thehusk

I’m so incredibly tired. Every single day is the same, whether I sleep or not, whether I take pills or not, whether I drink caffeine or not. It’s like there’s no energy in my system. I know I get enough calories, and I try to eat relatively healthy. It’s hard to imagine I’m deficient in anything essential.

So I assume it’s down to depression. I feel like I have no energy because my mind is telling my body that there’s no point releasing energy, because there’s no point doing anything. Not because there’s nothing to be done – there’s any number of chores that need to […]

The confusing thing about misery is the feeling that I’m kind of doing it to myself. Like I’m actively seeking out reminders of why I’m miserable. Because without those it doesn’t make sense. I wake up every day exhausted and with no motivation. Getting anything done is a struggle, I feel lost, and it’s frustrating. And inevitably I find myself drawn to things that trigger my feelings of longing and despair. And eventually I reason it all out and it becomes clear: that’s why I’m miserable. And I spend the rest of the day trying to distract myself, eventually fall asleep, and sort of forget. […]

I never really felt lonely as a child, though I spent much of the time on my own. The awareness that a few rooms away was someone who loved and accepted me unconditionally was enough.

Now I spend nearly all of my time alone, and I feel an all-consuming void in my life where other people would normally be, that grows larger every year. I see family who care about me once a week at most, and the pervasive awareness that they wouldn’t be able to accept who I really am now leads me to feel distanced and separated from even them.

I have no friends. I […]

After another day wasted trying to remind myself of the reasons I shouldn’t kill myself, I’m back at the same old place. All that I can do now is try to focus on ameliorating the circumstances that lead me to feel that my life is unbearable. And I honestly still have no idea how to effectively do that.

The longing I feel for connection and acceptance doesn’t seem fixable. I can’t be real, with anyone, because the truth about me is repulsive. So if I involve myself with anyone I’m effectively tricking them into liking me, pretending to be someone I’m not. So I inevitably feel […]

I’ve been carrying this self-disgust for a long time now. A large part of me just wants to stop. I don’t have the courage to, but I kind of wish someone else would do it for me. That would be a gift. That would be the compassionate thing to do – just put me out of my misery. I wouldn’t ask anyone to go through that though.

The things I’ve done and the things in my head contaminate everything else I do and am. I can’t see myself or think of myself except in reference to them. They define me. I gave up any claim I […]

It’s so hard to just function when my mind is consumed by how completely I’ve fucked up my life. Let alone do anything to be productive or improve my situation. I waste half the day wrestling with twisted fantasies, grasping for some kind of real foundation on which to base my life. Most of the rest is given over to sadness and regret. Why do my work, when I’m a worthless, unlovable, unbearably neurotic arsehole? Why do what’s necessary to prolong life, when my life will never be worth living? It’s like trying to drag an impossibly heavy weight behind you.

I want to be someone […]

Just trying to get some shit out (as usual.)

It’s maddening to deeply want something that you know is deeply wrong. It necessitates becoming alienated from an integral part of yourself. “No, surely, it can’t be me who would want to do that terrible thing. I would never.” And there’s no resolution to it. Either you do the terrible thing, and feel terrible about yourself. Or you don’t, and you have it eating away at you, and you feel terrible about existence in general. I hate myself, and yet a part of me loves that kind of longing far too much to ever give it up.

I […]

It’s so hard dealing with the constant reminders that my life is not worth living. That I’m alone, and I’m probably always going to be alone, and mostly what I want deep down is to not be alone anymore. Some people are fine on their own – I am not one of them. I just unfortunately lack the capacity for any degree of intimacy with others. I can’t feel connection or acceptance.

And nothing else in this world feels meaningful enough to make up for that. I’m not an artist, or a humanitarian, or an educator. I’m not religious, or an activist. I just don’t care […]

Sometimes in my dreams I’m transported back to the place I used to live, the only place I was every really “happy”. It’s different to how it actually was back then, but I know that’s where it is, because there’s forest everywhere, and the way I feel about it. I have this deep sense of longing, like I want to cling to the whole place and not let go. I desperately want to hold on to who I was back then.

I wasn’t neurotic back then. I was innocent, naïve, even for a child. I didn’t hate myself. It’s the strangest feeling, remembering that state, then […]

“It shouldn’t be this way.” I think that’s the core of suffering – the brain’s conviction that something has gone terribly wrong. I was supposed to have relationships. Friends. I was supposed to be likable, admirable, respectable, decent. I was supposed to be a good person. I was supposed to have a decent, meaningful career, and a family, and a partner. That’s how it’s supposed to go.

