thehusk

I’m so insanely tired. I just slept for the best part of 10 hours, and somehow I’m still tired. There’s just nothing in the tank. My body aches. My mind is numb. I have no drive to do anything.

What’s my motivation here? To try to suffer a little bit less? Seems sensible. But I can’t bring myself to actually care. The things I actually want from life are fantastical/delusional. All I’m left with is damage control – trying to limit the pain. However bad it is right now, it can get so much worse.

But emotionally, I’d rather just stop.

I want to stop being me. I’m constantly making myself miserable, and I don’t think I can change. I’m just too broken – it’s like I’m addicted to being unhappy. It goes too deep – there’s no decent person left to salvage. Rotten to the core etc. I hate myself, and yet I love hating myself. I want it all to stop. I want me to stop – no more thoughts, no despicable monstrous feelings, no sensations. Take me apart and let my matter become other things, that don’t hate themselves or the world.

But I don’t want to devastate my family. Especially my mum. They’ve invested so much emotion and so many resources in trying to support me. It would crush them. I can’t do that.

But I can’t stand being me anymore. The shame of it. There’s no way out. I’m so insanely alone. There’s no hope. Just day after day of decline. And it hurts. This is not a life worth living. This is a sentence I’m imposing on myself. And it only gets harder the longer it goes. I don’t think I can stick out another 20 years like this. I can’t imagine how awful it will feel by then. I don’t want it. Skip to the end. If it’s just going to finish with me being glad to finally cease existing, I’d rather avoid all the horrible bits in between.

But I can’t. I can’t do that to the only people in this world I care about. The only people who care about me. Can I? Can I?

I think avoidant is a pretty good label for at least part of what is wrong with me. It’s not the worst thing, but it’s a big issue. At root, I am terrified of being seen, perceived, or judged. Of the negative assessments of others, spoken or unspoken. And so I instinctively seek to avoid real world contact with people wherever possible.

It’s understandable that I would be sensitive to judgement, given that in many ways I’m pretty disgusting and pathetic. But I feared judgement long before I had done so much to deserve it. I was resistant to anything that would expose my underlying weaknesses.

I isolate myself not because I don’t crave social contact, but because I feel the need to control it. If you let people into your life, then they might do or say something that highlights your flaws. And how could one possibly tolerate that?

Perhaps there’s a kind of narcissism at work underneath. If I can avoid any exposure to others perceptions of me, then on some level I can pretend to myself that I am the handsome, witty, and moral person that I want to imagine. My self-image was always incredibly weak. I never really had a strong sense of who I was beyond superficial expectations. And now I’m too broken to develop one.

So I feel the need to avoid others wherever possible. In order to feel safe and not be gripped by paralyzing anxiety, I need personal space where I know no one will pop round unannounced. Where there will be no cold callers who peer in at you, or maintenance workers who turn up without an appointment. Where I don’t see or hear from my neighbors. Somewhere I can pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

And unless you’ve got a tonne of money, or you’re prepared to live in the wilderness, that isn’t realistically possible. So a lot of the time, existence seems intolerable.

Rationally, I know it’s stupid. Even if someone observes you doing or saying something embarrassing, what’s the worst that could happen? They assume you’re a loser or a weirdo, so what? Unless you want them specifically to be your friends, who gives a shit?

But I just can’t seem to tolerate the threat of random strangers thinking poorly of me. It’s a real problem. It’s making me incredibly dysfunctional – I often won’t even leave the house to get essential groceries. I don’t make necessary doctor’s or dentists appointments. I haven’t worked a real job in years.

And yet the idea of change seems impossible. The prospect of trying to overcome such fears seems overwhelming and unbearable. The world is just too terrifying to me.

It’s hard to accept this despair. It’s not an intense kind of suffering. Not like grief. I’m not in agony. I’m not tearing my hair out. I’m just…chronically disappointed? With reality, and with myself. It’s not an existence I think is worthwhile. But it’s not truly awful, compared to some states. I’m pretty much fine – it’s just that a lot of the time I’d rather it was all over. I don’t want this experience anymore – I don’t want this life. I want to hope, and feel invested again. I want to feel involved in life. And I don’t think I can now.

