18. Male. College student. Reality is difficult. I believe I have depression but I’m unsure. Resources are available, but I don’t tap into them. I am afraid. I’ve been rejected for what seems like an eternity, falling into a bottomless pit with nothing to grab onto, watching as everything rushes past me while I feel nothing. I feel no remorse, I feel no regret, just emptiness. I’m afraid of who I’ve turned into, of what I’ve transformed into. I can’t look in the mirror and see what once was a smiling, jovial young face. All I see now is a tired, wearisome, stressed young adult who feels much older, yet is much younger than what reality would tell me. I can’t fully express everything that’s been slowly pressurized inside me. Maybe this medium will help.
I’ve never sought those aforementioned resources primarily due to my inability to communicate anything of what I feel. There are days where I am literally glued to my bed for 14, 15 hours a day, only tugged out by what the small “rational” portion of my brain deems “obligatory.” It hurts. I have made maybe one friend (my roommate) since moving into college. I can’t put myself forward, despite attending what many would consider a university where students have “positive outlooks” or “bright futures.” I feel as though I have no purpose in life; as if the motivation just seeped entirely from my mind, body and soul years ago and has no remaining semblance in the everlasting, tired corpse that remains sitting, typing, wasting away.
Heck (is this forum PG-13? Or can I use whatever language I want? Someone let me know), I’m supposed to be writing a 10-page essay due tomorrow that I’ve barely started on, and cannot seem to find any reason to do it. I just slept part of today away, and spent most of the rest of my time just reading random articles on the internet. Not even as a distraction, really, but just that I can’t find any purpose. Not even from an academic standpoint, because this is how I feel most generally with everything in my life nowadays. Very little brings me joy. I’m down to what I feel like could be the final chapter in my life, and I know not how long it’ll be until the last page is written.
In the meantime, I write here hoping that maybe others will read and comment on this post. Most likely this will be a daily occurrence (my writing, that is). Perhaps others might share their experiences so that my struggles don’t seem so atypical or foreign. Whatever the case is, I hear that communicating with others makes the problems ease a little. It’s just that the trouble for me is, that communication in real life has been a struggle for me, because I haven’t really ever been in an environment where I’ve felt comfortable or really safe to fully open up. I’m sure that if anyone I knew in real life were reading this, they’d be utterly shocked. However, here is the blatant truth. The straightforward, ugly reality. And I need some help or reprieve.
Thank you for your time.
2 comments
Hello tiredstruggle,
I am 25, male. From what I understand, I’ve been going through the exact same thing for about four years now. ‘Feeling empty’ and ‘Very little brings me joy’ catch it quite well I suppose. I’m usually at a loss to describe what I am feeling but you just gave words to my thoughts.
First of all, I really like the flow in your writing. I’d imagine you already have a blog – if not, may be you want to start one.
And you’ll have to be aware the advice you’ll get here will be unprofessional and based on personal experiences. While I believe suicidal people are definitely saner than the rest of the world, they don’t have that small necessary craziness that makes you want to live. Grab as much empathy you want and get out of here. After all, this kind of empathy may only encourage you to be in the vicious circles of depression->procrastination->more depression.
That aside, I think we all have a desire to be loved. And at this age, a need to get laid too. No matter how much you think rationally, it will be hard to find any purpose in life. I’ll tell you the two things that keep me afloat – that is, I’ll give up on tomorrow’s essay anyway but somehow submit a bare minimum of what is necessary.
1. When the pressure builds up too much and I don’t go out of my room for 3 days, I do something reckless to release that pressure. Like spending 80% of my stipend on one really expensive cheesecake and having to live with 20% the rest of the month, may be even have to skip a meal or two, or may be catching the next train to wherever it goes, wander till I feel like coming back.
2. But if I notice pressure building up before it is too much, I’ll do something physical – hiking/running till I get thoroughly exhausted. The exhaustion puts me to sleep after which when I wake up, I feel rather fresh.
I hope this helps.
Hi tiredstruggle.
I think we are in pretty much the same boat. I am 17 and in college too. I too am feeling mostly emptiness right now. I’ve had depression and anxiety for four years now. I completely understand about your fear of going to a therapist or something like that. For me it was a very scary experience, but for the first year, the medication really helped me.
I’ve had an amazing professor that said that the reason we are depressed is because we have not learned to define how we are feeling. For example sad isn’t just sad, it can be unhappy or it can be miserable. Anyways.
You can email me if you wanna talk. My email is frozen9770 gmail com