Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Last Words of Programmer Bill Zeller (2011)

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There are a lot of logical loops here that don’t make sense. “I can’t”, “I will always”, “for obvious reasons...” etc.

They sound familiar to me. I’ve been stuck in loops of anger/pain where I can’t let go of an axiom, even though I know it’s probably not representative of reality, because I am obsessed about the possibility of finding another axiom under that one.... one that is both represented in reality AND addresses the pain I am feeling.

The only way that can continue for months/years is by keeping it a secret. He keeps saying over and over how he could never tell anyone because it would get out. But that’s his false axiom. Talking would’ve been the only way to find release. Talking would’ve unraveled his nonsense thoughts. But he needed to cling to them to feel safe.

I’m not sad he killed himself, that was his decision. But I’m sad he went so long without having a true friend or a doctor who could listen and help process reality with. That sounds unbearable.

There is someone out there who can hold the conversation you need to have. You will probably have to try with several people to find them, and it will be devastatingly hard. It will be terrifying. But it is the only way to get to the point where you have a confidant whose eyes you can use to correct your own flawed vision.

There is someone out there who has been waiting their whole life to have that conversation with you.

Cognitive therapy takes this approach. Distorted thoughts cause distorted feelings, in that an emotional reaction to an event/situation is dependent on a perception/interpretation of it. i.e. a cognition. Faulty cognition -> faulty emotion.

...therefore, taking such feelings as "true" (as an assessment of reality) is mistaken.

I bring this up is because cognitive therapy can be practiced from books, without having to share with another, if that is an obstacle.

Of course, having a true friend is an even better and easier way. And a funny thing is that by its nature, it's easier to spot faulty cognition in someone else (from the outside) than in yourself (from the inside). So, people can help each other.

Well said. He missed his biggest and best opportunity for not only comfort but revenge as well, by not talking honestly and openly about it. Seems paradoxical that he'd be brave enough to die, but not to try that. And don't just tell one person; scatter it to the four winds. Ideally go on Oprah so you can have a million people supporting you and hating your abuser for you. Yeah you'll lose your precious precious secret that way, but that's kind of the whole point. It stops being your sole burden, yes, but more importantly it stops being the thing you protect at all costs. Anything you protect at all costs is obviously the most important thing in your life, right? So if you want it to stop being that, you have to demote it from that lofty position. The day you can talk about it as casually as ordering a sandwich is the day you've finally licked it. But it can be scary to start letting go of the thing you've been hanging onto your whole life, even (ironically) when that thing is so profoundly shitty.

Shame is just the shadow of pride. The same advice applies to both: get over yourself. The difference is, with pride it's so other people can stand you. With shame it's so you can stand yourself.

> He keeps saying over and over how he could never tell anyone because it would get out. But that’s his false axiom. Talking would’ve been the only way to find release.

There are huge elements of shame at work here. No, it is not logical to feel shame over being abused as a child. Nonetheless, it becomes one of your most closely guarded secrets because you are ashamed.

It can take years to get to a point of being able to talk about it and be able to process it, assuming you can find the safe space to do so.

I knew Bill. He was such a sweet guy. I was so heartbroken to hear what he had been dealing with, posthumously. It sounds like he carried a crushing weight around, but he did it in a way that was effortless from the perspective of people like me. And yet, it eventually became too much to bear.

I can't help but think that professional help might have made some difference. Who knows. But if you're in a similar boat, I hope you try to find a way not to bear the weight alone.

> It took me a while to realize that no matter how close you are to someone or how much they claim to love you, people simply cannot keep secrets. I learned this a few years ago when I thought I was gay and told people. The more harmful the secret, the juicier the gossip and the more likely you are to be betrayed. People don't care about their word or what they've promised, they just do whatever the fuck they want and justify it later. It feels incredibly lonely to realize you can never share something with someone and have it be between just the two of you.

