Last ditch effort

I’ve never been one to reach out to others for help — especially not the online public — but f**k it, I’ve run out of options.

I am 33 years old and have struggled with suppressing the urge to kill myself all day every day since I was around 9 years old. I exercise every day, eat healthy, stay constantly active with work and recreational activities, volunteer my time whenever possible, have gone to therapy for years, and tried every SSRI and benzodiazepine on the market. No matter what, I cannot shake the idea that life itself is just an excess of time and effort with little to no reward. Despite my best efforts, the overwhelming majority of my life has been filled with pain, anxiety, and needless suffering. There have been a handful of “happy” moments in my life — I am not incapable of happiness, per se — but the sum total of positive emotion felt from those experiences fails to make a dent in the misery built up from the physical and emotional war that is everyday life.

Had life been some sort of pre-conceptive choice, the pros and cons of which were laid out before me, I would have forfeited the opportunity immediately, recognizing it for what it is: a bad investment. In reality, life itself is much like going to a casino. You start out with the impression that your skills and decisions effect the outcome in some way; but in the end, only luck and the amount of money you bring to the table matter. For the rest of us, the house always wins. Any financial consultant would recommend avoiding that scenario altogether, and any psychologist would label your inability to do so as an addiction. Suicide is the intelligent choice. I’m tired of gambling with life. I recognize that the game is rigged, I cannot win, and simply wish to stop playing.

Many people on this board seem not to really want death itself, but rather to avoid the pain they are currently going through. I just desperately want to die; I always have. Personally, I can’t even stomach the idea of heaven. I don’t want to live forever, despite the potentially better conditions. I simply wish to cease to be, to disappear from thought and memory forever. But this has never been a real option to me. My mother’s father committed suicide when I was 1. I happen to be his doppelganger. As you can imagine, this has always caused a strain on my relationship with my mother, but more importantly, it has caused her to expect me to kill myself my whole life. I cannot kill myself as long as my mother is alive, without believing that I would be killing her as well. I do not wish for her to suffer more than she already has, but cannot guarantee that this will remain enough motivation for me to survive much longer.

I continue to go through the motions, though I no longer remember why. I have lived under the pretense of fake-it-till-you-make-it for far too long. I do not believe that living for the sake of living is any kind of virtue and am running out of reasons to keep trying. I don’t  really know what I expect from posting this, but as I said before, I’ve run out of options. There is nothing in this life for me; I simply do not belong here.

*** If you are kind enough to respond to this, please do not waste your time talking about God, the soul, or any other such ghostly voodoo. I was a preacher’s kid; I know what the Bible says. But I also know far too much about the history of the Jews, the historicity of Jesus himself, and the authenticity (or lack thereof) of all supporting Christian documents to fill my head with such nonsense and deviation from logic or reason. As far as Buddhism is concerned, I could not possibly desire less, but feel no enlightenment from it — only more emptiness and despair. For what it’s worth, I could go on and on about every major religion but will refrain from doing so here, as I do not wish to deviate from the point. So please respect this aspect of my post and do not derail the conversation to one about personal beliefs, myths, and legends. Thank you.