The things I used to rely on to get me through don’t work anymore. They don’t distract me from my reality. I don’t care enough to invest. I’m not interested in anything. I have no plans, no goals, no aims. There’s nothing I want from life that’s realistic for me to work towards. The only things I want are impossible – to turn back time, to not be who I am. Right now, I mostly just want the pain to stop.
And it’s not that the pain’s even that bad. It’s that I have nothing to make enduring it worthwhile. I have nothing to distract myself with, to tell myself that it’s ok. So the pain is everything.
I have no hope for my own future. And I don’t care enough about others to be invested in what happens to them. And it gets worse and worse, the older I get.
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“the only things I want are impossible β to turn back time, to not be who I am. Right now, I mostly just want the pain to stop.”
“I have nothing to make enduring it worthwhile.”
–SAME. We’re vastly different ppl, different shit, but same outcome. I feel the EXACT same way. It’s hard to get “motivated” when the present and future feel so bleak. And motivation isn’t something one can fake or pull it out of nowhere.
I don’t want to be stuck- this fucking sucks- but I’ve been here for 18 years :'( I guess I’m even more “hopeless” than you.
Only been 17 years for me π Though saying that, it has gotten worse over that time. I used to be able to distract myself somewhat, at least some of the time. I still had enough fight in me to struggle a bit against the hopelessness, to deny it and occupy my mind with other shit.
When I was younger, although I couldn’t see any future for myself, it was still the unknown. Whereas now I’m officially “past my prime”, I’m there. I feel old. I feel my body slowly declining. I know now – nothing’s going to get better. It only gets harder. And all my bad habits, the things I relied upon to get me through – they’ve caught up with me.
And now there’s nothing left, to fill the void where a life should be. Nothing has meaning. I’m scrambling around for anything that feels at all significant, and nothing hits. I have the entire internet full of human creativity and ingenuity, instant access to knowledge about any subject I could imagine, every novel ever written, and it all just seems pointless.
One thing I’ve discovered in the last month of my fight is that it takes effort, you have to work at it if you have depression and you want to take an interest in, well anything at all.
The opposite isn’t doing nothing though, it’s just apathy towards whatever there is to do, being miserable about it and doing it anyway.
So I don’t know what piece you need. I’m still unraveling the mystery of how nothing is worthwhile yet so much is required, and it’s not like I can prescribe my existential apathy combined with just enough sense of duty to keep me at it. If there is a greater truth in this universe, I won’t be tuning into it at this rate.
It takes a certain kind of insanity to commit to silliness like I have. To produce nonsense, process nonsense, and be at the whims of absurdity and chaos, and yet keep together some sense of self care? I figure that needs a certain level of delusion.
So that’s my answer, as long as you keep trying to find whatever ordinary people have I can’t help you.
I specialize in derelicts and disreputable characters. Those are the only people who seem to react well to what I have to offer. However not all of them are willing to admit to it, and I try to be gentle with a lot of them.
That’s the question though husk, are you a disreputable character and are you willing to admit that as part of your function, or do you deny it? No shame in denying it! I wish I could!
I think we are both in struggles over who we want to be and who we are, and it’ll be interesting to see the outcome in either case. I want to finally turn the corner on being an agent of evil to some extent….. but can I deny it? Is that my nature?
Self focus, that’s me all over.
Stuff stops working over time, that’s a universal fact of passtimes. What you need changes, and what a passtime might provide changes. So if life is going to be engaged, and there really isn’t much of an option to keep eating, new approaches on old hobbies are needed or new hobbies. You’ll have to change.
I’m going to tell one of my stories; I’ve had a few video games that really did it for me, but none like modded Minecraft used to. I played tens of thousands of hours. I had an instinctual understanding of those mods and how they were coded. I spent hours optimizing systems.
Then I would fall out with it, and avoid it for a few months or years. I remember the last time I went back to it though and I knew it was the last time. It didn’t whiz in my head like before, escaping into that world. One thing that had happened was that Microsoft had aquired Mojang and made changes which essentially meant the game as I knew it was over.
The other thing was that I grew out of it. I discovered elements of that love in other games, but never again all at once. Even now, I’m not the gamer I was.
My latest game works for me though. It’s called Infection Free Zone. In it you control a group of survivors after a zombie apocolypse. The thing that really makes it fun is that it uses real world maps.
So the map I’m playing right now is the downtown of the city I live in. Dodging zombies in streets I’ve been drunk in is FUN in a special way. Plus I can tear down buildings, that’s cathartic as hell. I just got to day 28 of survival, two days playing in a row and that’s pretty neat.
