Eternal Hopelessness

Whats’s there to even say about me anymore? What’s the point in saying it. I am now a 19 year old male who has been in a severe state of depression for 6-7 (if not more) years. I hate reading the cliche sayings by depressed people, who just doesn’t know how to express what they feel, but I find myself using those same exact ones. I’m so overwhelmed just in writing this, that I have no idea where to begin… I guess I’ll tell a little of my story.

Well… I was raised by parents who believe/d in a rather extreme form of evangelical-charismatic christianity. Looking back now, the church they attended for over 25 years fell perfectly under nearly every definition of a cult. Unfortunately as an innocent young child I bought completely into the whole package. I can not in words describe the level of devotion that I had towards my religious faith. I guess a good example would be this one time when I was about 5 or 6… there was a women that had died from the church, and because I had been listening to a constant loop of childrens tapes on jesus’s miracles, I believed I could bring her back to life like he raised lazurus from the dead. I distinctly remember telling my dad my intentions and how he just kind of chuckled and then said I was too young to go to the wake. Though this only shows a shadow of how much I bought into this farce. My entire universe and very being was entwined with this sick joke.
Anyways, ill try to speed this up and not get too wordy. Needless to say my parents (mostly mom) reinforced this belief at home, and it was mainly with the ole “rod of correction drives foolishness from a child” bullshit routine. Now I was always a super nice, super shy kid to begin with, but the constant barrage of perfectionism put on me by my parents eventually take its toll. It made me never want to disappoint ANYONE… which has a funny way of turning around and coming back as a certain thing named Social Anxiety Disorder, but more on that later. My fantasy world persisted, and was only reinforced by the fact that I was homeschooled up until high school. Now I’m not trying to bash homeschooling in saying this, some people can do it for the right reasons. In my case we lived in a extremely racially divided and crime heavy suburb of south Chicago at the time, so homeschooling was the option I would of choose as a parent too. Though we joined a homeschool group in effort to help me socialize (like a normal school kid), it did no good. The religious values combined with the unfortunate genetic predisposition that my father has towards social phobia wreaked havoc in my social life. I NEVER ever felt like a “normal” kid. I was always the outcast, the left behind, the strange kid, or the weirdo. So at this point it goes without saying that I had zero friends. To sum up my childhood until puberty… it was a complete out-of-touch with reality, train wreck waiting to happen kind of setup.

My family would end-up moving to a much nicer area around the time I turned 9. There I would find my one friend who was a completely over sheltered baptist boy (sound familiar). Though he is the only friend I’ve ever had and remain to have, our relationship remains fairly shallow due to the nature of his beliefs. But to get back on track, puberty started to be absolute hell. I had accidentally seen porn one day simply by accidentally searching the letter “b” on Dog-pile search engine. I still remember the fake picture of Britney spears that showed up lol. The guilt that would ensue from progressively inching closer and closer towards looking at porn on a regular 3 day cycle, was shear torture. I’m still all the while attempting to hold on to the unattainable religious standards being set upon me. Simply put… puberty was a nightmare, or so I thought.