This passage was very resonating. I guess part of adulthood is to adjust your expectations of other people, that is, no expectations at all. If you hold your closest mates to any standard of decency, you're bound to be disappointed.

Going from high expectations to no expectations is only half of the solution.

You can then try to expect people to just be human, and be delighted when their humanity shines in a good way.

If you're thinking, "I wish there's something I could have said", don't say "What happened?" That focuses on the problem. Maybe they don't want to talk about it.

Ask "Are you OK?"

You can always say this even if there's nothing wrong. If they say "Yes, why?", they're your friend. If they say "Fine." then they don't trust you. If they tell you "No, ..." they think you're a close friend.

Then ask "What can I do to help you? You're not alone." Focus on the solution.

If you want to know if someone trusts you, just ask "Are you OK?" and they will tell you.

In my situation, I found out that while suicide would have been a "shut down", moving to another country was a "reboot".

I no longer have anywhere to call "home", but it's better than being stuck in that miserable place.

One thing I’ll never understand is people taking drastic action like this but then not naming their abusers. It’s not the first time I see it happening, and I just cannot comprehend it. It is irresponsible towards the community at large, towards other children, and the justification (the risk of not being taken seriously) is incredibly flimsy when you are willing to witness with your own life. Then again, somebody taking his/her own life is not likely to be following a completely rational train of thoughts.

I do understand the grievance against his parents. My uncle killed himself at 26, as a way of having the last word against his parents - a hard-working couple who raised 5 boys; they were only guilty of not fully understanding that the age difference between parents and child, with the last two kids, was probably too high from a cultural perspective. I wish there was a way for kids to simply opt out of their family when they decide it’s just not working out. As society we allow that only in extreme cases, but maybe we could solve a lot of problems by making it easier for everyone.

Published in (2011)

I remember when this was first posted back then. Very moving.

What a sad story. If you’re out there and you’re struggling, please know that help does exist. Professional counseling and therapy really can make a difference, you do have to find someone you can connect with. I wish Bill’s friends the best in dealing with losing him.

That is not true. Maybe if you have money, and a lot of it. Even then therapy is no ultimate solution, most likely they'll just recommend you to take drugs that numb you down. The world is a horrible place, humans are horrible beings, life mostly sucks for the big majority of people. If suicide was not forbidden by religion or society I am pretty sure lot of people would op out and that for good reasons.

I’m sorry to hear that that is your view of life. From my own experience of having money, I can say with some amount of certainty that it has no bearing on your happiness.

But it is possible to be happy, that much I know. The secret is that it takes work and an open-minded attitude. In my own experience, meditation is the only thing I’ve found that really works. Maybe you can give it a try and see if it works for you too.

That doesn't match my experience. I've been rich, and I've been poor, and trust me, rich is better. It's not like being rich solves all problems, not even close, but there's a class of problems that just go away if you can throw a few dollars at them, and I'm not even talking about particularly large amounts of money. And additionally there's a constant low-grade stress from living without a safety net that goes away once you have a solid emergency fund, insurance, healthcare, personal safety, etc..

My main point was that professional therapy and counseling is very expensive, even in social countries like Western Europe. Free resources are all exhausted and often bad, private therapy is 100$/h. Now even if you earn decent that's a lot of cash but people with issues usually barely have enough to pay rent and food. And as to meditation or "talking helps": NOTHING changes reality. I can do all positive thinking I want in the end I am still surrounded by endless suffering and misery.

> And as to meditation or "talking helps": NOTHING changes reality. I can do all positive thinking I want in the end I am still surrounded by endless suffering and misery.

That's where I respectfully disagree with you. I've been practicing meditation for over a decade and it very much changed my reality.

Money isn't required. Just a friend or family member who's a good listener, and has some life wisdom. At least for the first steps of simply talking about a difficult issue.

You probably can't keep them secret, which was Zeller's reason for not discussing his story. But on the other hand, the talking helps.

It can be hard to find the right person sometimes, but they exist.