So if you want to find something, I’d be glad to help you look. There are diverting and entertaining things. I didn’t even get into my cryptid tourism or horror novels. It’s silly and trivial to many people, but I still get a whiz out of it.
Don’t think I can stop wanting “whatever ordinary people have.” Can’t say I’m actively doing anything to try to find it, but that doesn’t make the desire go away.
I’m thoroughly disreputable, but I don’t know what it would mean to admit that “as part of my function.” In order to function at all in the world, I have to deny it, at least outwardly. And I’ve yet to find a way to live with the reality of it without wanting to cease existing. So denial is inevitable, however ineffective.
Part of the problem is that I’m an addict. So I’m always looking for something to plug in to the void. If it doesn’t feel as good as a past addictive pastime, I quickly lose interest. Even if I enjoy it, and find it rewarding. If it doesn’t quiet the scream in the back of my mind, it gets dropped. And the worse I’m feeling, the more this becomes the case. For example: learning to play instruments. Got myself a cool electric piano for xmas. Haven’t practised in months. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I know it won’t make me feel better. And that’s all I care about. Same goes for working out. Or writing. I need a base level of contentment with reality to invest energy in anything.
Video games were my first addiction. I still binge often, and I have a vast collection of unplayed games (mostly free giveaways.) But what I’m always chasing is that escape, which is so rare now. Thinking about finding that buzz is always more enjoyable than actually playing. I have chronic back issues, which means it’s painful for me to sit, and gaming makes it worse. And that makes it harder to sleep. So if I spend my time doing that, I’m making it harder for myself in other ways. Besides which, after spending hours investing myself in oh-so-complicated systems of play, I’m often just hit by this wall of regret and emptiness. I invested all that time and energy in a world where it will never mean anything. I have over 1,000 hours in CK3. That’s time I could’ve theoretically used on something meaningful, that I’m never getting back. Sure, I enjoyed some of it. But a lot of it was just busy work. Making numbers go up while trying to ignore the boredom.
I want to feel like something is significant again. And I can’t. My mind won’t let me.
“I want to feel like something is significant again. And I canβt. ”
–Bingo. Same. In my case, I’m jaded af, and I cant lie to myself that this world is great, that there’s meritocracy, that hard work or being a good person leads to anything in the end. It’s hard to live life when you’ve been red-pilled and know that all the bullshit in life is put in place on purpose, but evil corporations and the rich evil men behind them.
We have different issues and different mentality- but we end up at the same point- feeling that nothing matters anymore.
typo- by* not but
Yeah, I think you’re far more black-pilled/doomer about people in general. Which is understandable, given your negative experiences. Whereas for me, it’s more about how fucked up I am, and my inability to connect to others as a result.
But yeah, it gets you to the same place. If you can’t form meaningful connections with others over an extended period, then it starts to feel like nothing is worthwhile.
Yes, media is nothing more than a distraction, a band-aid. But I guess for me it’s becoming less and less effective, the older I get. There used to be at least a few shows that I could reliably lose myself in for hours at a time, and forget my reality. Now it’s like I’m just too cynical – my mind deconstructs everything, I instantly notice the shoddy writing or characterisation, and I check out. I find it so hard to invest in any story. I spent too long relying on fiction as a crutch. Now I just see through it, and it all feels so hollow.
yes i know, i’m way more “doomer” themed than i used to be my whole life. ever since covid 2020 (not due to covid itself but due to seeing shit all around me and things happening or done to me since), i’ve changed to this doom and gloom mentality. So this has been fairly “recent.” I mean I’ve always been depressed but never THIS bad. But then I haven’t suffered this physically bad before.
yeah i know “not everything is bad” but i also know that MY life IS currently “everything is bad” – hence the doom and gloom state of mind. If other ppl went through what I’ve been through, they’d all be doom and gloom too. Hell, most wouldn’t even BE here or be sane anymore.
i know, you and i come from VERY different backgrounds and life experiences, and we’re very different ppl- but the end result is the same. So i don’t think it matters how we got here- we are here, and we are stuck in a black pit of our own hate and hopelessness.
aaand…i feel pretty fucked -_-
things like video games or tv shows or movies are just a distraction- they’re a tiny band-aid, while we are bleeding like a geyser and blood is spurting everywhere.
games/shows- they don’t lead anywhere- just a distraction to get us through another mindless and meaningless day.