When that which motivates you, drives you, and feels essential also seems impossible, what follows? Suicide. But what if you’re afraid of death? Of the possibilities of existence and judgement beyond. Of doing something hasty or irrational. Afraid of devastating the lives of those who have given everything to you. Afraid of giving up on the possibility that somehow, at some undetermined point, things will magically turn around, and your life will seem meaningful again.
So, not suicide then. At least not yet. So what then? What do you do with this hole where purpose should be? You negotiate with your depression. With your extreme feelings of hopelessness, anger, resentment. With your desire to chuck in the towel. You try to do self care. To eat well, though nothing seems to make a difference to how exhausted you feel. You try to do the basics to take care of your body, though it all feels pointless, as you’re slowly falling apart. You do a little work, though it’s usually back-breaking and tedious or mind numbing and irritating. You try to reason yourself into being a decent person, when really you’re a garbage human who just wants everything to die already. When the extreme lows hit you try and absorb yourself in something that can provide even a shred of imaginary fulfillment.
But still, every day, you wake up feeling utterly lost, wondering why. Why am I still here? What am I enduring this for? What’s the point of anything? And you struggle to remind yourself of the reasons. Why you should get out of bed, and eat, and work, and take care of your body, rather than just allowing yourself to wither away.
12 comments
Well shit.. That’s my reality that I’ve been trying really hard to ignore.
Do you think it’s wrong to play pretend?
Is it worse then facing the truth and suffering?
I think this is better, ignoring, pretending, maybe one day everything will truly fall into place?
I think it depends on the circumstances. If pretending is somehow preventing you from doing what you really need to make your life meaningful, then I guess that’s a problem.
On the other hand, if it’s something that keeps you from completely self-destructing, then maybe that’s necessary, if you’re going to keep living.
I used to pretend in every aspect of life, I would avoid ALL my problems and that was a huge problem in itself, I’ve learned to sift through everything and face reality when I need to, face the problems that need solving, but some things need to be ignored, like the voices in my head when they try to convince me the world is against me, small shit like this, all the lies. All the painful memories.
Sometimes I have to pretend I’m okay, for even a chance of actually ever being okay.
That’s how I look at it anyway, I still go out of my comfort zone and face hardship when it’s necessary.
It’s definitely stopping me from succumbing to my mind and going through a lot of heavy self destruction so I guess it’s good.
Sounds like you’ve got a pretty good balance figured out. I hope you find that okayness at some point.
I think for me the need to escape is sometimes too intense, particularly at night or when I’m especially tired or anxious. I can face reality in a kind of filtered way for a time. I wouldn’t say I’m ever ‘okay’, but there are times when I can reason myself into coping with not being okay. But that gets worn down over the course of the day, and I just lose it. The things within myself that I need to ignore are so huge that avoiding them becomes draining in itself, and hard to maintain.
I can relate honestly, everything in life just seems to drain me, I feel guilty for finding everything so difficult when in reality I’m in such a good position in life compared to a lot of other people.
But yeah, pretending and ignoring isn’t easy, neither is trying to be semi-okay, it’s all a lot of hard effort and work and it breaks you, but people don’t ever see that.
They can’t imagine how it feels or what it’s like, completely ignorant, they look at me staying up all night and sleeping all day and doing nothing with myself and question how I can say life is difficult, to them my life is ideal, lots of sleep and little work, because they can’t see the constant chaotic battle that goes on in the inside.
It’s frustrating.
I suppose your position in life is determined by your mind – you could be rich, successful, and adored by those around you, but if your mind isn’t right with that situation then you’re still going to experience it as far worse than someone facing financial hardship who’s at peace with that reality. But I get the guilt.
I think it’s very tempting to simplify the motivations of others. So someone who sleeps all day is lazy, not struggling with depression. An addict is a purely selfish hedonist, rather than someone trying to escape their experience of reality. Everyone else is a character in our story, rather than an individual mind trying to deal with a host of issues in the manner they’ve learned to. People are very resistant to anyone who seems to be ‘special pleading’ for additional understanding. I guess it would be good if we could all be more open to each other’s experiences of life.
The very first sentence in your post along with it’s answer is amazing. It truly is. And the remainder of your post is the very stuff we grapple with. Thanks for stating these ideas so succinctly in ways I never could.
I’m glad you got something from it, though it always saddens me to know someone else is facing similar thoughts.
This is why God invented instalment plans.
Thankfully I doubt anyone checks credit scores in the after-life. (Just to be safe, I’d recommend paying for final expenses in advance. No one wants to wake up dead only to be presented with a bill).
Actually, I was talking about inching towards life goals. Sometimes you can’t get what you want – all at once. In those situations you can work up to it.
It took me 50 years to understand how important it is to change what you can change and let go of what you can’t. And then… wait.
Gotcha.
Baby steps, life as a series of incremental steps. Different stages in the journey forward, building on lessons learned.
Blah blah blah.