I’ve been crying almost daily for a year now, while trying my ass off to keep a stiff upper lip. I’ve been desperately hanging on to the standard justifications (maybe tomorrow it’ll be better, can’t let them win, this will pass, won’t rain forever, etc., etc.) out of sheer inertia, but I honestly can’t say that I believe any of them.
I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out which way to take it in life, what to do with myself, but all I feel is the walls closing in. And they’re suffocating me. The world is a fucking mess, my life is a fucking mess, I’m completely alone save for a couple of acquaintances with whom I have no true relationship, my close family is entirely dead (which, if I’m being perfectly honest, isn’t all that different than when they were alive, except I’ve been grieving the death of my mother for five years now and it doesn’t seem to end), and I’m getting old.
There is nothing which makes me want to wake up in the morning anymore. There is nothing to get me excited anymore. There is nothing to look forward to. And I don’t think I’m depressed, because depression felt like letting myself sink in lukewarm tar. This feels like a desperate, rabid sadness, like my soul wants to shred my skin off and just howl itself apart. I can feel my innards wanting to live, truly live, to experience at least some satisfaction, some sort of enjoyment, but I don’t know what I could do to get there.
I used to love being creative, but now it’s as though that pipeline got clogged up with rotten socks. I used to love interacting with animals, but all I conclude when thinking about getting a dog is that it would be unfair to that poor creature to have it bunk up with my despondent ass. I used to love hanging out with friends, but all of my friends turned out to be people who were only looking out for themselves. I used to love my country, but there’s nothing left to love around here anymore. I used to be fascinated by nature, now all I see is how little sense it makes and how worse it’s getting due to climate change. I even used to love loving someone, but now I just think about having to go through the process of dating and I’d rather just throw my soul away than have to do that again. I loved smoking weed, now it’s just a waste of money, because I’m just as miserable when stoned. I haven’t felt joy in… I don’t even remember how long, but most definitely not in the past decade…
And I’m so… so fucking tired. I feel more tired than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. And not “I need more sleep” tired, it’s as though I’m one of those old cars abandoned in parking lots, with busted wheels and corroded bodywork, with weeds growing through the upholstery. I don’t feel sick, I feel spent. Utterly spent.
And I don’t think I can do this anymore.
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There’s a lot in this world that will get you down, but you are wrong about the dog. There’s a dog on death row right now that you could save. I guarantee it will be happier with you, even if you aren’t perfect. And that dog will probably give you more love than any of us deserves. And that, often helps a little bit.
Go save some poor doggy, maybe they will save you back.
I didn’t even think about that, now I feel ashamed… You’re right. I’ll look into adoption, thank you so much!
I don’t have anything poignant to add, but I get that feeling. I sit and look out the window just wondering what it would be like to “live.”
I’m truly sorry you’re familiar with it… I hope you’ll manage to find an answer to that question, and I wish you inner peace until you get there!
Right back at you. 🫂
I reached the point in my chronic depression that I finally needed to do something about it almost a year ago. From what you’ve written it sounds similar to how I was feeling. I don’t know if you’ve tried therapy or antidepressants or anything, but I can tell you that I felt incredibly stupid for not trying them sooner and just living in misery for years.
I was lucky and Zoloft worked for me. I just stopped constantly hating myself and feeling like I was just waiting to die. I’m starting to end using it now, but I found it incredibly helpful to get a sort of “break” from the way I was feeling. It was like I was able to get my head above water and breathe again; I had been drowning in my depression for so long.
Just using my experience to say I hope you try some things and are able to find success with them. I thought I wouldn’t get anything out of therapy and was skeptical about trying medications, but it happened to help me and I felt silly for waiting as long as I did to try something.
Therapy has helped me immensely, especially to get out of and manage my depression (this is not the worst I’ve ever been, to be honest)! As for medication, both my therapists and I agreed that I am still in a place where, with enough work and mindfulness, I can keep things under control without the need for medication. And I still agree, as I’ve not fallen as badly as I did about a decade ago.
