Right now, I am searching for a reason to live. I am constantly lonely and bored. I constantly struggle with apathy. Occasionally I feel a need to try to improve myself, but am unable to maintain motivation for such goals beyond a few hours. Work feels unrewarding. All of my efforts feel pointless. I feel worthless, ugly, stupid, and unlovable.
What do I want? The reality is that all I really want is to be left alone. I want to go to bed and stay there. I want to dream and never wake up.
The selfish, romantic dreamer in me hopes that, while lying and waiting for death, someone will come and rescue me. Someone who loves me truly, cares for me endlessly, and has boundless patience. Someone who will guide me and hold my hand through every difficulty.
I miss my angel, whether she ever really existed or not. The few times she’s come to me in my dreams and hallucinations were the only times I felt truly cared for and loved.
I want to be happy, but I don’t know what, if anything, could make me happy. Everything I have tried only brought me temporary joy and more struggles. I’d inevitably become overwhelmed with my struggles, and then I’d become even more depressed than when I started. This has been an ongoing pattern since I was a child.
I am now in a place of complete apathy. I have an intense reluctance to do much of anything. Doing things may lead to hope, and hope will only lead to further disappointment. I feel like I can’t handle anymore disappointments.
The only reason I even bother trying to work and maintain my job is to support my two housemates. Not that I contribute much, but at least I can ease the burdens I place on them. Plus I fear that if I allowed myself to die then it would cause them great distress. So I continue getting up in the morning for them. I fear that one day even my concern for them will no longer be enough.
Something that really helped me when I was feeling really apathetic - you don’t have to be hopeful about what the future holds, if you can at least be curious. You have all the time in the world to end your life if that’s what you decide to do. Are you at all curious that something in your life might change if you live another month? Could you be curious if anything in your life might change if you live another year? Was there ever anything good that happened in your life, and would you have missed that if you had ended your life earlier? Are you curious if that might be true about something that could happen to you in the future?
Don’t worry about having a powerful hope for being happy in the future. Hope is hard to come by and harder to maintain. Can you just be curious? Is it possible I will miss something interesting in my life if I stop living? If so, why not stick around for another month or two to see if something interesting happens that you would have missed.
When I was at my lowest, I struggled to have hope that my life could get better. But I enjoy learning and experiencing new things, and I could cultivate curiosity about whether anything in my life would be worth experiencing in the future, even if I couldn’t cultivate hope.
Another way to think about it is what I call life Bushido. Bushido is a Buddhist/samurai philosophy premised on the idea that you should do everything in life as if you will already lose or die. If you are going into a swordfight and you assume you will lose and die, then you have nothing to fear because you already know you will die. So you can let go of your hold-ups and just give it your best shot. If you fail, then you’re no worse off than when you started.
If you can reliably predict that you’re never going to find happiness or love or fulfillment, then you lose nothing by trying to get these things and failing. If you’re already doomed to not find happiness, then trying and failing will have the same end result, so why not give it a shot? If you lose, you’ll be right back where you started. If you have no reason to live, you have nothing to lose in trying. Make an online dating profile. Message people you might be interested in. If you go on 100 terrible dates and get rejected 100 times, you’ll be right back where you started and you will have lost nothing. But you will have gained some interesting experiences, and you will have gained some insight into your life.
I feel for you and I’m sorry this pattern is a part of your life.
This may be terrible advice, but you have asked the Internet, so… In addition to getting professional help including possibly medication, which I’m sure you have considered, maybe lean into the “dreams”. If they give you pleasure without the angst of hope, let them. Keep them about you as you go through your day and let them give meaning to your actions. When you get your coffee, imagine getting one for your angel, too. When you’re at work, talking with others, imagine you will come home and tell her about it, or imagine she is next to you. You may seen slightly spacier to other people, but otherwise there’s no outward effect. Try it as an experiment and see if it changes how you behave or how you feel about real experiences. If nothing else, I find it helps me stay open to new things and friendlier even when I feel like curling up in a cave. It makes the transition to a happier state faster and more frequent so that the long sadness is broken up and doesn’t seen so permanent or so personal.
