The confusing thing about misery is the feeling that I’m kind of doing it to myself. Like I’m actively seeking out reminders of why I’m miserable. Because without those it doesn’t make sense. I wake up every day exhausted and with no motivation. Getting anything done is a struggle, I feel lost, and it’s frustrating. And inevitably I find myself drawn to things that trigger my feelings of longing and despair. And eventually I reason it all out and it becomes clear: that’s why I’m miserable. And I spend the rest of the day trying to distract myself, eventually fall asleep, and sort of forget. It’s an endless loop.
If I’m not going to kill myself anytime soon, then all that remains is to figure out how to make myself less miserable. And I don’t know whether it’s that I don’t know how to, or on some level I won’t let myself do anything that moves me off that. It might be that I’m stubbornly addicted to misery – I’m clinging on to it, because it’s the only way I know of making sense of my circumstances. Anybody in my situation should be miserable, therefore I must also be miserable.
But it is something my mind is doing to itself. Nobody is forcing me at gunpoint to react to my reality with despair. Aside from some low-level chronic physical pain, there’s nothing stopping me from dedicating myself to actively improving my situation (or helping others.)
The problem is that I don’t care enough, about anything else. I just about care about the effects on my family enough to not kill myself right now. But beyond that…nothing.
If any kind of meaningful connection with another person is off the table, as it seems it is, then life just seems…empty. I don’t want to do anything. I just don’t care that much. I’m cut off in my isolated little bubble, insulated from everybody. I have most of my material needs more or less met. So why do anything? Why engage with the world at all?
I have no motivation, beyond the basics. I eat when I’m hungry, I work when work is available, I get groceries when I’m out of food. And that’s it. The rest of the time I torment myself with pointless regret and longing.
I’m not expecting to be in total command of my own feelings, but there must be ways to bypass the need for external motivation. To somehow refocus your subconscious on achievable goals. There must be some way to make yourself really care about something, even if it’s arbitrary. But then maybe even if there were I wouldn’t allow myself to accept it. Because I’m trapped in a mentality that’s making me pointlessly miserable.
I think I need something like a strong psychoactive drug trip, to really jolt me out of that mindset and give my mind a chance to refocus. But that shit is scary (and hard to get hold of for me.)
2 comments
There’s an aspect of fake it til you make it that is really effective. Early stages of pulling up, you are doing it in hopes that later you’ll feel better, it doesn’t necessarily feel better any time for the first few days, weeks, maybe even months. You should see something months in, but it’s still not going to work all the time.
I think why it’s a problem is that some people rest there, with external signs of improvement, when they need to eventually show internal signs… which doesn’t sound anywhere close to where you are.
Behaviouralists have a point; doing actions that validate health do tend to create health. This is what Skinner and his ilk were going for, they didn’t train people to think differently and hope it would produce behavior, they looked for patterns of behavior and looked to stimulate that, reasoning that healthy behavior would produce healthy thought…. and from experience, yeah, that is a thing.
The other thing…. that missing element for a reset, does it need to be that strong? Sometimes I imbibe some THC or alcohol (both relatively available these days) to the point I’m able to have a deep ugly cry, just like washing my face with tears…. and being somewhat high at the time helps that to happen…. and then when I sober up, I get the physical benefits without having too many memories of how I got there.
of course, pushing that too far may lead to substance abuse…. so if you don’t trust yourself with a substance don’t use it. Benedryl is also pretty good, with a touch of THC…. but I have a tolerance… most people just pass out.
I think I really struggle to keep anything going for months without some kind of payoff. One week is probably the most I can manage, and that’s a stretch. I don’t know if it’s that I don’t believe deep down that anything can really help, or that a part of me just doesn’t want to change.
I do think it would need to be something pretty strong for a reset. These patterns and ways of thinking go back decades, and they’re so deeply a part of me. Alcohol can numb the pain for a time, make me feel more sanguine about my situation, but it doesn’t actually shift anything. Crying does nothing for me anymore. Never tried weed or other THC substances, but assume they’d similarly be more likely to reduce the pain rather than permanently shift the mindsets that produce it.
I take sleeping pills which I think are similar to Benadryl – they do make me feel a bit more disconnected from pain & the world in general, but they also leave me extremely drowsy the next day, and make it harder to function.
I think I’d need to try something like mushrooms or lsd, there’s some evidence they can be effective with treating existential suffering. But I’m worried about obtaining them (I’m extremely naïve when it comes to illegal substances), and I don’t think I’d be able to take them with anyone else present, as I can see myself blabbing some pretty incriminating stuff. So I’m worried about getting stuck in a negative trip with no one to help me out of it, which I’ve heard can be pretty hellish.