This is why I strongly suspect that this is not depression, and my therapists agreed that, at least, it is not a severe form of it if nothing else. I am simply reacting to the conditions around me, and life has not been necessarily kind during the past decade. I do have some form of hypersensitivity in terms of emotional intensity, as sometimes any emotion can be overwhelming (I also have some form of Stendhal Syndrome), so management takes a bit more work.
What worked for me was to think hard about the reasons why I feel like shit, and what I could do about them - even the big, scary reasons. Especially the big scary reasons.
It’s probably the only reason I’m still alive, because while I still struggle to bear living in this world, I can see the faintest glimmers of a new one that waits to be built. I just need to start (or in my case, to survive till I can start). I don’t think I could keep going if I was just trying to achieve conventional norms of ‘being happy’; those were never meant for me.
This isn’t what I started with, but it is a good encapsulation: https://crimethinc.com/tce
It helped me to expand my idea of what it means to ‘love’ someone, or something: https://gl.crimethinc.com/2024/02/14/notes-on-love
And here’s where I hope to be one day: https://crimethinc.com/2018/03/22/we-fight-because-we-like-it-maintaining-our-morale-against-seemingly-insurmountable-odds
Hey, thank you very much for the resources! These pair up nicely with what I’ve been trying to expand myself toward.
Thing is, I have been doing the thinking - if there’s one thing which I’ve learnt to appreciate about my mind is that it’s so hungry for truth, that it can’t lie to me even if it’d make me feel better (blessing and curse, really, but things of the mind are neither bad nor good, they just are). I know what causes me this hurt, it’s both the state of the world and the state of myself, of how I seem to be wired.
And, yeah, I want to take my first few steps toward lending my hand to trying to fix things (volunteering, community work, maybe even politics, etc.), but I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel… intimidated/overwhelmed/terrified by it all. I’ve been trying to work on myself through therapy and I actually managed to reach a place where I’m no longer a stranger to myself. I even managed to discover my “flavour” of spirituality, to reconnect myself with the Universe, to feel it around me again. But it’s like the world keeps shifting the goalposts with every success, if that makes sense… Rediscovered myself only to open my eyes and be faced with the dumpster fire. 28 Days Later’s opening feels relatable, waking up from a coma and into an apocalypse.
I keep feeling that I’m being thrown into different types of “deep ends,” over and over again…
Your sphere of consciousness is stuck too open, too wide, too zoomed out. You need to contract your universe into something small and manageable.
Anything that is overwhelming needs to be broken down into smaller sub-problems that are actionable. And problems should be solved with some consideration towards prioritization.
Otherwise you’ll be stuck trying to solve Heat Death of the universe while your house burns down.
- Health
- Life
- Work
- Play
How are those things on a daily basis? Are you taking care of them? In the right order? Do you actually know what you want?
Yeah, I’m constantly trying to keep things in perspective, but I get overwhelmed very easily, especially by things at this magnitude.
As for the list, the only aspect which is (thankfully) stable is my health. The others… not so much…
As for what I want, I’ve been trying to figure that out for the better part of a decade. Hope I’ll get there one day.
But it’s like the world keeps shifting the goalposts with every success, if that makes sense… Rediscovered myself only to open my eyes and be faced with the dumpster fire. 28 Days Later’s opening feels relatable, waking up from a coma and into an apocalypse. I keep feeling that I’m being thrown into different types of “deep ends,” over and over again…
Sigh… yeah, that’s relatable. I am trying to train myself to accept the world as it is, without overemphasizing my own (and other people’s) emotional reactions to them - keeping things in perspective, basically.
The best way I’ve found do this is, unfortunately, meditation (I know, they were right, god fucking damn it). But seriously, I’ve found it really helpful. Moreover, consider that meditation is a coping mechanism developed by people who lived in much shittier times than ours; Gautama Buddha is traditionally presented as having developed his teachings in response to suddenly becoming aware of horrific things, which is the exact thing that many of us have been going through for the past few years.
Here are some resources that have helped me:
https://annas-archive.org/md5/bd811e54438e39c709895c8a85a99e32
In this vein, there’s a poem I want to share, from Kyle Tran Myhre’s latest book. He doesn’t seem to have posted it anywhere online, so I will just paste it, in a collapsible, below (pls don’t sue me Kyle :3):
Hen March Fights On
In those wild early days, Hen March found herself surrounded by doubt. Some of that doubt was her own: bright blue lightning coursing through the larger cloud of other people’s doubt—their cynicism, their fatalism, their valid critique. The cloud, gray and formless, hung in the air outside Hen March’s always-open window. Sometimes that cloud spoke.
