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.
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.
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.)