sometimes I think I think too much. I get paranoid and fearful. I can see all of the worst case scenarios clearly but not nearly enough of the good. I notice it but it doesn’t seem solid to me. I’ve been programmed to think that only bad things can happen to me and those around me. I notice the good that comes usually is a result of a concentrated effort, a conspiracy towards success on behalf of a person who is cared for and loved. Perhaps it isn’t that. Perhaps this is my overthinking things again. But I notice all of these details, the differences, the strengths. Things that I don’t possess. Things that I don’t know how to do or be. The reasons why I am in the state I am in and the reason why other people are not.
I read a lot. I try to find answers because even though I have been suicidal for most of my life and have attempted several times… I don’t think I am completely convinced that I want to actually die. This is probably the largest reason I am still alive despite all of the difficulties I face(d). It seems morbid to constantly want to escape a sad, cruel world where goodness and kindness are fleeting moments. But to wait for those sweet moments, as I have aged, well, it has gotten more difficult. So my thoughts are darker. The feelings of suffocation more intense. Needing to be free of the hatred, lies, greed, and wishy-washy morals of the world… just intensifies.
I am not a saint, though I do rather enjoy looking for the good in people, even within myself. But when you can’t break down anybodies walls, including your own, to break through to that light that I feel so strongly has to exist… what hope is there?
How do you cope? Do you just meander through life in a bleak haze of sadness, anger, and frustration? Do you simply ignore everything and purposely put on blinders? Do you hush out all of the ugly noise?
Being truly happy almost seems to delude yourself. I hate that I think that. I hate that I might be right.
I still try. But I get tired. And I feel for all of you who are suffering, especially the young ones.
How did we let this world become so unkind?
3 comments
My feelings are very similar, and I’m sorry for both of us that they are. Your point about happiness being some kind of self-imposed delusion hit really close to home as I’ve felt this way for years, and it’s a sad thing to think that way. Even sadder is the possibility that it’s true.
We keep stumbling through our civilization’s thick fogs and we keep searching for ways to assure ourselves that this world can’t possibly be so full of evil and cruelty, that humans really are fundamentally loving creatures, that we really are crazy for doubting the goodness of people. We turn to faith, family, diets, employment, self-help books, positivity moguls and the like for this reassurance of these supposed facts, but time and time again we are let down. It’s us, we think. We simply aren’t looking hard enough. We’ve convinced ourselves that there’s a kind of El Dorado of self-validation somewhere in the foreign jungles, always just tantalizingly out of reach, but nevertheless still there. To try and live without it is all but impossible, like devising a compass with no adherence to true north. Every night however I find myself sunk in the pits of despair, always coming to the same conclusion: it’s not there. There is no El Dorado. I hope desperately I am wrong, but I just don’t know how to prove that
My feelings are very similar, and I’m sorry for both of us that they are. Your point about happiness being some kind of self-imposed delusion hit really close to home as I’ve felt this way for years, and it’s a sad thing to think that way. Even sadder is the possibility that it’s true.
We keep stumbling through our civilization’s thick fogs and we keep searching for ways to assure ourselves that this world can’t possibly be so full of evil and cruelty, that humans really are fundamentally loving creatures, that we really are crazy for doubting the goodness of people. We turn to faith, family, diets, employment, self-help books, positivity moguls and the like for this reassurance of these supposed facts, but time and time again we are let down. It’s us, we think. We simply aren’t looking hard enough. We’ve convinced ourselves that there’s a kind of El Dorado of self-validation somewhere in the foreign jungles, always just tantalizingly out of reach, but nevertheless still there. To try and live without it is all but impossible, like devising a compass with no adherence to true north. Every night however I find myself sunk in the pits of despair, always coming to the same conclusion: it’s not there. There is no El Dorado. I hope desperately I am wrong, but I just don’t know how to prove that I am.
Thank you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you for your words. I used to think that I was crazy. Now I realize that I probably am not. I’m just different and not easily blindsided (if you could call it that). I see it just as it is and that in and of itself is terrifying. Please write back.