I have definitely felt something similar at various times throughout life, and feel really lucky that it hasn’t impacted me more. But when it’s on you sometimes no amount of reasoning can shake it off. You need to experience something different and the easiest way to do that is simply to imagine it. I think we have this power for a reason.
Anyway, your mileage may vary and I am not an expert at anything. But you are not alone.
I appreciate your kind words and thoughtful reply. I’m sorry that you can relate.
I’ve been seeing a number of different therapists and psychiatrists over many years. I’ve been on several different medications. I can’t say they haven’t helped, but I never feel “better.”
Regarding the “dreams,” unfortunately they’re mostly gone these days. I used to lay in bed and dissociate for hours when I was miserable and couldn’t sleep. After some progress with my most recent therapist I’ve found I’m no longer able to daydream in that way anymore. It’s probably a good sign for my mental health in the long term. However, it feels like I’m losing more and more ways to cope with my depression.
That said, when I was fully into these fantasies, and mixing the dissociation with THC, I’d go through very vivid dreams and hallucinations. I came to believe, for a while, that a guardian angel was with me much of the time. She’d comfort me, repeat the advice of my therapist, coax me away from self-destructive behavior. She’s the only “person” I’ve ever had any sort of intimate relationship with, and that was only in rare dreams.
Losing my dissociative episodes has led to me losing my angel. I can’t “summon” her in my mind anymore, along with my other fantasies. Again, these are probably positive changes in the long run. I just wish I didn’t feel so apathetic and lonely all the time now.
Hope it gets better for you friend. My advice is to try not to tie your identity self worth to your job. Allow yourself to be a normal human. Spend lots of time outside, meditate and deep breath. Praying is also very helpful for your mind. Therapy is good too. Go to a gym that has a sauna. Start with just the sauna if you have to. Then do weightlifting. Try to start cutting out things which mess with dopamine…drugs alcohol porn etc. The sauna and gym will help a lot.
You can do it!
P.s. doing stuff you don’t want to do is the start to kinda wanting to do stuff. There is a willpower part of your brain and it’s just like a muscle or needs exercise and practice. The. You will get better at doing uncomfortable things which leads to growth.
I appreciate your kindness and optimism. I wish it were as easy as “doing uncomfortable things.” I feel paralyzed by my anxieties most of the time. Going to a gym sounds terrifying, and simply being outside of my home or driving causes me great anxiety. Of course, I have to go outside to work almost everyday, so it’s not like I’m a stranger to experiencing these feelings.
I had to stop working with my most recent therapist after we both felt like we were stuck in a rut. I’ll be seeing a new therapist in a couple of weeks, so hopefully they’ll be able to offer me some more help. My current SSRI doesn’t seem to be helping much, either, so I’ll be looking into other medications.
I quit THC a month ago as it just wasn’t helping me feel better anymore. Plus it was cranking up my paranoia to concerning degrees. I’ve, thankfully, never liked alcohol so I don’t have to worry about cutting such a terrible addiction. Pornography used to be a concern, but my libido is practically nonexistent in the last couple of years.
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Then perhaps this life just isn’t for me? I’m tired of wandering aimlessly through the same routines, while being too weak to break from them.
I’ve been seeing therapists and been on SSRIs for more than a decade. They’ve helped, but I feel broken and unfixable.
It’s hard, but try to hold on to wanting things to get better, instead of wanting them to end. Either way, it stops the shittiness. Just one way is a lot better for you than the other. I know the response, “why bother? It’s not going to happen”. When shit’s like this, you have to make the conscious choice to want things to be better. This isn’t me saying “oh just choose to be better duh” like some fucking asshole, I mean things can’t improve unless you consciously want them to. Not just the automatic “of course I want to be better” response I would have to reading this comment, I mean when a nihilistic suicidal thought crosses your mind, you have to manually think to yourself “no, that’s not right, I want to feel better”. It’s fucking hard and it takes mental effort that you might not have sometimes but things can’t improve unless you consciously want them to.
Or at least, that’s what I’ve found to be true. You’re not me, but I hope this helps you.