Why are we so broken?

You answered some of it yourself; you wanted to be “normal”, and “happy”, the moment you realize that you aren’t, you’ve drifted too far to ever be an ordinary human being again. Happiness is temporary, fleeting, contentedness is at least possible.

Nothing is firm, all that we see, all that we think has been translated through the spectrum of our senses, and as those senses can be tricked we can never be absolutely sure of anything. It may be just what works for me; I lean hard into that void. People are frustrating, but that’s just what it looks like from where I’m standing. There’s no objective measure of what a “good person” or “functional person” looks like. The majority of people are barely holding on to what they’ve got. The world is a carnival of horrors, as such anything good is an abnormality.

I am “broken” because I have empathy and strong memory for things that I have felt from talking to people. That sensitivity is my special experience, apparently a rare thing. I think that my particular problem is that while appreciating that all is nonsense, I long for sense and order in the world.

The human thing is to want what we can’t have. Thus even understanding that normality cannot be had, we want it. Wanting is what keeps us alive, not food, and certainly not a desire for life.