Sometimes, its voice was a hissing whisper like acid melting through glass. You’re never going to make it, you know. You never belonged here in the first place.
Other times, its voice was a soft murmur like rain. It’s okay that you’re going to fail. It doesn’t really matter. Nothing matters.
Still other times, its voice was clear, confident and enunciative, an inspiring roar. Let’s think about this rationally: what you aim to do simply won’t work. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a hundred other things you could do. Why don’t you just go ahead and do those things!
Hen March listens to all the voices, because “just don’t listen to them” isn’t any kind of serious advice. She decides that if they were going to yap away at her anyway, she may as well get to know them.
The hissing whisper is afraid, always looking over her shoulder, waiting for something undefined—but bad—to happen. Hen March holds her hand, waits with her, and says this is also happening.
The soft murmur is tired, just so very tired. Hen March lets her nap on her shoulder, and says, it is okay to rest.
The inspiring roar is also afraid, underneath her bluster. She is bursting with ideas and possibilities but doesn’t know how to hold them. Hen March stays up late laughing and arguing with her. At one point, she says, we have time.
By taking the time to get to know her doubts, Hen March makes friends of them. Many years later, asked by a storyteller how she was able to keep fighting against such overwhelming odds, she remembers:
My doubts were always with me. When I got to know them, I was able to understand them as pieces of myself.
And the thing about me is I’m just a person. So no matter how cynical I felt, I was always able to remind myself that to surrender to cynicism is really to surrender to arrogance.
“Oh, I feel pessimistic, and I’m such a genius that I must be right!” Bah. Our fears, our doubts—they’re valid. But you don’t fight them; you don’t “beat” them. You try to understand them.
You try to be humble enough to remember that our personal doubts aren’t bigger than our collective power. They’re louder, sometimes, sure. But not bigger.
Finally, just a personal note before I log off and get back to the grind - I feel you, I really do. I remember being at the absolute end of my rope before; it was exhausting, and it hurts to know that you’re there. I sincerely hope you feel better <3
Yeah, I gave in and started trying to incorporate meditation into my habits, but if you’ll allow another movie reference, it’s like Dr. Octavius trying to contain the solar flares in Spider-Man 2… At least I like sitting with my thoughts, so silver lining, I guess… I’ll digest the resources, any tip helps! Thank you for this!
As for the poem, it’s beautiful! It reminds me of my depression years and how I managed to claw my way out of them (did it alone because I had no idea how to ask for help). Guess there’s still a bit more clawing to do…
Thank you so much for everything! Sincerely! Knowing I’m not alone makes it simultaneously better and worse (because I hate it when people suffer…). But I am glad to hear that you’re past the end of that rope! Gives me hope that maybe I’ll get to see the sun again one day.
Hey. I’m so sorry that you’re feeling so spent, so tired, so helpless.
Faced with these feelings, you have tried what many sensible people do: we try to feel better by telling ourselves that it’ll be okay, that tomorrow it’ll stop raining. Sometimes that helps, especially if it indeed stops raining. However, if the rain doesn’t stop, telling ourselves that it’ll be okay feels fake. This is actually backed by research on the topic.
I don’t mean to say that optimism is bad. I mean to say that maybe there’s different paths that we can take, paths that I’ll mention here. Maybe some of these paths are new to you (given that you mentioned wracking your brain). Hopefully they get you closer to where you want to be. Maybe you already know the paths (again, given that you mentioned wracking your brain). Hopefully there’s a new way you learn to traverse them (for example by bike instead of walking, or looking up at the canopies and the valleys instead of looking down at the ground). Maybe they don’t resonate at all with you, and at least you can have the certainty that you’re not alone, that we have all struggled finding our path. It’s all okay. Ultimately, it’s up to you what you do.
