I’ve been visiting this site more and more often over the past few months. I know it’s a signal that I’m in yet another downward spiral, but as usual, I have no idea how to break myself out of it. I can never really manage to do that. Not completely. I’m what the therapist I’m seeing calls “passively suicidal” — I don’t have an immediate plan, but I think about how I’d rather be dead than alive, and possible methods for actual suicide, should I get back to the point of wanting to make an attempt, every day, over and over again. When I’m walking to and from the job I hate, my mind often goes to how it would be nice to just get hit by a car, and have the decision taken away from me. What stops me from actually walking into moving traffic is that I think it’s wrong to use a stranger’s hand to end my life. I wouldn’t want to visit that on another person. I’ve caused enough people enough pain as things are, just by being who I am from day to day.
I’ve felt this way with varying degrees of intensity since I was 16 — the first time I seriously considered killing myself. I never did make an attempt; I had a plan for most of the year I was 17, but managed to switch up my thinking enough that I convinced myself not to go through with it before the date I’d set. I’m now 28, and, honestly? Nothing has ever really gotten better. I’m just as lonely as I was back then. I’m just as self-loathing. I hate myself, and my life, and I can’t see anything ever getting better than it is right now. Because in twelve years, that’s never happened. Why should I believe that can ever change?
I’ve been lonely for almost as long as I can remember. I’ve always had problems with social anxiety, and with trust issues layered on top of that, it’s almost impossible for me to make friends. The concept of an actual community of any kind, or even a small circle of friends, is foreign to me; I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel like an outcast. The few friends I do have are so broadly scattered that none of them know each other, and I almost never get to see them. I’ve lived in several different places, but never found anywhere that feels like home. I don’t think there is such a place for me. All my experiences have taught me that things do not, in fact, get better, the loneliness doesn’t ever go away, and there’s nothing out there that can make my life feel like it’s worth living. I’m a burden on the one or two people who I have opened up to a little, because they have enough crap to deal with in their own lives without having to hear about all the darkness in my head. And I wear a mask all the time with everyone else, even people I feel like maybe I could be friends with — because I don’t trust them enough to open up to them. If they knew what kind of a monster lives inside my head, I know they wouldn’t want to be around me anymore. And every time I have trusted someone in my life, they have, in fact, turned around and left me. The only exception is my mom — and she is, realistically, the only reason I haven’t killed myself yet. I know it would hurt her, and I don’t want to do that. But I don’t know how much longer I can go on feeling like this before I just… implode. I live each day feeling like a time bomb… and a chameleon. I act like everything’s fine and tell everyone what I think they want to hear, but inside I’m a ball of (self)destruction just waiting for the wrong spark to set me off. There is no one, absolutely no one in the world who knows me for who I really am — because who would want to know that person? I don’t even want to know me. I take it for granted that I will eventually die by my own hand. I just can’t say right now whether that will be in the near future, or not for some years yet. I know what I’d prefer, and I feel like I’m getting closer to making a concrete plan every day.
I’m not even sure why I decided to post instead of just lurking again today. Partly because I can express this here, and feel less like I’m burdening anyone with things they’d rather not know (since no one knows me here anyway; and besides, I’m preaching to the choir). And partly, if I’m honest with myself, because I’m still stupidly looking for a connection that I will never find, that doesn’t exist for someone like me. (I keep going back and forth about posting my email here, but after all I’ve just said, I’d feel too pathetic doing that.) I’m just so tired of feeling exhausted, and depressed, and self-loathing, and horrible all the time. I don’t think I can go on like this much longer without something changing one way or another. And the only change I can see making a real difference is to not be here anymore.
I feel for all of you. I know what it’s like to live wishing every day that you could die. If I could help any of you, all of you, I would. But I don’t even know how to help myself. I never have.
5 comments
I know how you feel Im isolated to. It’s hard
I’m 28 too..and I’m still a damn *nobody* in this crooked world, and sadly, in my parents’ eyes too.
Have you ever watched the old 1985 movie starred by Dustin Hoffman titled “Death of a Salesman” (it’s taken from a popular Broadway play as well) ?..if u haven’t, I strongly recommend you to go find the movie (you could easily download off the Net nowadays, like I did), and watch it. You’ll definitely relate with the movie, like I do.
Maybe we could talk, become friends, and share with each other. Here’s my email address, and Facebook as well:
nikiwonoto@gmail.com .
Hey, I feel just the same as you and it’s really hard to live with those feelings. I think meeting new people is difficult because deep inside our minds the darkness that goes on in there shows on the outside on our faces and in our body language. It’s like being stuck in a hole and you can’t get out and it all just seems to get worse. I’m a few years older than you, when I was the same age as you I thought I could change it and make things workout but it never has and I’m just the same now. I hope you can change it! And I hope you try!
I feel for yu, I also feel the same way. Been feeling like that for 5 years…it’s hard, feels like it will never go away.
blackqwert, it is hard. Too hard. I’m sorry you feel so isolated too, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. There’s this quote I read, years ago: “Loneliness makes depression feel like insanity”. It still rings so true.
viggen, it’s funny, but being stuck in a hole or a pit is exactly the metaphor I use for this too. Something with sides so high and smooth, it’s impossible to climb out of. I think you’re right about the darkness inside showing on the outside without our entirely realizing it, and that other people pull away from that without knowing what it is that makes them uneasy. Thank you for your kind wishes… sometimes I can almost believe it’s still worth trying, but most of the time these days I know that nothing will ever change for me either. Still, I hope the same for you as you do for me — that you can somehow find a way to change things after all, and not have to feel so alone anymore.