No Future Shock

I turned 25 about two weeks ago, but inside I feel like I’m three or four times as old.  Once again, I have spiraled into the throes of major depression, and I want out.  The last time this happened, it hit me so hard that I holed myself up in my dorm room for a month, skipped my classes and exams, and flunked out of college a semester away from graduating.  In that sense I’m better off today; I managed to complete my undergraduate degree this past spring, so at least I have that going for me.  But the underlying causes of my unhappiness are the same now as they were in the fall of 2009.

Inside me there is a void.  Where purpose, ambition, passion, and meaning should reside, there is nothing.  I first became aware of this emptiness in college, which led to my first bout of depression.   Now I feel that void gnawing at me more and more acutely as each day passes.  In the three years since I failed out of my first school, I have ultimately done nothing to sate its appetite.

God knows I’ve tried.  I’ve studied so many different things: writing, foreign languages, chemistry, economics, international politics, journalism, teaching… but nothing touches me.   Of course, when this happens, when I realize that whatever it is I’m attempting to get into is trivial to me, I cease to exert any effort.  That is now the pattern of my life in general.  I coast by, risking nothing and gaining equally.  I can’t even remember the last time I did something that made me want to pursue it at a deeper level.  The other day I tried to recall what dreams and ambitions I had as a child for my future.  I drew a blank.

Since graduation I’ve moved back home and enrolled in a teacher certification program.  My first semester there is also my last, because I now realize that I have zero interest in becoming a teacher and embarking on a career that sees me stuck in a classroom day in and day out.  I’m unemployed.  I’m reaching the end of my rope.  I feel like I’ve hit a level of profound physical and spiritual exhaustion that comes from always running into dead ends.

It’s not all bad; I have a tight-knit family that is very supportive and willing to do anything to help me.  I have many good friends who are very loyal to me, as I am to them.  They tend to be creative and intellectual types, people with sparks.  I think I draw these sorts to me because I can sense in them what I lack.  Even my love life isn’t terrible, though I’m currently single.  This is actually not a bad thing.  There’s no way I have my shit together enough to be in a functional relationship.

There are days, at my lowest points, when I think that I’d trade everything good in my life to have purpose.  I desperately want something to do or create that will fulfill me and make me feel whole, something that could make me risk complete and spectacular failure just so I could hold my head up and say, “At least I tried.”  Maybe I’d even find happiness.  But this passion continues to elude me.  People tell me that I have so much potential, as if this is supposed to make me feel better.  It doesn’t.  In fact, it has the opposite effect of making me feel shittier, since I’m made even more aware of how much I’m wasting what abilities I have.  I’ve learned the hard way that potential is only as good as your ability to capitalize on it.

Every day I toy with the idea of suicide.  I don’t think I could go through with it.  Dying scares me, and I know how my actions would affect those closest to me.  I want to live, dammit!  What I’m currently doing though couldn’t be called “living.”  “Existing,” maybe, but not “living.”  I know I can’t go through life like this, but I don’t know how to change and I’m too afraid to end it.  So I keep on.  I can’t even tell if my refusal to give up is a result of genuine optimism for the future or sheer stubbornness that’s part of my personality.  I hope it’s the former.