This is a public forum and many others will hear my words. They may have heard me before and they will know that I tend to recommend a set of paths that lead to psychological flexibility. I do this because, regardless of what we’re faced with in life, we will always be accompanied by our brain and its voice, our thoughts and their recommendations, and our sense of self and its aspirations. Psychological flexibility teaches us how to relate with ourselves, how to approach that machine that sometimes tells us that life is unlivable and we are unlovable.
You mentioned that your brain is telling you that the world is a mess, that you’re lonely, that you’re old. In a weird way, it’s trying to take care of you. It’s predicting where the tiger is hiding and how to avoid it. “Don’t try dating or finding new friend-groups! It’ll be exhausting and you’ll leave there with nothing good”. “The world’s a mess. Don’t even try.” But our mind plays tricks on us. It’s like a friend who is trying to take care of us but is sometimes confused. It’s an advisor who sometimes nails it, sometimes fails miserably, and sometimes gets stuck. It’s usually when our inner advisors get stuck that our lives become full of unnecessary suffering.
That’s psychological rigidity. Our mind becomes a dictator, entirely sure of how the world works and what can and can’t be done. Our thoughts become repetitive and our life shrinks, kind of like how you described the suffocating walls, closing in on you.
The good news is that there is a way of pivoting from psychological rigidity to psychological flexibility and that there is solid science behind this. Here’s something I’ve said elsewhere some time ago:
Imagine the longest essay you’ve ever had to write for school. A dozen pages? Two dozen? Now picture it in front of you, printed out, on a desk. Imagine there’s ten copies of your essay spread around the desk. Add another layer of essays on top. And another. And another. A hundred times. If you organized the documents into a single stack of paper, it would be 1.2 meters tall. That is how many randomly controlled trials there are on the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Here are two places where you can look at the evidence: one and two.
ACT has changed my life and that of hundreds of thousands of people. While I would suggest to get an ACT therapist (and a good one!), there is evidence that you can learn the skills of psychological flexibility if you engage in the appropriate mental processes, regardless of how. You can learn about how to do ACT exercises in A Liberated Mind, which you can find here https://stevenchayes.com/.
I hope you can see how those same words apply to this context.
Now, you mentioned crying daily with a stiff upper lip. But you also mentioned that you can feel your innards wanting to live, to truly live. These two are related. We hurt where we care and we care where we hurt. The crying and the yearning are two sides of the same coin. You have a yearning inside of you for life-affirming experiences. It hurts to see yourself not having them.
I just wanted to point out that this pain that you feel is tied to the passion for living a well-lived-life that you have inside of you. That energy that you have spent trying to tell yourself that things will get better, crying, putting up a facade— that energy can be redirected to a life that you find valuable. Hopefully the tools I mentioned earlier help you do exactly that.
Two things before I let you on your way.
First, you may consider the program “Healthy Minds”. It’s an app/program developed by a non-profit that has been tied to the research of meditation and human flourishing. I donate to them because their research is well grounded, their app is well designed, and they’re life-changing. If you cannot do the investment of time or money or effort for ACT, Healthy Minds is the single easiest thing that you can do daily that will have the biggest impact in your life.
It’s important to note that, while Healthy Minds is the easiest thing with the biggest impact, it’s not a replacement for ACT or otherwise therapy. Here’s a very cartoonish way of thinking about it, but it exhibits my point. Let’s say you have been crawling on the floor. Healthy Minds helps you to walk. ACT is like the high-speed train. Walking is not a replacement for the high-speed train.
Second, as to feeling like a rusty and corroded car, it’s worthwhile to point out that there are ways of removing rust and reinforcing existing structures. Heck, there’s even recycling! A phoenix can arise from the ashes in the same way that people can grow from trauma (it’s a thing; look up “post-traumatic growth”).
I hope this helps.
Thank you for taking your time to go this in-depth, and I resonate with a lot of what you’ve expanded upon!
To start off, you’re right. I know those mantras are fake right here and now, and the only reason why I still kept them going is because that’s what literally everyone I’ve met so far kept telling me would help, and it would feel… scientifically dishonest (for lack of a better way to put it) to not experiment and see what happens. But I also know that the grand majority of people whom I’ve met so far haven’t been where I’ve been, or haven’t processed that enough to understand if they have, so the things which work (or seem to work) for them are not the solutions I need. But I try in the interest of thoroughness. I’m not judging them by saying this, just to be clear, I’m just listing the data.