Presumably most of what’s keeping me here is evolved instinct – an organism that wishes to delay it’s demise as long as possible. I might think to somehow overcome that side of myself and end it, but the rationality doesn’t really check out. If I don’t want to die despite kind of wanting it to be over, there might still be some sense in which I should end it. But the only justification I can think of is to spare myself this suffering. And if I should value my suffering,,, shouldn’t I also value the greater suffering that would be caused to my loved ones by my loss? What is perpetual disappointment & longing when compared to the intensity of grief and loss? The bottom dropping out of your world and your life collapsing?

So it seems I continue to live – because I’m a genetically programmed survival machine (with admittedly poor programming.) And I should live – to spare my family the pain of my loss.

It’s just I don’t want to experience the reality of it anymore. I don’t want to see what I see, know what I know, feel what I feel. If I could just check out and allow this body to run on autopilot, that would be ideal.

I have locked myself in a cage called life, and now I’m banging on the bars, yelling for someone to come and save me. But I won’t/can’t liberate myself. Even with keys lying all around.

It would be funny, if it wasn’t my actual existence.

I want not to be this anymore. I want not to be me anymore. Every time I’m around other people, I hate myself. I deserve to hate myself. But I don’t want it anymore. I want the feeling, the guilt, the self-awareness – I want it all gone. I want to be free of it – of this self, this identity, this craving. I’m so tired of it – I don’t want to be the villain anymore. Fine, me=badman. Deserving of death. Stain on existence. Can we just get it over with already? Just end it – so I can finally stop being this?

But of course, that’s not what I really want. I want ‘freedom to’, not just ‘freedom from’. I want to exist again, without these chains dragging behind me. And that’s not possible. There is no freedom – there is only an end. And that’s where the doubts set in, and keep me clinging on to an existence and a self that I’m thoroughly sick of.

I have a virus in my mind. If I could just let it go, then things would be so much easier. But I can’t seem to. A part of my brain is fixated on pointless unhealthy delusions. It’s almost a religious conviction at this point. If I could just have these impossible things, then everything would be ok. Land of milk and honey. But I can’t. And it wouldn’t.

But knowing that rationally doesn’t change how I feel. It’s been over 13 years now, and I’m still fixated on this shit. No matter what I do to distract myself or focus on other things, I always get pulled back to it. It’s at my core.

Like I said, it’s a religion. There’s no rationality there. No evidence. In fact there’s a whole bunch of contrary evidence showing that it would be a really bad idea to go down that road. And yet I somehow ‘know’ that it would make life meaningful again. Even though it wouldn’t. It would make everything worse.

I am addicted to a fantasy. An idea. A really bad idea. And no matter how much I reason with myself, it will not fade. I torment myself over it. I both hate myself for it and love it simultaneously.

It’s ridiculous how someone could become so twisted up in themselves. Freud would honestly have a field day.

I should kill myself, morally speaking. It would be the honorable thing to do. I’m far too corrupted to ever be able to live any kind of decent life. But I doubt I’d ever do it. My sick brain is far too attached to tormenting itself.

I would give anything to be free of the knowledge of what I’ve done. I don’t know if it’s even guilt. It’s hard to feel guilt, when you don’t know if what you did had any real impact on others. I suppose I wronged a lot of people, in an abstract kind of way. But I don’t know if that’s what I feel bad about that, if it didn’t actually change anything for them. Maybe I’m in denial.

I think I mainly feel bad for me – being the one who has to live (or not) with what he’s done. Having to know what I know about myself. I don’t know how to cope with it, mentally. Being the villain in other people’s stories. Viewing myself that way – it’s hard to accept. But I can’t escape it. What do you do if you’re the monster (other than kill yourself)?

It doesn’t change much – recognizing that what I did, what I want to do, is wrong. Because it also feels so right. No huge lessons were learned, no greater moral clarity was reached. I did try. But my mind resisted. The evil was sunk in too deep. So it’s very wrong (morally speaking), but also very right (emotionally speaking.) And that contradiction exists inside my head, constantly driving me mad.

So I have to live with myself, as someone who shouldn’t exist. I should hate and despise myself, as anyone who knew me would. I shouldn’t want anything good for myself, because I’m complicit in something horrible that’s ruined the lives of others. And no matter what I do, this knowledge will never go away. There’s no escape. No peace.