But that’s not who I turned out to be. Instead I’m a neurotic, unlikable deviant. I’m socially awkward, depressing to be around, morally twisted. And it’s not that I consciously chose to be any of these things. But I […]

I’ve spent most of my life making myself pointlessly unhappy. And I’m not sure if it’s that I don’t know how to stop, or I don’t want to stop. But either way, I can’t stop. I get attached to impossible things or fantasies, emotionally invested in them. And they become the only thing that feels meaningful, that feels worthwhile. But meanwhile I’m simultaneously aware that it’s not real, and there’s nothing I can do to make it real. And that hurts me. But I can’t bear to give up on the fantasy, even though it’s hurting me, because if I do then I’ll have nothing. […]

There’s so much misery inside of me, that I’ve spent so many years burying. Parts of me I didn’t know how to fulfil, or was too scared to. And in order to bury that misery, I’ve given power to other parts of myself that are insatiable, compulsions that never bring real peace or satisfaction.

So now no matter what I do, some repressed part of me will be screaming for the alternative. Contentment is not possible. It’s just a question of which path brings less misery. And knowing that makes me want to give up. But I won’t let myself end it. I’m too afraid of […]

The part of me that wants to end it is unlikely to be strong enough to prevail anytime soon, unless there’s some kind of catastrophic development. This animal apparently wants to cling to survival, regardless of misery.

But the delusional optimist in me isn’t strong enough either, to push me to finally sort my life out. It would probably be the smart thing, in terms of having fewer regrets in future. At least then I wouldn’t have to wonder about what would’ve happened if I’d really tried at this point in my life, the way I do about times in my past. But the odds of […]

I’ve never come across a good example of how to manage the incredible range of contradictory, conflicting drives within me. I often see people who are struggling with some aspect of themselves, and think that if they just made a small adjustment in their approach, they could avoid so much trouble. But when it comes to myself, I have no clue where to start.

I have instincts and impulses to do the worst things imaginable within me. And it’s not that I’m worried that I’m actually going to enact them. I’m generally pretty reserved in most circumstances. But they’re strong enough to the point where they […]

I don’t want to be this anymore.  Being inside my mind is not a fun place to be. I’m tired, sad, lonely, and full of regret, all the time. My life sucks. And I’m not blaming anyone else for that, But it feels so past the point of repair that the urge to give up is overwhelming.

There are certain kinds of videos games (I’m thinking mainly of strategy/tactics games) where it becomes clear you’ve messed it up, long before you hit a game over. Where the mistakes you made early on are now sabotaging your every move, making just keeping your head above water hugely […]

There’s something extremely destabilising about not having a clear idea what you’re living for. If I examine the narratives I tell myself about what’s keeping me here, none of them are sufficient to help me to live a functional life.

I’m not killing myself because of a strong attachment to an unrealistic and idealised fantasy of a possible life (romantic love, inner peace, freedom from pain.) But if it’s obvious that it’s highly unrealistic, then what good does that do me? What does it give me to work towards, to motivate me to get out of bed in the morning, to get my life in better […]

I never thought I’d be this alone when I was young. I encountered plenty of people who lived on their own, who relied on occasional visits from relatives to provide them with social contact, but it never occurred to me that that would be me. I suppose I lived in a pretty sheltered bubble for most of my childhood. I never learned that you had to work in order to get people in your life, in order to build worthwhile relationships. I was able to live with the delusion that things like that would just come to me. I never had to struggle or work […]

I’m tired of trying to distract myself from my loneliness. I’ve been more or less alone for the majority of my life, and it’s only getting worse as I get older. No one knows me. No one cares except my family, and they don’t really know me. I’ve given no one a reason to care about me. There is no good reason to care about me. I’m not someone worthy of being cared for. But it doesn’t stop me wanting it. I want to be known. I want at least one other person to really understand what goes on in my head, without wanting to […]

Trying is scary to me. If I do everything within my power, and it’s still not close to enough to get me anywhere worthwhile, but I still don’t have it in me to end it, then I’m just… stuck. Stuck in complete misery and despair. No more false hope or fantasies to tell myself, to get me through the day. Just the unrelenting awareness of my failure and inferiority. That’s terrifying.

But at the moment the story I’m telling myself is that I will try. That I am trying. Tentatively and gradually at first. But  that I will eventually do all that’s reasonably possible to find […]

Something I think about a lot is unavoidable suffering, what you might call “existentially necessary suffering”. There’s the suffering that’s caused by our own minds, or inflicted on us by other people, which we can imagine might easily by relieved by a change in fortunes. But then there’s the suffering that’s “built-in” to the fabric of reality. The children born with agonizing degenerative illnesses. The animals doomed to be slowly torn to pieces in a competition for survival. The suffering that was in some senses required for this world, with all it’s beauty and wonder, to exist. You can think of it as “natural evil” […]