thehusk

It’s not that I want to stop existing. It’s that I want to stop existing like this. Full of regret, sadness, longing, loneliness. And I can’t see any plausible ways to make that happen. If I put in enough effort and time, then maybe I could earn myself a little relief. But a lot of the time, the thought of just ceasing to be seems preferable.

I don’t view death as a liberation, or an escape. More just a dissolution of what I am now back into the rest of the world. I don’t know what it’s like to be bacteria, or a worm, or a […]

The only things I feel strongly about are either impossible, or so loaded with negative consequences that it would be wrong to attempt them. There’s nothing else in life I really want, or care about. Nothing feels that meaningful.

I do the bare minimum that I feel is necessary to survive, because I’m scared of the finality of dying. Otherwise… nothing. I try to escape into fantasies or the stories of those who have more of a reason to live than I do.

Forcing myself to work feels like pulling teeth. It’s dull, but the pay’s fine, and I can work from home. It would be OK, […]

I can’t help thinking about what life would be like if I’d made different choices. Of course, in order to choose differently, I would’ve had to have been a different person, living in a different reality. But what if things were just ever so slightly different. If something else had caught my attention, just long enough to prevent me from doing something terrible. And if I’d avoided that, would I have found my way out of my depressive self-hating spiral? Would I have rediscovered my purpose in life, and re-engaged with the world? Would there be a different version of me lying here now, with […]

I am disgusting. I’m mostly in denial about that fact. But I am. I’m so covered in filth that nothing in this world could ever make me clean. And that’s a problem, because I would quite like at least one person in this world to really understand me, while still caring about me. And that’s not possible. Because if you understand me, you understand that I’m repulsive, and you want nothing to do with me.

So I will always be alone, unless I fool others into believing I’m not repulsive. In which case I will be permanently acting, and will still feel alone and unloved. So… […]

I can’t be what I want to be. I can’t live the life I want to live. So I want nothing. I want not to want anymore. I want there to be someone worthwhile in the space I’m occupying, putting it to good use. But that’s not something I can control.

I don’t want to devastate my family. I don’t want that pain for them. So I don’t want to kill myself. I just want to not exist anymore. Or to never have been. Or really, to have been someone different. But that’s not something I can control.

In order to not die, I have to live. […]

So I’m standing on a railway platform, leaning against a pillar, waiting for my train. Looking ahead of me, trying to keep my anxiety under control, and not to get too caught up in depressing thoughts. As another train pulls in behind me, I notice a couple of girls smiling down at me from the raised street level across the tracks in front of me. They’re waving and shouting something at me, but I can’t hear a word because of the noise. I look confused, and gesture that I can’t hear, but they keep waving & smiling. Now there’s no reason for them to have […]

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 […]