I’ve been thinking about the ways my addictive/compulsive behaviours increase my suffering, and some stuff from a video on addiction struck a chord with me. That one of the largest risk factors with addiction is a sense of meaningless in life, a lack of purpose. And I’ve felt that pretty much my entire adult life.
The idea is basically that you need something meaningful to help you deal with negative experiences, to make them seem tolerable. Otherwise you suffer far more than you would from just the experience alone, leaving you more likely to turn to addiction to “fill the gap”. An example of this for me was working a tedious, stressful, dead-end job. I remember walking home in my 20s and most days idly thinking about jumping in front of a car. And I wondered how most of my colleagues didn’t have the same response. And I realised it was because they had other shit going on in their lives that made putting up with the bullshit seem worthwhile. Whereas I had nothing. And I spent all my free time doing addictive shit to try to make it feel less terrible.
And I have no idea how to regain a sense of meaning or purpose in life. I can’t imagine a life that seems meaningful to me. As I’ve previously posted about, I can’t imagine having any kind of meaningful relationship. I do care about my parents and my sister, but I only see them every couple of weeks, and it’s not like I can even do much to help them when I do. So I can’t really tell myself they’re my purpose. I’m not altruistic enough to find much meaning in attempting to help improve the lives of strangers. I’ve done my fair share of volunteer work, and none of it ever made me feel more motivated to get out of bed in the morning. Possibly if I had the ability to really transform people’s lives in an obvious way, that would be different. But I don’t.
So I have this void inside me where meaning used to be, and also a kind of awareness or terror of that void. Because if nothing in my life has meaning, then why do anything? Why eat? Why not just curl up in a ball and wait for death? And death is scary. So I’m constantly trying to run from that. To fill my life and my mind with things that distract me from that emptiness.
From the moment I wake up each day, I’m constantly looking for the next diversion. And it leads me to a lot of additional suffering, through self-destructive, compulsive behaviours. But without them, life feels unbearable. Every little pain and misfortune feels unbearable.
4 comments
Same here. Life seems so meaningless and painful for those who have no purpose in life, nor ppl who love us (or not a SO).
I’ve also worked crazy hours in my 20s and the job was so intolerable to me and like you said, to others, my coworkers, they had family or SO so they viewed work as not that important and didn’t really care that the job was dead-end or stressful or that our boss was a total shit. It bothered me way more bc I had thought we could actually effect change or do something meaningful in our lives through work- what a big lie what was.
And I’ve also run the gamut of volunteer work- there was a period of about 6mo where almost every single weekend was devoted to some kind of volunteer work. I volunteered at so many different places and organizations, only to find that most volunteer work was bullshit. Most volunteer work did not actually do what their aim was in the long run. Or were horrible ineffective. And most charities or were basically money scams- for every $100 they take in, $55 went towards “administrative fees,” the actual figure give or take some depending on what charity it was.
Another dash to my worldview that there’s meaningful shit to do in this world.
Anyhow, I’m in the same boat as you. WTF is going to make our lives worth it, meaningful, and give us happiness if we aren’t able to find love and acceptance?
Are we destined to be alone, living in misery, and wanting what others have? (love, acceptance, companionship, etc). Yes we have very different lives, very different circumstances. Hell, everyone on this site has a different story- but in the end, we all wind up here. Depressed. Unhappy. Some more miserable than others. Many of us deal with loneliness. I see that a lot of the members overs the decades tend to be single, loners, weird, different, etc. Even before I became sick, I was always a loner and different from others.
I wish I had a crystal ball to see what life I have in 5 years or 10 years. If it’s made all worth it in the end (unlikely) or should I just quit life now. Why prolong the misery? Except like you said, it’s very difficult to actually commit the act. Our instinct for survival battles with our depression every single day.
Anyhow, idk. My life sucks. There’s maybe a 20% chance that my becomes better but 80% chance it’ll remain shitty.
I’m so tired of a shit life.
Yeah, I try to tell myself that although my life doesn’t feel meaningful right now, if I put in enough effort, maybe at some point in the future it’ll feel different. But without that feeling of purpose being present there’s nothing to push me to put in that initial effort. I wake up every morning feeling like shit, not wanting to do anything, and so I don’t. Even trying to switch to more healthy coping mechanisms requires a degree of focus and motivation that I don’t have. So I just end up slipping back into the same self-destructive cycle.
But maybe at some point I get so sick of this that I’m pushed to try doing something slightly different. And possibly that improves things just enough to begin a slow upward spiral. We’ll see ¯\_(?)_/¯
I’m 41 years old (M) from Indonesia. I can deeply relate with your post. Nihilism philosophy, which basically posit that life is meaningless, especially in the grand scheme of things, have personally caused an unbearable existential depression to me for a long time (probably 10 years or so), and now as I’ve got much older, it’s only getting worse, sadly. I’ll admit that probably it’s also because I feel like a total failure I’m a NEET, still living with my parents, with no income & job, just stay at home most of the times. I’m also still single now, although I’ve had four relationships in the past when I was younger. But to be honest, I seriously envy all those ‘lucky’ guys who got girlfriends, like, why I can’t be like them??
Everyday I just basically distracting myself (escapism) mindlessly, or sleeping, contemplating about all these ‘meaninglessness’ as well as this absurd, ridiculous, ironic, tragic, random, chaotic life/existence, and also this mundane, boring, limiting, & depressing reality. I don’t know. I’m so lost. I wish I could just stop existing in this world.