Related to my brain’s status updates, I may have overplayed them a bit in my initial post - yes, I do think all of those things, and while I know they’re not necessarily permanent states, I also know they’re what applies right now. To my eyes, the world and my life are a mess. Dating has so far produced nothing but a long, long string of disappointments and failures (with everyone involved being to blame for it, including - especially - myself). And I know exactly why - because I’m significantly different than what people try to define as “normal” nowadays and I’d been trying to fit a mould which wasn’t mine to begin with.
And that’s ok! Sincerely, I’ve reached a point where I’m ok with how specifically different I am and I kinda’-sorta’ love (or at least respect) myself for it. And I also accept that this specificity of mine requires different approaches, which, again, is all fine, it’s the human condition. My point with listing those things was closer to “I need to try something different, to focus on other things for at least a while, but I have no idea what,” although it’s not evident in my initial post, for which I apologise.
This brings me to how this relates to psychological flexibility. I’ve been working on this for a long time now, because, as weird as it may sound, this isn’t the worst I’ve ever been. I went through 7 years of depression after finishing Uni because my life went down the toilet completely, plus past traumas were shoving their way in to get their dues. I hated myself - HATED myself. Not even a drop of compassion was wasted on myself, to the point where I believed the only correct and fair thing to do was to remove the plight of who I was from the world so that it wouldn’t hurt others.
But I managed to get through it and literally unlocked the cage I’d built for myself (I did it alone, which probably wasted a lot of time, but water under the bridge). And it was exactly this “scientific honesty” to which I so insistently cling that got me through it, it helped me see just how grey I was instead of the pure monster I was convinced I used to be (there was no proof for this, but it was what my family had told me all my life, so I believed it). After that, I wanted to go deeper, so I finally went to therapy.
I started to understand why my family didn’t understand me (I’m most certainly not neurotypical), why they were so abjectly against even trying to understand me (good ol’ unaddressed transgenerational trauma), and while it helped me to let go of my resentment, it also helped me to understand that I couldn’t count on them for support. Which is ok (not ok as in it doesn’t hurt to know that they never had my back, but ok as in I know what I have to work with).
Then I started digging into philosophy, because while I know that what works for others doesn’t have to work for me, I fell back on the things which I knew had worked - gaining an understanding of this species’ greater and historical context and trying to figure out where I fit into all of this. I wanted to try to start from as blank a slate as possible, so I did my best to let go of my previous convictions (which were compromised beyond recognition and weren’t even ‘mine’ to begin with).
And it worked. Not 100%, but paired with my immense luck in finding genuinely good therapists, it worked a lot more than anything else had worked up to that point. I slowly started to piece myself together, to see my inner workings and to map myself out for myself. Which brought about acceptance after a while, to circle back to the start.
My current state stems mostly from external factors, to be perfectly honest. I buried the last two members of my immediate family within the past five years (granddad from mum’s side was the last to go, in 2024, mum went in 2019 right before the Pandemic hit). In addition to this, the string of romantic failures continued throughout that same period. My dissatisfaction with my career had reached a breaking point, twice. I’d lost my social circle during the Pandemic, when everyone started showing their true colours (for me, it was the best break I could’ve asked for, I miss the Lockdowns…). I took a massive hit, though, when humanity started losing its collective shit starting with 2020, because I can’t and won’t deny myself my empathy. I’ve recently moved from a city in which I lived for mum’s sake, to a city where I have no idea what to look for. And this is why I feel spent.
And this, I hope, makes it clearer why I feel the need to try something different for a while, to try to focus on other things, but I have no idea where to start. The desire/need to live meaningfully is entirely realised within me, and while my more impulsive parts want it to happen here and now, I know it can’t and won’t happen overnight - took me a decade and a half just to undo the hereditary damage, it, again, would be “scientifically dishonest” to assume the road from here will be any easier or shorter.
