For what it’s worth

I apologize in advance: this is going to be very unorganized.

I tried to kill myself a little over a year ago, but I was taken to the hospital. I dropped out of college. Around the beginning of the school year, I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I withdrew from school for a few months. The details are more complicated than that, but that’s not important right now. I got a job this past August, which I lost in January. Since then I’ve been moping around my parents’ house, pretending to look for a job or be interested in going back to school. Going back to school is the last thing I want to do, and I’m dreading the prospect of another stupid depressing dead-end job. My friends are all at school in other states and they have busy schedules, so the only people to talk to are my parents and the cat. I love my parents, but life with them is so tedious, and asking them for advice or help is so worthless that I feel like screaming. I’m just in this goddamn purgatory. I’m sure there is a way out, but I don’t have a clue of what that would be. It seems that people will only help you if you pay them, and even then it’s often a scam.

I don’t want to die; I want to live. And what I’m doing isn’t living but decaying. People try to give me advice sometimes but it’s usually something hollow and worthless like “oh, just get your foot in the door and you’ll do fine” or “just work hard and have a positive attitude”. I want to slap these people. Not to sound like an arrogant bastard, but I’m pretty amazing. Everyone tells me how smart I am, and I believe them, because I think most people are really stupid. I’ve decided that from now on whenever someone calls me smart I’ll say, “Great! When do I start? What does it pay? What are the benefits?” Being smart is a bit of a curse: it isn’t enough to survive, but it’s enough that people take for granted that you will be successful.

I was just chatting with three friends on Facebook, who are all studying abroad next year. Norway, Australia, and Egypt. My older brother is a junior in college, and he just got a several-thousand-dollar research grant. These things make me angry. I can’t be happy for people, just depressed that they’re doing so well when I’m doing so miserably. I really don’t want to kill myself, but I don’t want to completely toss out the idea either. I think it’s an option–not the best option, but an option–if this bad luck or poor decision making or whatever this crap is continues for much longer. Sometimes it feels like all I can do is rant anonymously and wait until I grow the cojones to jump off a bridge. But I don’t want to jump off a bridge! I want a tolerable life and I am willing to work for it, but that’s apparently far too much to ask for. The way people treat each other is disgusting. There’s this two-for-me-none-for-you mentality that’s both cruel and nonsensical. People live in luxury and other people beg on the highway off-ramps. And then they try to justify themselves by saying they “earned it” or “worked hard for it”. I’m waiting for them to say that they were “lucky” or “born to rich parents”. But by that point they’ve probably called you a Commie enough times that nobody listens to you anymore. Maybe I don’t want to live. Maybe people just suck and I don’t want to put myself through another sixty years of their crap. Or maybe I’m just some stupid kid who whines about problems he made up.