Eudaimonic
I want to fade away.
- Aug 11, 2023
- 329
I don't know if I can make my life livable. Maybe I can, or maybe I can't. Is it worth trying? For me, no. For others, maybe. It's never going to be good; I'm never going to be happy. I know that much. My actions, or rather inaction, ensured that. I don't want to live anyway; I will always be haunted by what could have been.
I feel like a failure and a bad person for wanting out of this miserable existence, though I recognize that is irrational. I don't want to hurt my family, especially my younger sibling. Further, some beings suffer far more than me, and I could stay alive to help them even if my life still sucked and I'd be better off dead. I feel like I have to keep going even though I don't have it in me.
I am probably too much of a coward. I can't face the unknown. The known terrifies me already. I worry ceaselessly about what happens after death. There's one worry in particular that plays in my head like a broken record. It's irrational, but that doesn't matter. I latch onto the possibility that somehow, against all odds, it's right. I have to rationalize it away frequently. I wish I was more of a materialist and believed wholeheartedly in nonexistence like many on this site seem to. Instead, I view death as a gamble. It's a gamble with the universe, with unknowable odds. This is not a Pascalian argument. It's simply a fact. There is no proof of nonexistence just as there is no proof of an afterlife (though, there is some evidence for postmortem survival of some sort and, curiously, no such evidence for nonexistence, only the physicalist assertion that consciousness ends at death because it's an emergent property of the brain). So, why hasten something that might turn out to not relieve my suffering? Shouldn't it be my last resort after trying and failing to carve out a decent life for myself in this hellscape?
What if I attempt, but fail, and end up with a severe injury, hypoxic brain damage, or even paralysis? All of those are worst-case scenarios, sure, but they are not impossible or even that improbable if I don't take the right precautions or simply screw up my attempt, which I fear could happen given how incompetent I can be sometimes.
I just want the uncertainty to end.
I feel like a failure and a bad person for wanting out of this miserable existence, though I recognize that is irrational. I don't want to hurt my family, especially my younger sibling. Further, some beings suffer far more than me, and I could stay alive to help them even if my life still sucked and I'd be better off dead. I feel like I have to keep going even though I don't have it in me.
I am probably too much of a coward. I can't face the unknown. The known terrifies me already. I worry ceaselessly about what happens after death. There's one worry in particular that plays in my head like a broken record. It's irrational, but that doesn't matter. I latch onto the possibility that somehow, against all odds, it's right. I have to rationalize it away frequently. I wish I was more of a materialist and believed wholeheartedly in nonexistence like many on this site seem to. Instead, I view death as a gamble. It's a gamble with the universe, with unknowable odds. This is not a Pascalian argument. It's simply a fact. There is no proof of nonexistence just as there is no proof of an afterlife (though, there is some evidence for postmortem survival of some sort and, curiously, no such evidence for nonexistence, only the physicalist assertion that consciousness ends at death because it's an emergent property of the brain). So, why hasten something that might turn out to not relieve my suffering? Shouldn't it be my last resort after trying and failing to carve out a decent life for myself in this hellscape?
What if I attempt, but fail, and end up with a severe injury, hypoxic brain damage, or even paralysis? All of those are worst-case scenarios, sure, but they are not impossible or even that improbable if I don't take the right precautions or simply screw up my attempt, which I fear could happen given how incompetent I can be sometimes.
I just want the uncertainty to end.
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