My mind is as open as it’s ever been, and I want to open it even more if the hinges will allow it. I take a modicum of pride in this and the fact that I’ve reached a point where I can accept and process cognitive dissonance without the sheer horror of not being able to pull a straight answer from that tangle of data. My only problem is, well… what next? Because while I know that the world being on fire and myself not getting younger aren’t the end of the road for me, they also change the playing field to the point where I need to adjust my course. But right here and now, I’m sailing blind, and I can’t define what’s urgent and what isn’t from the new conditions I have in front of me just yet.
So, again, thank you for the resources and the depth of your reply, I will most certainly dig through them because information is my heroin.
Hot air balloon pilots are always looking for crew people. Balloon clubs are having their annual safety seminars over the next couple months.
Repair stations are performing annual aircraft inspections, which requires a visual examination of every single panel on the balloon. They love having extra hands and eyes.
Not op but I’m interested. Do I just call a hot air balloon company and ask if they are hiring?
That’s one way, sure. Those companies typically do ride business.
I would suggest looking for repair stations. Every balloon needs to be inspected by a certified repairman every year, so those certified repairmen know every pilot in the area. Including the private pilots that don’t do ride operations.
That genuinely sounds lovely! But hot air balloons aren’t all that big in our country (Romania), most of my compatriots prefer to yell at their phones in public, pop illegal explosives months after New Year’s, and just generally being uninteresting assholes…
But hot air balloons aren’t all that big in our country
So?
Ballooning isn’t “all that big” anywhere in the world. It’s a small community, but an extraordinarily welcoming one. We need help, and most of it is stuff we can show you how to do in a couple minutes. The hard part is connecting interested people with teams.
Romania actually has some very large balloon festivals that attract crews from around the world. Foreign teams rarely bring their whole crews, and rely on local volunteers. Big, special shape balloons often need 20+ local crew people.
No, if there is criticism to be laid on ballooning, it’s that we often cancel our plans at the last minute, due to weather.
I honestly didn’t even know we had hot air balloon stuff at all around here, I’ll look into it. Thank you.
That’s the same everywhere.
I would suggest looking for repair stations. Balloons need to be inspected and repaired by trained and licensed repairmen in certified facilities. As rare as balloons are, repair stations are rarer still. But, if you find one, they will know every balloon and team within 200 miles.
This actually sounds like it may even be a career-worthy thing, always wanted to get into some sort of “fixing things” job.
I think balloons are possibly an example of an activity that would allow you to focus on external instead of internal and also require a degree of physical activity. Both of those are excellent ways to get a little break from what you described. I might add that suffering with thoughts and feelings sometimes is shortened by allowing ourselves to do it more intensely for a bit. I’d try both - allowing myself to wallow intensely for a bit and then get up and do something for a bit. Repeating as necessary. I’ve found it to help a little bit sometimes. It looks like you’re getting quite a few responses. It’s nice that others identify and care enough to write.
Exactly. Ballooning is just an activity that puts together physical activity, some structured socialization, sunshine, a little adrenaline…
And a flamethrower.
Everything is better with a flamethrower.
I really do need a break and I think even the slightest possibility of being allowed to join someone who’s taking one of those things up and away from this fucking place would let me at least catch my breath.
I didn’t expect to receive this many thoughtful replies, yeah… Makes me even sadder to think just how many lovely people are suffering…
Amazing how relatable this is and yet loads of us can still feel chronically isolated or without purpose in life. Do you have some idea what elusive condition might allow you to experience life as a gift? If not, I hope you find it.
I also hope to see you posting again. This may be a tangent, but I like your way with words! There’s an understated grace in how you wrote this post. If writing isn’t of interest to you that’s cool. I just couldn’t help pointing it out.
I honestly don’t know… I realised I’ve lived my entire life for others so far, trying to achieve their standards for me, trying to fix their problems, trying to make them happy, not so that they’d be happy with me, but that they’d be happy enough with themselves to stop criticising every cell of my being for once. But now that they’re all gone, there’s nobody left to try to satisfy other than myself, and I don’t… think there’s enough of me left to be able to identify anything concrete. I feel like a tool without somebody to use it, if that makes sense. Purposeless, as you’ve said, and still.