I just want the awareness to stop.

No, that’s not true. I also want what I did to somehow magically be made morally acceptable. And it’s not. It can’t be. I will never be acceptable, and I will never be acceptable, especially as long as I still want that. I will never be ok. I want the impossible.

My biggest remaining question is: are there reasons why I’m the terrible person that I am? And is there a real way that things could have turned out differently? I don’t remember ever thinking ‘Aha, I’ll be evil!’ I think I did evil things because they appealed to me, and they felt good. I didn’t consider the morality of it, because I couldn’t see any consequences.

I have no real outlet for the loneliness I feel. Reaching out to others doesn’t help. I’ve cut myself off from everyone morally and psychologically. Which means all I have is myself. And I’m tired of me.

I wish I could go back to before I made myself this. So much of the time, I want not to be me anymore. For the self-awareness to be gone. So I can experience the world fully again, without the burden of my identity.

It’s such a waste of a life, to be so inhibited. Someone else could be using this oxygen, and really making the most of it. I just don’t have it in me to enjoy this world. There’s nothing I really want to do as me. I just want to stop being me – to be someone else, free of the things I know.

Presumably I’m resisting suicide because of some kind of survival instinct. And I can’t convince myself it would be best to try and overcome that – at least while my parents are still alive and so invested in me.

Which leaves me trying to make my life less miserable. And I honestly don’t have a clue. My body leaves me uncomfortable most of the time – my digestion, skin, back, teeth – all cause me pain. I’m constantly tired – even when I get lots of sleep. It’s like there’s nothing in the tank. I wake up, have breakfast, and I just want to go back to sleep or curl up in a ball. I rarely have the energy to focus on or enjoy anything. I can’t face the world. I can barely function.

I’m completely alone 6/7 days a week. I can’t do social interaction without crippling anxiety. I have no real hope of ever finding a partner, or even a friend that I enjoy being around. And I get regular reminders that I’m irredeemable and shouldn’t even attempt to form relationships anyway.

But still, I have to try and somehow make things feel a little less shitty. The problem is that my brain is fucked. The only ways I know of coping are what led me here in the first place.

My brain is endlessly hung up on things I know logically are no good for me. This dumb insistence that if I could just find this specific thing in this specific way, then everything would be ok. That I would finally be happy again after over all these years.

Rationally, I know it wouldn’t end up like that. If I got anywhere close I’d most likely be left feeling far worse, and in danger of severe consequences. Nothing would be resolved, or healed. I would’ve just discovered a new low, and put myself and others at greater risk.

And ‘logical me’ knows that, and knows I’m never going to pursue that course. ‘Emotional me’ on the other hand is stubbornly fixated on it. It’s the desperate longing that torments me last thing at night, and wakes me feeling empty and despairing.

It deranges me. I have dumb addict brain. I’ve tried so many things to change it, but it’s hard-wired too deep. Wasted so many months in therapy exposing my darkest self. This obsessive fantasy still just gnaws away at me, constantly under the surface.

I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to take any steps away from darkness, when I have this thing tormenting me at my core. I want peace, but I don’t know how to let it go. How to stop wanting what I know would only make things worse.

This life terrifies me. I’m scared of judgement, violence and imprisonment. Of being stigmatized, shunned, condemned. Scared of never being able to connect with another person. Of being forever beyond the pale. I’m scared of spending the rest of my life alone, and dying embittered and ashamed.

I’m afraid of how irreversibly broken I am – so that there’s no point even trying to fix it. I recognize the evil in myself, but I love it – it’s the only thing that gives me respite. There’s no hope of anything good – I’m way to far gone. So evil is all I have left. But still, I hate myself. I both love and hate the evil within me.

I fear there is no happiness for me, no recovery, no peace. Just ever greater regret, shame, despair, loneliness, self-hatred, and desperation. Until death.

Apparently, I fear death more than all of the above.

I don’t remember consciously choosing to be such a coward. It’s not that I never faced my fears. I had to, at least for a time. Day after day. But there were so many of them, and they never went away. My nervous system became hyper aware of threats, and saw them everywhere. I couldn’t turn it off. Every day became an ordeal. So I numbed it. I tried to push all my anger and fear down inside, and it twisted me.

