Thank you, everyone. I'm sorry for causing a bit of a scene, but it was probably for the best. Some ventilation. I'm very thankful for the responses.
You might have Depression or something that causes Depression resembling symptoms. Like, this may be a sincere medical condition. Not a doctor, but I recommend seeing one if possible.
Yes. I believe so. I think it could be useful to get in touch with a professional, and see if it could be handled more directly.
*hugs*
Is there somebody you could talk to about this? A therapist, a friend? Random internetizens?
I don't know. Not quite, for faults of my own. The people I do have around me have their own things to soldier on with, and it seems... Petty, to ask them to add me and mine on top of it. I will have to get in touch with a more specialised therapist, it's a remarkably reassuring feeling, knowing that it's their professional obligation. It feels much less like shirking or being a liability, knowing that they are paid for the trouble.
So hey, Depression has this way of short-circuiting your thinking, particularly about your self-worth, about meaning, about living, etc. It can make you want to blame yourself for all your shortcomings, count all your blessings as undeserved and a reason for self-loathing, and make you ignore or undermine everything you've done well. It can make it hard to see the value in things. Sometimes, it can even make you want to harm or invite suffering on yourself, as a way to correct some cosmic Karmic imbalance... as though your suffering is some payment that should be enacted for some imagined slight against the universe, just by virtue of being yourself.
Here's a thought experiment; would you hold someone else accountable in this same way, if they were in a similar place? Are you upset when other people important to you have the sorts of good things that you have right now? What about relative strangers... say if they were really ineffective people, worse than the way you see yourself right now... would you be upset that they have these things either? If not, why not try to extend the kindness, forgiveness, and generosity you show other people to yourself?
Depression sucks, but it's a temporary state. Once you're feeling better, if you're still bummed about some things in your life that you want to change, brainstorm some ways to make it better. For now, focus on putting one foot in front of the other. It'll get better. And you can make it better too, if you keep going.
That's true. I've been at this before. It's why it hurts, that I keep scuttling myself like this, because the winter dark is rolling in, because this or that happened or because it was tuesday. It's temporary, but a car that falls apart on random isn't a very useful car, on the whole.
I'll keep the advice in mind, it'd probably a good idea to take stock like that. Thank you.
Oy. You get your shot in life 'cuz nobody's going to have the same perspective or world experience that you do. Your measure of good, bad, comfort, discomfort are weighed only by you first, you're no less entitled to your own existence for someone else's suffering. Frankly, there's no 'slot in life' at all- the existence of the person that would be you is not owed to anyone, more or less fortunate- nobody but you. It's yours. Your comfortable existence is not counterbalancing someone else's less enjoyable one. You may live well because that existence is the fulfillment of so many people before you- every person doing what they do to make the world a little better for those that follow them.
Your feelings may not be quantifiable, but they do have gravity. Maybe they're not rational, maybe they're the product of a little suffering compounded on a little frustration compounded by a lot of existential disenchantment compounded by a little chemical imbalance in the brain. Probably doesn't make it any easier to deal with, and that's fine. We all end up suffering, and sometimes asking why and finding an answer why isn't enough to sate it. Again, your suffering is no less real, holds no less gravity, in comparison to yon parched child. You compare yourself like that, you end up devaluing yourself and your experience- I've been there. Sure, maybe it sounds a little selfish, but a little selfishness isn't a bad thing. You gotta take care of number one first so that you can fill whatever aspiration you think the person in your 'place of existence' should fulfill.
It sounds to me like you're grasping for a sense of purpose- it's something that doesn't come to people right away. It's something that some people have to go out and find. Maybe finding the purpose is your purpose, at least for now. There's schools of thought that there is no purpose and you may live freely knowing it. There's the idea that we have purpose through our improbable existence and that the chance to laugh in the face of both eternity and probability is purpose enough. Some believe in living well and having experiences, others walk a path for a higher purpose. Funny thing is, you get to choose, choose to live for the choice to live.
And some days you just want to step in front of a bus.
Hang in there, guy.
Thank you. I'll have to try and keep it in mind. It's only that I think of my life, and I know I have very little, comparatively, to complain about. And there is this very solid impression that a lot of people, better equipped and able, would love my life and, on the whole, do a better job with it. It's just so difficult to not feel... Deeply, deeply ashamed of it, in-between the great stretches where there is no feeling at all.
One of these days, it is time to choose. I just worry if it's a choice that I will be able to live up to.
This is rather the mammoth post, but it'd be incredibly impolite of me not to say thanks for listening.