I don’t know what to do. In one sense, I should kill myself. I’m a terrible person. I’ve done awful things in the past, and part of me wants to do worse. And recognising objectively that I’m a bad person doesn’t motivate me to be much better in future. My conscience fades in and out, like a radio station – some times there’s just no signal, and I want to do the worst things imaginable (though fortunately I have little ability to). People like me shouldn’t exist. I don’t want to exist as this person, during times when my conscience is stronger. It feels wrong to continue to exist. So I should end myself.
On the other hand, doing so would devastate my parents and sister in the worst way. They’re all good people, living relatively meaningful lives. My sister is getting married in the spring. Killing myself would likely cause them all a degree of suffering equivalent or worse to what I experience. So…I shouldn’t do that, on the basis that tripling significant suffering would be bad.
I keep thinking I should wait until the balance changes – until something gets much worse in my life, or one of my parents dies, and my suicide would cause less suffering. But that leaves me having to live with all this conflict. Hating myself one minute, consumed by terrible impulses the next, then terrified. I don’t know how to live like this – how to be this thing that shouldn’t exist. It hurts too much.
Then there’s also all the other stuff that normal people have to deal with. There’s parts of me that are terrified of death. There are bits that long for companionship, relationship, goodness – all the things I’ve made impossible for myself. I don’t know whether even if I decided I should kill myself I would have the motivation to do so.
I’m so insanely lost and confused. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know whether I should kill myself, and I don’t know how to live with myself in the meantime.
2 comments
You have to stop hating yourself, and the comparing to other “normal”/”good” people…fuck that. The messed up nature of much of the way the world works is because of those very people, whether by ignorance/disinterest because they are too busy enjoying what aspects to life they can, or in a select few cases by deliberate participation/acquiescence because they benefit from it in some way (i.e. the 1% and the truly f’d up financial/monetary/economic system we have throughout the “developed” world).
Fuck it, be selfish, enough with the scrupulosity, if all these other people deserve to live and be happy so do you. You need to believe this to put everything else in the right context, including the admittedly painful fact that you don’t “fit in” and can’t form meaningful relationships.
Don’t be ashamed or feel guilty for who you are. Don’t let this world/society place that burden upon you.
I think it’s hard for me not to hate myself when this part of me is so deeply wrong – it shouldn’t exist in the world. It could do terrible harm to people (if acted upon.) And yet understanding that doesn’t stop such impulses.
I’ll grant that everyone is complicit in a system that causes harm to or exploits others, and I’ve taken comfort in that in the past. But it’s not the same. In most cases, they’re simply pursuing innocent goals that could be entirely pro-social, but are forced to do so through a system that negatively impacts on others. In contrast, my worst impulses are deeply antisocial. They couldn’t be acted upon in a way which wouldn’t risk the wellbeing of others, in any society. So for me, it’s my motivations, my very ‘self’ that is wrong, rather than just the pursuit of them through the present system. If the system changed, most people could pursue their motivations relatively blame free.
So the more conscientious side of me feels I should hate myself, and feel guilty. But doing so doesn’t actually change anything (though perhaps it prevents me from embracing the wrongness inside of me.)
I am deeply selfish, but I don’t deserve to be happy. The wrong is within me, rather than just my interaction with the world. I’m afraid society is right to despise me, to the extent that doing so discourages people from being like me.
I try to distance myself from the shame/guilt by reminding myself that I believe I am this way for a reason – that this part of me has roots in biology and the way I interacted with my environment growing up. I did not consciously decide to become this from a position of pure neutrality. But it’s very hard to maintain that attitude while interacting with society. Socially, we believe in agency – we believe that each person is the source of their own evil. And, antisocial as I am, I’m not a psychopath. I want to be part of ‘the tribe’. So , when I frequently encounter people disgusted by things that go through my head on a daily basis, and I understand that they’re right to be so, part of me takes that on myself.