Thank you! Writing used to be one of the things I loved (and literature in general), but it’s now on life support, like everything else.
I’m so very sorry you could relate to my words. Honestly. And I truly hope you, too, will find your bliss!
Why are you me. Thats so fucked that I’m not the only one feeling like this. No one should feel like this. Yet here we are. The only thing keeping me going is seeing new games or anime that make me excited enough to wait for them to come out. If that ever stops ho boy am I fucked. But everything in between fucking suuuucks. Hope you find a way out of this hole. Maybe share it with the rest of the class once you’re out.
No one should feel like this.
Yes. So bear witness. Write. Make art. Document what you’re going through.
Do it for yourself, at least.
I say this with experience: you will forget the intensity, the gravity of what you’re feeling. The coping mechanisms you’ve developed and mindset you’ve cultivated will stay, like muscle memory (so better cultivate healthy ones!). But when you go back to the stuff you made back then, you will be overwhelmed - both by how much worse it was than you remember, and how much stronger you are than you thought to have survived it.
(Also - writing can be really helpful for sorting through feelings and working things out.)
I don’t know you, but boy I’ve felt that. Not as intensely or as long, for sure, but the helplessness and inner desire for… meaning? Adventure? But being stuck instead. Yeah that sucks.
If you ever want to just chat or whatever, feel free to hit me up with a dm. I may not be able to make the world at large better, but I can at least offer an ear.
Yep, adventure, meaning, and also just simply a direction, to be honest… It’s like I’ve managed to rebuild myself into a human-looking thing which is able to stand on its own, but I have no idea where to go from here…
Thank you so much for the offer, you may just see a message pop up from me!
Directionless is definitely a feeling a lot of us have out here. I’ll keep an eye on the inbox!
I wish I could go on a one-way trip outside our solar system. I wish I could see the Universe and just die out there, alone and in peace…
I hope this isn’t inappropriate to share, as it literally begins with a potentially very triggering suicide attempt, but I think you may enjoy reading this somewhat short web comic/graphic novel about a scientist on mars who is struggling with existing.
I hope it helps, genuinely.
Thank you! I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way, but I’ve been living with Death in my heart for so long, that it feels closer to family than anything else around me.
I’ll dive into it.
Just out of curiosity, are you downvoting all of your own comments, or do you have some jackass stalking you?
I remove the default upvote, one of my stupid little principles, I guess…
This sounds like you’re describing an “Identity Crisis”. source
I have no professional expertise. I recommend you reach out to a professional for good guidance. The one thing I can offer is that it sounds like you’ve been someone else for some many other people that you’ve may never been able to explore who you are or who you want to be. If you at this low right now, then perhaps this is the lowest point and, with your actions, it only gets better from here.
I’m only seeing you from miles away, but you are in my thoughts.
Oh, yep, been going through it for a decade and a half, believe me…
I’ve been through the worst of it, though, right after finishing Uni - had a complete system breakdown, fell into a deep depression characterised mainly by self-hatred for about 7 years, but I managed to pull myself out of it, then sought therapy to cement my work and to build upon it. I still don’t have the full picture (and I’m starting to doubt I ever will, as we’re frustratingly dynamic creatures from a psychological standpoint), but I’ve at least identified my ‘core’ aspects and I try to nurture them as much as I can.
I can sorta’ see who I am, but, as you’ve said, not exactly who I want to be - I’m still trying to reconcile what I’ve understood about myself so far with fitting into the greater context of humanity, but it’s so hard to relate to people who haven’t been through The Suck… Feels like I’m pretty much on my own with this, and it’s… not a happy thought…
I am window shopping for therapy again, but I wanted to give “swimming on my own for a bit” an honest try beforehand - my previous therapist tried to encourage me to develop more confidence in what and how I think (ironically, the consensus among them was that my thinking isn’t the problem, not having any faith in it is). I want to respect the homework, but I’m done trying to demolish brick walls with my face.
Thank you so much, it really does mean a lot to me!
… it’s as though I’m one of those old cars abandoned in parking lots, with busted wheels and corroded bodywork, with weeds growing through the upholstery.
Since you put it this way, I would like to introduce you to The Holey Goat.