It is so soulcrushing and depressing to think that somebody who appears to be a kind and sensitive person had to go through that much pain. I have seen a couple of fairly miserable days in my time, and I still was not even close to seriously consider ending my own life. Maybe I am just strange in that regard, but maybe that means this person had to suffer a lot more than I could ever imagine.

Life can be hard miserable enough - more than enough! - even under the best of circumstances. That some people still would go out of their way to make it worse for others without any real need is something I do not think I will ever understand.

I likewise knew Bill. I met his parents once too, and saw his kindness and good nature reflected in them as well. This is a tragedy no one should have to bear. We miss him.

Umm... did you read Bill's letter in its entirety?

> I'd also like to address my family, if you can call them that. I despise everything they stand for and I truly hate them, in a non-emotional, dispassionate and what I believe is a healthy way. The world will be a better place when they're dead—one with less hatred and intolerance.

Why do you think he didn't read the letter in its entirety? Just because Zeller hated his parents doesn't mean his description of them is accurate. Don't forget, it's a suicide note. People use them to vent their grievances, real and perceived.

It's very sad that he felt he had to take his own life. I wish he had reached out and gotten professional help for his depression.

Did you read the letter in its entirety?

"You may wonder why I didn't just talk to a professional about this. I've seen a number of doctors since I was a teenager to talk about other issues and I'm positive that another doctor would not have helped. I was never given one piece of actionable advice, ever."

But that doesn't contradict your parent poster's wish in any way. Read your quote again carefully. He says he did NOT seek professional help about this. (Only about other issues, and seems he was never given good advice).

He didn't seek professional advice about his central life-altering pain because he thought it would be as poor as the help he'd had for other things (by what sound like crappy doctors). He was probably wrong about that.

People under enough emotional strain and pain sufficient to drive them to suicide are rarely thinking clearly when considering how to deal with that pain alone, no matter how intelligent and logical and reasonable they might otherwise be. Such a huge mental burden clouds your judgement. It's hard to think clearly about how to climb out of the swamp when you feel yourself drowning in it.

I'm pretty sure that being kicked out of your home at 19 because you wouldn't attend church for seven hours is a legitimate grievance.

It is if that's what happened. But you and I don't know that.

What reason do you have to doubt his account? I'm honestly curious.

To quote: He does not have a history being dramatic, emotional, manipulative. He does not have a history of having crazy outbursts and attention seeking behaviors. He is a quiet reserved isolated type, and he wasn't in any trouble at all. He wasn't a drug addict, a criminal, a thief. He wasn't a psycho borderline nutjob who randomly does random things. There is no reason to assume his suicide is motivated by any other reason than the one he is telling us, and that reason is this: he cannot cope with what happened to him as a child any longer and so he made the choice to end his life.

The reason looks like religious defensiveness.

Wait, questioning the venting and rage level of a suicide note is "religious defensiveness???" Wha....????

The example he chose to show how bad they were makes them look fairly reasonable. So perhaps his judgment was clouded. That example was that Muslims who follow the koran are terrorists. The koran does actually advise people to kill quite a lot of other people, so following it strictly would make you at least a murderer, if not a terrorist.

> If you're unfamiliar with the situation, my parents are fundamentalist Christians who kicked me out of their house and cut me off financially when I was 19 because I refused to attend seven hours of church a week.

They seem reasonable, alright.

So does their own bible.

Glossing over this fact in order to safely hate other people is what makes them shit people.

I'm a Muslim and you got it wrong.

I never met Bill's parents. But I do know that perfectly pleasant people can fail catastrophically when confronted with a deep conflict of interests. It happens all the time. When the chips are down, most people will choose whatever they think preserves the status quo with the greatest likelihood.

I read it in full and what a truly sad story. I almost started crying, but there are many people around me, so no. The suicide not is well worth reading in full.

Ctrl-F "therapy" "counselling". Nope. Hmm.

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