“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I haven’t felt comfortable in my own skin for practically my entire life. And I’m comfortable with that fact. I feel that if I were to wake up tomorrow and suddenly feel nothing negative that I would end it all immediately. That hideously foreign feeling of finally being content would soak into my skull and be the final straw… because that would mean I had finally lost the last part of me that was me. My familiar and terrible friend would have finally abandoned me.
I think back to the last time I may have felt happy, but so many times I realize that I, in fact, had been acting. For my own benefit or for others? Oftentimes both. I may have mastered fooling others but I can never fool myself. The constant question of why always comes back to sink its fangs into me. Why act when I know myself better? Why distance myself from the only thing I know for a fact about myself… that I am truly unhappy?
Funny that losing that last part and becoming okay would be my final straw… when I have done so much and made so many choices all because I wholeheartedly believed that I wouldn’t be here much longer. Yet still have held on. To what? For who?
I have ended precious friendships. Less people to disappoint when I’m not here anymore. Racked up thousands in debt and maxed out credit cards. Why worry about money when I won’t be here to ever pay it off anyway? Don’t ever date anyone. What’s the point in being in a relationship when both the concept of emotional and physical intimacy is as foreign to you as happiness? Gave up physical and emotional things that meant a lot. Who cares if I’m not going to be here to appreciate these things?
Selfish? Foolish? Naïve? Cowardly? Illogical? Probably.
But this is the war within my mind because now I’m in this position where I’ve made it this far. Reached adulthood. Graduated college years ago. Far surpassed my “deadline”… so now what? With no current hope to solve these immediate problems… I am now worse off. (Hope… that word is the most painful to hear.)
Those friends are long gone. Had to leave a job with coworkers I actually respected. Had to move halfway across the country to a place where there’s barely anyone… much less anyone of my age or mindset. I’m now unemployed with hundreds of unanswered job applications going out every month. No money to pay off these increasing debts. Have to live with family in a toxic home because I can’t escape due to all of this. All because of myself. My own battle within my head that no one else can see.
And when I have mentioned it to others I always sabotage any attempts at getting help by downplaying it with jokes or completely shutting everyone out. I’m so annoyed at myself it makes me sick. But it’s a response I can never seem to turn off no matter how many attempts I’ve made.
I am comfortable with being uncomfortable within myself. But now I’m drowning because for the first time in well over a decade I had a thought that maybe I want to keep going after all. But now I’m even more isolated and fucked than ever before.
If life is nothing more than something being loaned by the universe then why the hell is it so hard to exist within myself? I could have taken my life and ended this like I had planned since a worryingly young age, but I have failed multiple times. Can’t even do that right.
So now what? Lose myself in financial help books and hours-long advice session videos that leave me more overwhelmed than before? Seek therapy even though seeing a therapist as a child is one of my biggest sources of trauma? Attempt to reconnect to people when I can rarely respond within the same month to a simple text message anymore?
No matter what “logical” solution I come up with my brain replaces it with about twenty reasons why that would only make it worse. So I rot away in my room. All the “promise” I was once said to have is hidden away. But I wake up each day. And for what? For that damn brief moment of hope? I’ve often heard that hope is stronger than fear… and perhaps that is true in some instances. But for me hope is the reason for me becoming even worse mentally than perhaps ever before. It has fueled my fear. Because it plagues me with all the things I cannot have.
A warm place to call my own. To have a simple job that pays the bills. To have someone by my side that my brain doesn’t feel like I have to act around. To finally have a permanent smile… a genuine one.
To just be. Even if I had all that and still felt uncomfortable with myself at times, being able to just be would be enough.
But that’s okay. I’ll just learn how to breathe underwater and hope that maybe one day a tide will just take me away to a perfect nothing where none of this worrying, pain, and emptiness means anything at all.
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