High school… dare I say anything else. That’s where this story comes to it’s screeching halt. You see, I had sworn within myself that if my parents ever made me go to public high school, I would kill myself. Freshman year came… and hell is a word that is such an understatement for it, it’s not even fucking funny. A big reason I didn’t follow through with any of my illogical plans at the time was because of how much I loved baseball and wanted to play on the high school team. I had huge dreams and really was that good (already had a fast in the mid 80s). Baseball was the sole reason I stuck through the nightmare I endured on a daily basis. I was simply in wayyyy over my head socially. I can still feel the pain of the underhanded teasing and bullying… the kind of shit were you don’t know if someone is trying to be slightly friendly or just an ass to you… the second one applied in my case. It got so bad that it made me seriously question my straight sexuality. This was a major tripping wire mentally due to how much of the stigma there is against gays in christianity. It just made me hate myself to even think that at the time, and it made me severely depressed. This coupled with watching the anti-suicide videos in health class (which only made me think about it more) very nearly sent me over the edge. This was late Nov. of my freshman year and winter break could not come soon enough. I thought I would come back refreshed and renewed, ready to take my place on the baseball team. I can sum that entire hope up in one word… WRONG!!! It end up being a complete political joke. The coaches only picked the boys they already knew from their own traveling teams, and this sent my entire world spinning. Feeling of anger and rage were combined with complete bursts of hopelessness. It drove me so much in fact that I learned to be ambidextrous in the summer between freshman and sophomore year. Sophomore would come around, and boy was I in a cold rage towards the world. I just wanted revenge to be on the baseball team, which I did rightfully deserve. The bullying and taunting would continue in the meantime though. I just became cold and numb to it. It was at this point that I effectively built up my walls against the outside world. Socially I was still a complete fucking wreck. There was a girl I liked who I couldn’t come to talk to. I would torture myself on a regular basis just to attempt to say hi to her, and honestly saying hi to anyone is just about as much of a chore. I didn’t know it but I was falling to pieces. It would end up by the end of the year that I did not make the baseball team again. This time I wasn’t as surprised… just numb. On top of everything else, my grandmother is sitting atf my house withering away from congestive heart failure. By the time junior year started I was ready to snap. Grandma was worse than ever, and I was bitter as ever. Three days into my junior year my grandmother passed. Ever before her passing though, I can still remember the social calamity happening to me . I vividly remember sitting in the very middle of the cafeteria at a table all by my self, just watching as kids would laugh with their friends, wonder wtf that was like. That was it for me. I was ready to burst into tears in the middle of that cafe. Just when I was about ready to crack I remember an attractive girl coming up, only to ask me if she could take one of the 7 unused chairs at my table though. That had to be one of the greatest let down moments of my life lol. But I then remember sitting in the bus that day, just completely ready to burst into tears. I got off that bus ran home, threw the garage open, and broke down right there. I effectively couldn’t take anymore, I just cracked. If I recall I uncontrollably sobbed for an hour straight while my dad and sister tried to comfort me. Oh and then my grandma dies the next day…

From that point on my life has been frozen in time.I should be a junior in collage right now, instead I’m a kid sitting at home basically living in his parents basement. Counseling has overall been a massive waste of time and resources, christian counseling is a joke, and the meds have nothing but shitty side effects. Oh an all this from a kid that was still able to hold a 4.0. Everyone hoots and hollers at me what a bright future I have, but it means nothing.

I’m cold, I’m empty. Full of a dark void of nothing… followed by a black-hole of more nothingness. Christianity absolutely enrages me now, along with any other religion made by people as a crutch for not being able to cope with the insignificance their life actually means to this dark and cruel world. With that being said, it goes without saying I am agnostic now. I don’t wish for anyone to force their beliefs on me, nor do I wish for the vice versa.  My Social Anxiety comes and goes in waves, but for the most part is at an all time high. I can’t even check emails from ebay sellers, messages on facebook, or texts from close friends (I’ll probably even be to scared to look at any of the responses on this… due to fear of criticism). 20mg of paroxetine has done nothing but cause sexual dysfunction… not that I actually need it with virgin status.  My parents go from religious extreme to the next. They’ve seen the error in their ways of going to the first church, but now go around essentially looking for a carbon copy just like it. My 13yr old dog who i got as a 7th birthday present is on the brink of death due to kidney failure and diabetes. Still no GF, first kiss, etc. My sleep schedule gets so fucked up on a regular basis that I can’t remember the last time I didn’t see my eyes not bloodshot. Speaking of which it’s 12pm, that’s right PM here and I still haven’t gone to bed.

ALL OF THIS and I still don’t know why in the FUCK I’m still here. The only thing I can figure is that my high anxiety keeps the fear of suicide at an arms length. Yet there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think that life would of been better if I just did it freshman year. I could of even had a free funeral because I was under 18 at the time because  my mom had a deal setup to prepay my grandpas funeral that also said that any grandchild that dies under 18 gets a free funeral. Now I can’t screw my family over with those expenses, they’re always crying money as it is. I don’t know why I even posted all this…

In closing, I really do hate to compare. But to all you kiddies who think you got it bad going through a couple bad weeks or a month or two of depression… try nearly 7 years now of bitter, numb, cold, indifferent, all encompassing nothingness, and eternal hopelessness…