It seems I love torturing myself – making myself miserable by observing my pathetic life, while refusing to let go and embrace the nothingness.

I’m constantly questioning the decision to keep living. I don’t know if it’s purely based on dumb survival instinct, and if there’s any way to overcome that. And if there is, should I?

I know I’m suffering, but it’s not that extreme – just this chronic, middle-of-the-road thing. I’m uncomfortable much of the time, but rarely in excruciating pain. My mental suffering is probably significantly worse than most normal people, but I can numb it at least some of the time.

I can rationalize my fear of death in so many ways – fear of an afterlife, attachment to this world. But I don’t know if any of that is sensible. I have more reason than most to fear judgement and punishment. But apparently I’m not afraid enough to actually change. So why delay?

I can’t see things getting any better from here – I’ve spent too long being too broken. I can see things getting much worse. Why take that risk?

I don’t want to devastate my family. But I don’t think I have it in me to pretend to be functional and whole for their sake.

I’m so lost.

My guess is that I’m not ending my life because of a combination of survival instinct, fear of something worse beyond death (hell etc.), and attachment to personal experience (memories.) It’s highly questionable whether that’s the best choice for me, but it seems like it’s at least less likely to devastate my family.

Which leaves me with the question of what to do while I’m still here, besides preparing my exit. I don’t know if I should attempt to pursue anything in this life. It seems wrong to involve myself in the lives of anyone else. I’m honestly a repulsive person (believe me, if you knew me, you’d want nothing to do with me.) The only way I’d ever form a relationship is by deceiving someone. And that’s wrong. On the other hand, I have the same feelings as anyone else – the same longings for intimacy, connection, acceptance etc. I don’t know how to live with those without going nuts. And I don’t know how bad my regret would be at the end of my life (or beyond) if I never made any attempt to fulfill those feelings.

I do know I’m not going to do the virtuous thing – I’m not going to confess my sins, Crime & Punishment style. I just don’t believe the devastation caused to both myself and my family would be worth it. I suppose I don’t anticipate it bringing existential salvation – I don’t think it would wipe clean my conscience.

Apparently, my shame isn’t great enough to bring me to end my life either. That’s what any decent person who found themselves in my circumstance would do. They wouldn’t be able to live with themselves. But no decent person would ever do the things I’ve done.

So I don’t know. I don’t know if I should make any attempt to fulfill my desires or not, given the deception it would require. I don’t know if it would even be worth trying. With the mess I’ve made of my life so far, it’s unlikely I could even put on a convincing pretense of normalcy good enough to appeal to anyone. I’ve spent so long isolating myself I’m effectively socially disabled, and my health is slowly falling apart. But I don’t know how I’ll cope if I do continue alone all my life. I fear some echo of me will remain beyond death, still tormenting itself with everything it didn’t do.

And if I don’t make any attempt at personal fulfillment, is it worth trying to do anything to redeem myself? Am I capable of change, and what am I changing for, if my life remains empty?

I’m so incredibly lost. I have no clue what I’m doing.

It’s not so much that I want to die. It’s that I don’t want to live with this reality. Which is dumb, because there are no alternatives. But my mind is incredibly resistant to ‘making the best of things’. I’m a stubborn asshole, and I don’t know how to stop that. I can plan it all out on paper, how I’m going to slowly improve myself and my circumstances. But when it comes to actually dealing with the day to day reality, I turn away, time and again. I refuse. I reject reality, and my place in it. And the only solution seems to be to numb it all away – in the hopes that I’ll forget all of the jagged edges to the picture I see. I’ll forget who I am, and what I’ve done, and what I want to do, and what the world thinks of people like me.

I spend so much of my life feeling unwell. It’s hard to know how much of it is in my mind, and how much is physical. I get these pains in my gut – kind of like hunger, only they’re still  there after I eat. It might be bloating – my gut feels kind of swollen or distended. Or like something is squirming inside, trying to get out. There’s weird gurgles and rumbling.

I feel tired so much of the time. But in a low-energy, rather than lack of sleep way. Maybe my body isn’t properly absorbing nutrients somehow.

