kane
Student
- Jun 26, 2020
- 171
I think I'm still a long way from being ready to end it, but continuing on in this way long term seems untenable. I have no life, no friends, no connections. no job, and fairly crippling levels of social anxiety. I'm 32 (male). and I've essentially spent the last 15 years of my life isolating myself and avoiding people. Obviously that was never a smart choice, but I just couldn't take the way being around people makes me feel, and it never seemed to get better with exposure, no matter what I tried. Sooner or later I always felt the need to retreat from my engagement with the world, and cut ties. I probably fit the diagnosis for Avoidant Personality Disorder. I've been down most of the standard treatment routes and nothing really made a difference. I also have growing health issues, which leave me physically uncomfortable much of the time.
I can't claim to be a victim of this world. To be honest, I'm a bad person. Not a psychopath, but I've done things most would consider unforgivable. I've curbed that side of myself to some extent, but I can't see it ever really going away. Deep down I don't want it to, or at least not enough to change it. But a large part of me feels like I should kill myself purely from the shame of it. It's like I've irreversibly contaminated myself, and nothing can really make it right. I could cure cancer, and I would still just be the villain in someone else's story.
Despite all that, I'm still very much attached to the idea of a life. Even though I haven't really been alive all these years. I want to be free again - to be able to enjoy being around others without constant gnawing fear. I want connection, relationships, meaning, purpose, beauty. But looked at rationally, I see no real hope of that. This weight always hangs over me, holding me back.
I can't continue on like this indefinitely. I've been living frugally on money left to me by dying relatives (the only job I ever held was minimum wage), and it will run out. So I will have to make a choice, sooner or later. Will I try to find a way to function in this world, with all the pain that will bring me. Or will I finally put it all to an end.
I'm not sure I have it in me to take my own life. But I also can't face the alternative. Even if I somehow found a way to make a living and manage the constant anxiety, the idea of living out a normal lifespan like this, alone. cut off from everyone not just socially, but morally - it seems unbearable. How could I go on all those years, longing after dreams of a life I never had. It's only going to hurt more and more as the years go by.
But even if I could overcome my instinctive fear of death, my delusional attachments to life, my fears of hell etc, I'm still unsure it would be for the best. The thought of what it would do to my poor parents, who've invested so much in trying to help their fuckup of a son. It just seems unacceptable - to make them deal with that grief. I think their pain would honestly be worse than mine is now. But the alternative would mean sucking up my own suffering and somehow continuing with the anxiety and despair, at least until they're dead.
I really don't have a clue what I'm doing. I have this growing internal conviction that going on is pointless. that it's only going to get worse from here. But also this stubborn resistance to the realities that suicide would entail. I need to choose, one way or the other, and commit, rather than constantly going back and forth in my mind like I have been.
I can't claim to be a victim of this world. To be honest, I'm a bad person. Not a psychopath, but I've done things most would consider unforgivable. I've curbed that side of myself to some extent, but I can't see it ever really going away. Deep down I don't want it to, or at least not enough to change it. But a large part of me feels like I should kill myself purely from the shame of it. It's like I've irreversibly contaminated myself, and nothing can really make it right. I could cure cancer, and I would still just be the villain in someone else's story.
Despite all that, I'm still very much attached to the idea of a life. Even though I haven't really been alive all these years. I want to be free again - to be able to enjoy being around others without constant gnawing fear. I want connection, relationships, meaning, purpose, beauty. But looked at rationally, I see no real hope of that. This weight always hangs over me, holding me back.
I can't continue on like this indefinitely. I've been living frugally on money left to me by dying relatives (the only job I ever held was minimum wage), and it will run out. So I will have to make a choice, sooner or later. Will I try to find a way to function in this world, with all the pain that will bring me. Or will I finally put it all to an end.
I'm not sure I have it in me to take my own life. But I also can't face the alternative. Even if I somehow found a way to make a living and manage the constant anxiety, the idea of living out a normal lifespan like this, alone. cut off from everyone not just socially, but morally - it seems unbearable. How could I go on all those years, longing after dreams of a life I never had. It's only going to hurt more and more as the years go by.
But even if I could overcome my instinctive fear of death, my delusional attachments to life, my fears of hell etc, I'm still unsure it would be for the best. The thought of what it would do to my poor parents, who've invested so much in trying to help their fuckup of a son. It just seems unacceptable - to make them deal with that grief. I think their pain would honestly be worse than mine is now. But the alternative would mean sucking up my own suffering and somehow continuing with the anxiety and despair, at least until they're dead.
I really don't have a clue what I'm doing. I have this growing internal conviction that going on is pointless. that it's only going to get worse from here. But also this stubborn resistance to the realities that suicide would entail. I need to choose, one way or the other, and commit, rather than constantly going back and forth in my mind like I have been.
