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.
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.
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.
I wish you luck! If you just want to make some gamer friends who often pontificate on existential nonsense like this, you’re welcome to hop on our Discord server for company, just say the word.
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
https://www.mctb.org/
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.