I don’t think I have it in me to live a worthwhile life. To deal with the reality of my situation, or my experience of it. There just isn’t enough motivation in me. I’ve screwed things up to such an extent that it doesn’t seem worth salvaging.
It’s entirely possible that I could still get something from life, with enough hard work, dedication, and consistency. I’m not without resources – supportive family, savings, mostly physically healthy, some education. Someone else transported into my situation could probably make a go of it. If I woke tomorrow with a completely different mind, then who knows.
The problem is what’s in my head. The things I know about myself, about the world. Memories of things I’ve done, and my emotional response to that. The fear, regret, shame, exhaustion, complete loneliness, self-hatred, unfulfilled longing, desperation & despair.
My perception of reality is that it’s fucked beyond all belief. Human nature is fucked. But I, in particular, am most especially fucked. A huge part of me feels that I shouldn’t exist. None of this should exist.
I suppose the way I feel about my life is kind of like I’ve spent years turning it into a huge radioactive sewage dump. Now if I could commit to really turning it around, and spent decades enduring the tortuous process of trying to painstakingly clean it up, then I could probably make an impact. If I could somehow keep myself to that task, then I believe in time I could probably get to the point where things look semi-normal. But there would still be the smell of shit constantly lingering – it’s seeped so deep into the soil. It would still be radioactive, slowly giving visitors cancer. And there would still be skeletons buried everywhere.
I don’t think I want to face that task – at least not enough to ever make consistent progress. The thought of it just feels exhausting, and ultimately futile. I don’t think I want to put myself through that. I don’t want to endure my current experience, let alone how much worse it will feel if I have to fully face the state of things. But if I’m going to survive long term, there’s no alternative. The alternative is death.
I also don’t know if I have it in me to end my life, or whether that would really be for the best. If I could overcome my fear and other inhibitions, and successfully kill myself, would it truly be over? I tend to assume that human experience ends at death, and that the mind is a product of the physical brain. But what level of confidence can one have in their own perceptions of reality?
It doesn’t seem likely to me that hell exists, but if it does then I guess it’s pretty likely I’ll end up there. How much weight do you give to the idea of eternal agony & torment, even if it seems unlikely?
Or less than that, I’m scared of somehow being trapped in a state of unfulfilled longing and regret after death, a hungry ghost, unable to do what is still possible (though growing more unlikely by the year) here on earth. How much weight should you give to the pursuit of the possible, when compared to enduring your daily reality?
I would like not to cause my family the trauma of my loss. We’re very close in some ways, and I’m fairly certain it would be devastating to them. I’m not sure they’d be able to cope. But I don’t think that’s enough to consistently motivate me to live a life that doesn’t cause them such disappointment and stress. It all still seems intolerable and unbearable.
How do you know when it’s better to throw in the towel? How do you make that ultimate decision? I don’t know. I feel utterly lost, trapped between a life that seems intolerable and a death that seems terrifying. But sooner or later I’m going to have to make a decision, one way or the other.