is far more pleasing.