State of Sanity Address

Well, I'm 25 years old. And I guess it's been a while since I made one of these existential posts, so it's time to get my thoughts in a row and out of my head.

I've been recently a lot more forthcoming with people who are important to me about my suicidal thoughts. The hope I had was that this would produce a more secure safety net for me and I could get a sense that I could turn to more people. Unfortunately, this is not the case- not for lack of effort on the part of loved ones, mind you, but just because I will always feel like I'm a burden and that I'm like a broken toy that keeps going back to try to get fixed. People are sick of it.

It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that the thoughts are getting worse and increasing in frequency. On a larger scale, for the first time, I have now thought that I may not see my 26th birthday.

My quality of life is slipping, even as I go out of my way to try to improve it. Trying to eat healthier bit by bit, exercising more, putting myself out there more socially, talking to people more about my depression. These things are not making me feel better, and it occurs to me that if such large steps are ineffective, I don't want to sit here, floundering about, a fish out of water, struggling to breathe for much longer. It is painful. It is sad. I am not happy. These are the themes that re-emerge in my life.

It's ridiculous, in part because I know that the support structure is there and is willing, but I just can't bring myself to bother them more than I already do. One of my longest and dearest friends spoke with me about it recently, and I confided in her that I don't think I could ever actually commit to anything until I wrote. Specifically, until I wrote a letter to every person who is important to me for whom I have things left to say. That was my stated barrier and restraint.

As of writing this, I still have not started writing those letters, and I do not want to, but I also am unsure exactly how much longer I can put this off.

In another instance, my brother with whom I was semi-estranged for years (someone with whom I had had approximately 2 serious conversations in the past) reached out to me to ask me if I was okay. For some reason, that made me bawl. I'm not sure if it was because I felt like someone cared, or if it was because of how obvious it must be that I'm unhappy. And if it's that obvious, what must people think of me as they watch me drift from day to day. Are they just waiting for the day? Are they expecting it? How many of them wouldn't miss me? How many would be happier with me gone? Are they taking bets? Surely, I'm over-estimating how much anyone else is invested in noticing me at all.

Whenever someone takes their own life, you always hear something about how no one saw it coming. No one had any idea the depths of their despair and hopelessness. But what if they did? What if there's just nothing that can be done? Our society is so narrowly focused that there's little to be done for the people who don't travel in the "right" direction. My boss actually told me last week that it was a privilege to work in this law firm; that we were helping people whether they realized it or not. On the one hand, I don't disagree. We get injured people money from insurance companies so that they can go on to resume their lives as best as they can. But, in another very real sense, we're a band-aid covering a wound too big for us. And that wound is one of many. These are the systemic flaws in the world that are nothing short of truly disheartening. So many people are suffering, and there's so little being done about it. The people that do try can spend their entire lives doing so very little for so few. The system is not designed so that people are happy; it's designed so that people make money. In particular, an unbelievably small number of people are the ones making money.

The rest of us are just barely keeping ourselves alive, draining our energy and our passion for those few- just so that we can get up and do it again the next day.
I'm not really interested in being a part of that process, and I've already put up with it for longer than I was comfortable with.

So, what's the state of my sanity? You're already getting a pretty good picture, but here I sit on my birthday, crying my eyes out trying to figure out if I'm going to be alive this time next year.

I really don't want to start writing those letters. It'll just hurt more. I don't want to hurt more. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up.