I’m so far from anything healthy, or normal. I’ve completely isolated myself. To the extent that even when I’m around people, drinking and talking, trying to be sociable and personable, I’m alone. I’ve isolated myself morally, psychologically. I’ve become something unrecognisable, twisted, alien.
And I have no fucking idea what I’m doing here, out on my own. This is uncharted territory. Here be monsters.
I know there’s no way back. There’s no way of unseeing the things I’ve seen, or undoing what I’ve done. There’s not much of a path forward either. No real examples to follow. Those who’ve been down this road tend to keep it to themselves.
I’m trying to force myself to keep walking, or swimming, or whatever the fuck this mixed metaphor requires. Because if I stop, then… whatever little progress I’ve made in all these years gets washed away. And I know I don’t have it in me to start from zero again.
But there’s no destination, not really. Even the goals I set myself, I don’t expect them to change anything much if I do ever reach them. Pretty sure I’ll still be this, still feeling like this, still wanting it to stop.
But death’s inevitable, right? Sooner or later. Nothing lasts forever. And then no more me. No more neurosis. No more gnawing emptiness inside. No more making myself pointlessly miserable. Something else can make far better use of the space I take up. That’s all I can really hope for at this point. An end.
8 comments
This beautifully sums up how I feel most of the time. I’m sorry we both feel this way. I at least hope that you can find the spark you need to launch you forward. Me? I’ll just wait here. I’m too tired to get there.
I appreciate that. Trying to talk myself into making a decisive movement in one direction, no idea if it’s forward, pretty sure there’s no destination.
What a burden you are carrying. And of course, common wisdom dictates you should share it, but that might not be advisable in your position.
Hello, Rock. Nice to meet you, Hard Place. Pleasure getting cozy with you both.
Might not feel like it now, but I think you must be really strong for trying. That’s not nothing.
Yeah, guess with my issues it wouldn’t be such a burden if it was stuff I could talk about, without a huge amount of shame. But it is what it is.
Rock and a hard place is pretty accurate to the feeling.
There’s some kind of survival instinct/will deep down there, pushing against the waves of apathy. I fear the little progress I’ve made falling apart just enough to keep me struggling on.
Good on you for not throwing away the progress you’ve made. The struggle will be even worse if you do. That survival instinct is a strange thing, isn’t it. Work with it?
Yeah, the thing is my will to survive only really kicks in when things seem urgent – when I’ve got a work deadline pressing, for example. I can just about maintain the connection in my mind between being late with a project and losing the client, being unemployed again, having to move back in with family etc. And the fear of that is just about enough to eventually force me out of bed to start work, even when my mind is foggy and unfocused.
When I have several days off though, it all just disappears, and I just kind of drift, rudderless. I don’t have the drive or mental clarity to set about seeking more clients, or more fulfilling work, or improving my health.
I want to start to force myself to take small purposeful steps when I do have that free time. But when it comes to it, my mind inevitably just gets consumed in the same old cycle of regret/longing/shame/despair.
I very much relate. I’m a freelancer to, and that constant hustle to get new and better clients…. sometimes there’s just not enough gas in the tank to do that.
You’re likely a very high functioning depressive. Still able to put on the game face and do the bare minimum to not fuck up your life. It’s admirable. Down side is no one will ever know how bad things get for you, which sucks. Vent it all out here, I guess.
Heh, 30 ish years without a decent example here….. humanity always came up short in that department. There is no path, nor road or predetermined anything. I’ve been making this up for so long.
Every time I think I relate to someone, their path isn’t replicatable. I try to like people though, I’m a friendly monster.
So to me you don’t need a way forward. Get up in the morning and make something up. Today maybe try to communicate indifference to the humans, that’s my current mission from high command, by which I mean the part of my brain that makes up the plans.
It’s all BS. It always was. All that ever mattered is that some of it makes some people less miserable. That was the sum total of man’s achievement. Existentialism for the win, when all there is is what there is right now, very little matters. What does, is a lot easier to decide what to do with.