Some things can’t be forgiven. But if there’s no way you can be forgiven, then why try to be better? Part of me wants to. Part of me doesn’t want to see any more suffering in the world. Doesn’t want to feel complicit in it anymore. But another part of me just doesn’t care. It’s willing to do anything in the attempt to drown out this feeling of wrongness.
And I regularly flip between these two aspects of myself. At some point I just give up. Maybe it’s an addiction. But I think maybe a more accurate way to describe it is a failure to deal with reality. Something will remind me of the huge gap between my selfish, unrealistic desires and reality. And I just give up. I get sick of trying to make the best of a bad situation, and get as close as I can to what I want. And instead I try to forget. I try to drown it all out of my consciousness. To wash it away with sensory overload.
Because there’s no way to deal with it, or make it ok. It’s like a splinter in my mind, digging away.
5 comments
You just described my battles for the last twenty five years. I found there is forgiveness but you have to feel you can be forgiven. You also have to forgive yourself. Those last two are what I struggle with.
I used negative coping skills, drugs, alcohol, porn, and video games where my primary means of avoiding the guilt and pain. This last year I reached a breaking point and seeked help. It has been long and painful but I have now been able to forgive myself, stop the negative addictions and leave the past where it belongs.
I just can’t see how I could be forgiven. I can’t feel it. I can’t imagine anyone really understanding everything I’ve done and being ok with it. And without that I don’t feel like I can forgive myself.
Are you engaged in criminal behavior? If this is the case maybe you should turn yourself into the police and you can seek “redemption” of some sort by owning up to your crimes. Or, if it’s some kind of self-harm or malignant way of thinking, then you could ask to be voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital at least until you’re recovered, then at least you wouldn’t have the opportunity to do whatever it is that you feel is such a negative habit.
Some of the things I do currently could technically be criminal (where I live), but they’re nothing compared to what I used to do. I’ve thought about turning myself in and seeking ‘redemption’, but I just don’t see how that could come. As I said, some things just can’t be forgiven. Some things carry a stigma, even after you’ve ‘paid your debt to society.’
I fear that all that would result would be the destruction of my parents from shame, and the removal of any future prospects for a job, life, or social acceptance. I can’t see how I could survive it. My guilt might be reduced, but I think the shame would become even more overwhelming. It doesn’t really seem like a way forward.
I feel exactly the same way. I am only 22 now, but fully realize the implications of what I am, just as you seem to. There are some things in society that no matter what you do, there is no escaping the stigma of it, whether you ever act on it or not. I have never acted on my thoughts, because I have no impulses, just wishes for things to be different, and for the connections that I want to have to actually be possible without harm to anyone. But, the logical (and much more dominant) part of my brain, realizes that this wish is not realistic. And that realization that it can never actually be makes hoping for a better and happier future not really possible, and my motivation to actually try to make anything of myself faded with that moment of clarity that led me to this conclusion. At this point, I keep going back and forth between wanting to end it and wanting a sign that my assumption is false that my wishes are impossible, even when I don’t even know if I want to see that sign in the first place. Personally, I mostly want to finally just reach that threshold of pain so that I can finally say goodbye to the world and end all of my pain. And all without ever having to determine if my wishes are possible or not, because that action opens up the possibility of someone else getting hurt. And I would rather die than risk that.