Thoughts During Depression.
I have chronic depression. It isn’t as bad as it used to be, but it still hits me hard sometimes. Like today.
Emotionally, I feel like a piece of garbage – totally worthless and useless and repulsive. I feel like my life is pointless. Nothing seems important or interesting, and I feel like I mess up everything I touch. I don’t feel like I have deep connections in the world; nobody would care too much if I died. Yeah, sure, a few people would be appropriately shocked and say all the right mourning phrases for a few days, but that’s about it. Realistically, the only people who’d actually miss me, the only people who’d be aware of my absence on an acute level, are my children.
Even so, they’d probably get over it pretty quickly, being the resilient children they are. Besides, they already have a replacement mother in queue. So, what would be the big deal?
Logically, I do know that it’s ridiculous to think that my children wouldn’t really miss me that much – they would be very badly affected if I died. I am aware of that, and the only reason I actually I stay alive is because I don’t want to leave them in that emotional pain. But, that doesn’t change the reality that I feel, emotionally, that they’d be better off overall if I didn’t exist.
I don’t like being alive most of the time. It’s not pleasant because most of my thoughts are iterations of hateful words and actions I’ve received from other people. Essentially, I run the “Jane is a piece of shit” channel in my head 24 hours a day every day. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Sometimes I’m able to tune it out, but some days it’s just overwhelmingly loud.
I think the worst part is that most of the relationships in my life have ended with my being told I’m the reason everyone else is/was miserable. So, it’s not some kind of imaginary thing or “all in my head”. I’ve watched and listened to people I felt active care and love for tell me what they hate about me and write me off as worthless. If so many people can come to the same conclusion and take the same actions to remove me from their lives, there must be something to it.
On the other hand, I also know that every single one of those people is self-righteous and insecure, with access to very few critical thinking processes, and an identity revolving around excessive pride. Thus, I also know that hate they give me is a version of projection. Because, I am definitely aware that people see what they hate about themselves in me. Not because I actually exhibit the same issues or behaviors, but because I literally remind them (with things I say) of the things they hate in themselves.
But, this is not something I can change. I can’t help that I see people’s insecurities. I can’t help that I also see how to overcome the insecurities. I also can’t help that I unintentionally address these things. I don’t have a choice in the matter. Even when I spent most of my time trying to hide my unnatural level of discernment, I’d still slip up and tell people things they didn’t want to hear. They’d still find ways to get rid of me.
I know most of my life has been lived with an acceptance of this… I just expect people will grow to hate me, then remove me from their lives. There’s no alternative. Every time I’ve allowed myself to hope it will be different, it all just falls together in the exact same pattern. So, I stopped hoping. I still try to get to know people, love them and care for them, but I do this with full knowledge that it’s all going to be flushed down the drain as soon as I say something “too” real.
I feel like nobody is real, nobody wants to show who they really are. I know that people are pretending, I see through their farce. I don’t mean to, honestly, but it is very clear to me when people are lying to themselves. I just know, and I eventually end up saying something about it when I see they are hurting. Backfires big time, though, because their hurt turns into rage at me. There is nothing I can do to change this. Realistically, I should just stop caring about other people all together.
I want to withdraw from the world completely. I want to be alone and never have to see another human. Humans just bring pain. My pain is centered around rejection… My entire life has been a series of vehement rejections. If it were easy, I could just remove the humans to remove the pain. It doesn’t work like that, though, because my pain follows me around in the form of memory. I have too many painful memories, but no way to remove them. There is no way to find relief.
Well, there is one way.
That isn’t even an option, though, because I have to stay alive to prevent other people from living with painful memories.
And so, this is my life: Intentionally existing in pain because I don’t have a choice. I made choices in my past, and those choices affect every day of my current and future lives. I do know that I’m the one who should suffer the consequences, not the people I’ve brought into existence in well-meaning but misguided attempts at happiness.
It’s pathetic that all attempts at happiness I’ve ever made have just ended in even worse misery and woe. I’m certain at this point I was just born to live in endless emotional suffering.
I’ve been thinking about religion lately, and how I just have no interest in worshiping “a higher being”. I truly feel indifferent about it.
Yesterday, though, I remembered that I used to pray. I used to genuinely believe that “god has a plan” and “god is watching over me” and “god loves me” and “trials are just tests of faith”…
And I remembered the exact moment I stopped believing those things, at age 17. Because, I’d finally been through too many painful things. And, in the middle of another “trial”, I tried praying. I was already weeping and I started praying… and I just felt like any god thought it was all a joke – that my life was nothing but a joke to him/her. There was nobody leading my life, there was nobody watching over me, definitely nobody protecting me… there was just nothing. I realized I was on my own – all that praying and worshiping and glorifying, believing everything would turn out for the better… for what? “Haha, you idiot, pray all you want, I’m still going to let you be hurt as much as possible.”
It’s bleak, to feel incapable of hope.
I’ve always felt alone and isolated around humans. But, this is another level of pain – I am alone and isolated in the universe.
I’m finally able to turn things around and pull myself out of that utter desolation to some degree… but that infinite well of pain and despair is always there.
The bright side is that I’m able to find my way out of it much more quickly today than even a year ago. I know it will always be there, though, waiting for me to slip and then fall headlong into the darkness of deep depression.
I’ll slip, I know it. I’m slipping today, to be sure. But, that doesn’t mean I’ll fall.
Here’s to not falling today.