And if you want to see the whole thing, there’s a playlist.
It might sound stupid, but this project hit me in the right place at the right time. It’s never too late.
Thank you! This looks like a brilliant watch!
Although, I’ll be honest, I don’t see myself as a former beast, more like this:
If you’re down for binging the entire playlist, I highly recommend it. The long version does a much better job of showing just how much went into it.
Sending you hugs. ❤️
Thank you!
Thank you, I’ll watch it before bed time. Right now I feel the need to stand in my kitchen and chain smoke until my trachea starts hurting.
It’s probably the best thing that’s on YouTube. Watching that kid go from a babe in the woods to an experienced traveller and a brilliant filmmaker in such an authentic way is very inspiring.
Try a big dose of psychedelics
I thought about doing this at one point, but I’m pretty certain I won’t be coming back from that. My sanity seems flimsy enough as it is, to be perfectly honest. I don’t even really understand how it lasted this long…
I wouldn’t recommend starting with a big dose, but they can be really useful for giving your mind a reset. You mentioned weed, which in my opinion messes with your sanity a lot more than psychedelics. I think a tab of lsd in nature with a sketchbook would do you a lot of good. It can really remind you of the beauty of being alive.
If that’s not something you’re comfortable trying, I’d recommend looking into something else that also acts on serotonin, like SSRIs.
Also consider getting a cat. Depending on the cat’s personality they could be absolutely thrilled to have someone who sits around all day. You won’t feel like you’re letting the cat down in the same way you would for a dog.
Anyway I relate to too much of your post. I hope you find meaning and fulfillment in your life <3
Weed has been good to me for a good while, to be honest, it helped me make some space between myself and my thoughts, if that makes sense, and that extra space has helped me in figuring out a lot of things which would’ve otherwise been drowned out by the deluge. It also makes food taste better, which is always a good thing!
But, yes, there’s a time and a place for everything, and while it has been good in helping me get some enjoyment from my life, right now it’s not the “tool” I need.
I’ve been considering psychedelics for a while, I knew a lot of people who started microdosing during the Pandemic and the overall opinion seemed to be good. The only thing which holds me back is that I don’t want to do it alone the first time.
Thing is, I think drugs work differently for me when compared to what I’ve discussed with partakers so far - weed acts more like coke, coke acts more like weed, and the one time I tried MDMA, I ended up creating a 2000-track playlist in 6 hours, while the rest of the group was awkwardly getting naked around me (that was… very weird, to say the least…). Heck, even anaesthetics seem to go through me faster than the norm… Not knowing what to expect from the interaction between my brain chemistry and LSD, I’d think it best to have a “sherpa” the first time around, just in case…
Gotta find a friend group for that, though…
Thank you so much for your recommendations and your thoughts, I, too, hope you’ll manage to reach that place! May we meet again with more fulfilment in our hearts!
Late edit: as for getting a cat, I’ve had about 11 during my lifetime and I love them to death, but dogs are my ‘siblings’ in terms of approaching life… Either way, cat or dog, I still want to fix myself a bit more before I’ll feel comfortable enough to have another living soul depend on me…
I think drugs work differently for me when compared to what I’ve discussed with partakers so far - weed acts more like coke, coke acts more like weed, and the one time I tried MDMA, I ended up creating a 2000-track playlist in 6 hours, while the rest of the group was awkwardly getting naked around me
This person has never done drugs.
Psilocybin is the bees knees, highly recommend. Not even in a “get chooched” kinda way either. Use a little to make a tea and just exist after drinking it.
Do something safe that requires concentration, like drawing, writing or playing an adventure video game (light on the action, no horror, really as little violence as possible). You could also straight up do nothing but exercise mindfulness with a long meditation.
If you’re worried about the legality or safety of acquiring it, use a prepaid credit that you buy with cash and order it online.
Microdosing is also totally reasonable, bearing in mind that there are stains just like there are with weed. Some will do a body buzz, some will boost your energy and some will boost mindfulness.
I didn’t even think about shrooms, tbh! A tea sounds like it could be pretty mellow, indeed! Thank you for the suggestion! As for obtaining said shrooms… where there’s a will, there’s a way.