I’m sure there’s an anxiety component to it. It seems to get worse when I’m dreading something specific, and temporarily relieve when something’s over with. I definitely spend an abnormal amount of time on the loo.

I’ve had a nervous stomach since I was 9. People describe it as ‘butterflies’ but that always sounded far too pleasant. More like slugs, or worms. But it seems to have become all pervasive over the years. There’s rarely a day I don’t feel nauseous.

I’d never actually thrown up from anxiety before, but a few months ago I was more sick than I’ve ever been. I threw up so much that it hurt, for so long I started to worry my internal organs would follow. It might have been a rare case of food poisoning, but I have been especially anxious since the pandemic. I still feel different – like my stomach is on the edge of doing it again. I get a weird taste in the back of my mouth.

I think of it as IBS, but that’s mostly just because I have nothing else to call it (I know it’s not a food allergy). All I know is I feel like shit a lot of the time, and I didn’t used to, at least not as much. I don’t know whether my anxiety and depression cause these pains, or whether the pains cause the anxiety and depression. I would pay quite a lot of money to someone who would really cure it – god knows I’ve tried every form of quackery over the years.

My existence is absurd. Perhaps that is true for everyone. But mine especially. To be so consumed by what is expressly forbidden to me, more at this time than at any point in history. It’s obscene. And not even something that’s necessary for survival, but a distortion, based on my own inadequacies. How sick in the head do you have to be to torment yourself like that?

Things are reopening here, though the infection rate still seems too high to control (especially after recent mass gatherings.) Restrictions are rapidly being eased, and I don’t know what level of caution is sensible to maintain. I’m terrified of my parents getting it – they’re both into their 60s, and my Dad has health issues.

I’m scared of infecting them, but I don’t know how rational that is. They’re my only social contact (sadly). The only other time I go out is to get groceries, and I’m reasonably careful – try to keep my distance, wear a face covering. If my parents do get it, it seems unlikely it’ll be from me. But still, I worry I’m putting them at risk.

I agreed to go for a coastal walk with them tomorrow, which means spending 30 mins together in a car- an enclosed space. We could’ve walked near where I live, but the options are far more limited. I don’t know if this is putting them at risk. I suppose I agreed because seeing them is generally good for my mental health, as is getting a change of scene. Which leaves me more functional. Which gives me a better chance of pulling myself together in the long term. And I figure if we just stick to walking where I live, it won’t have the same positive effect, and they’ll want to walk less often. But I don’t know if that’s selfish.

I don’t know how much of this is neuroticism, and how much is an appropriate level of concern. Things are really serious. People are really dying. But life has to go on somehow. I’m struggling to figure out when something becomes too risky to justify.

I have an attitude problem. Or a personality problem. Personality disorder/s. The problem is me. My feelings, my thoughts, the way I react to the world. When I see something I want but can’t have, my response is despair. Rather than making the most of whatever I do have. Because what’s the point, if I can’t have that crucial, essential, fundamental thing? Everything else becomes meaningless in comparison.

I can go through the motions, and try to make the most of my situation. But it’s like carrying a dead weight around – my hearts not in it. So inevitably i retreat back into dysfunction. Because I don’t care – if I can’t have that, I don’t really want anything else.

It’s a stupid, self-destructive attitude to have. It means I inevitably end up with nothing. Rather than getting some of what I want, I choose complete failure. I allow my longing for the ideal to destroy any chance of anything good.

But I don’t know how to stop. How to give up on the fantasy, and accept the reality. I don’t know how to invest it with meaning and value.

I feel so awful – in myself. And it’s not that I don’t deserve to. I’m a truly shitty person. But there’s no way out from under it.

There are things I can do to be less shitty. In some ways I’m significantly better than I used to be (though in others I’m possibly worse.) But no matter what I do, I can’t get back to neutral. To the position where I can look others in the eye again. I could cure cancer, and I’d still be scum. If anything, the feeling gets worse the harder I try – the more I have to interact with people, and face up to that distance between us.

So why bother doing anything? Why struggle and make things harder for myself, when I know there’s no way back? Why not just sink further into it, and numb the feeling away? When you’ve dug yourself a pit so deep it would take more than a lifetime to climb out, it makes more sense to keep digging than to desperately claw at the walls, or stare longingly at the sky.