I’m 24 and dealing with high blood pressure. I’ve seen five doctors, had countless tests, and they all say the same thing: “Take these pills and try to reduce pressure in your life.” It’s as though my blood pressure and heart rate have minds of their own, fluctuating freely without any reason.

For the past six months, I’ve felt like I’m on borrowed time. Every morning, I gulp down my pills, hoping I won’t have a stroke or end up disabled. Once, I dared to think I was better and skipped my meds for two days. Unfortunately, on day three, my blood pressure shot up over 150, bringing me crashing back to reality.

I’m not an nihilist, I’m the opposite of that. But facing my own mortality every second of life has hit me hard. Maybe I’m just like a “24 years old kid” tasting life’s bitterness for the first time. I hate to compare myself with others, but seeing friends partying, doing drugs, and sipping coffee just makes me hate this fate of mine even more.

I’m an artist, I studied music and wrote lots of songs (only keep them for myself, not trying to be a celebrity or anything like that…), and music has always been my escape. Lately, though, my songs have been pretty dark.

I’m sharing my story not for sympathy, but to connect with anyone else who’s going through a same journey in their life. If you’ve been there and made it out, please tell me how you did it. Any advice, hobby, or habit would help! And if you’re still stuck in the trenches like me, just know you’re not alone.

P/S: This post has been improved by ChatGPT since I’m not confident in my English.

  • Maeve
    2•8 months ago

    The truth will always be that humans will find it more ideal to be unconditionally generous and interdependent onto each other, without the cue of any system of thinking, which will be especially true as the complexity of existence increases and our intelligence grows which will cause more mental disorder to arise. I might have anhedonia, the medical community’s name for what comes off to them as a lack of motivational feelings towards the world, but I still can feel when the world lacks what it suffers without.

    Social expectations, imposed on us by governments, mostly, are designed to break us down. So they label anyone who sees past it, with it without happiness, as having a mental disorder. I neither want nor need an antidepressant to “fix” me. In fact, I’ve managed to become generally ok and usually happy. What I want is for everyone to work together to fix this ghastly “system” designed to make us crazy. Thoreau caught on too, and they used to make Walden required reading, but that didn’t serve the system. Do they still teach it, beyond university liberal arts?

    • Call me Lenny/LeniEnglish
      2•8 months ago

      Yes, or it at least is in my school. It’s too easy to see one’s thoughts in books (Of Mice and Men comes to mind here too, being on the opposite end of the scale, me being in the middle), so any underlying messages perceived by others went over my head, but if everyone’s word is went by, to put it briefly, Thoreau could use a sense of sonder.

      • Maeve
        2•8 months ago

        So he should be inauthentic about inauthenticity? Lol.