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Birthday Cheer!! :D

7 years ago1,248 words

It's my birthday today. I was going to give myself the gift of sweet release from this miserable existence... but I'll probably just rant about that here instead. Yay!!

I'm 30 today. This feels like a landmark age, in a bad way. Before, I felt old - considering the average age of people in my environment and all the typical milestones I've failed to reach - but I could at least console myself with the thought that I was still a "twenty-something" and therefore still could potentially be called young by a lot of people. I felt that students here at university, just entering their own twenties, might, upon learning how old I actually was, be a bit put off by the difference, but they'd still see me as roughly their kind of age if at least the first digit was the same. Seems like that's over now, though, and being 30 creates a bigger psychological gulf between me and them. Not that I really talk to most students anyway. Or people in general.

I always reflect on the state and progress of my life on my birthdays, and this landmark one feels like I should do that even more than usual. Usually I just feel depressed. Today's no exception. The last two years, I spent much of my birthday with my ex-friend, which was nice. Now I'm alone, with thoughts of that and other ruined relationships oozing poisonously through my mind, as they do all day every day.

I was planning to kill myself today. It's probably eye-rollingly tiresome at this point, how I keep saying I'll off myself but then never actually follow through (one of many projects I say I'll do but then just don't have the energy to complete, I suppose!!), but I'm mentioning it because I've been thinking for years that 30 would be my limit. Specifically, I thought "if I haven't had sex again by the time I'm 30, I'll just END IT ALL!!!" Because that's not warped priorities at all, of course. It's a profoundly sad thought to have, on many levels - unlike all the other uplifting and cheery stuff I always post on this blog - but it is one I took very seriously. It's not that sex in itself is so valuable I'd kill myself over it - though it is a gnawing urge that torments me all the time - but rather a failure to reach that level of closeness with another person would reflect an inability to achieve intimacy, to be likeable enough to be loved, wanted... Confirmation that I'm wrong for human life. A genetic dead end. Connection to others is what moors us in this world, and I'm lacking that. It's hard to hold onto life without anything - anyone - to, well, hold onto.

Instead, I just feel like the sort of toxic person who others would gain strength from severing from their lives. I'm very aware of my many failings, and I'm constantly consumed by shame and guilt because of them. I wish there was some way to be a better person who added value to others' lives rather than pain, but any interactions I have are fraught with overwhelming insecurities and anxiety born of the position that I'm already in. It's like I'm stuck in a pit, and nobody would want to help me out because I'm so covered in mud and filth down here. Or something. Or maybe that's just the self-sustaining dismal narrative that my mind has latched onto? Belief and reality are so intertwined, and the way we assume others see ourselves becomes the truth. And yet knowing that doesn't mean that I can magically feel like I'm better with people than I evidently am. That's not really how belief works. It'd be like deciding to truly believe there's a pink elephant in the middle of the room. Plus I feel I deserve to suffer, so there's that.

Maybe Earth is a prison, and I'm trapped here for some cosmic crimes I committed in an existence blocked from my memory? Perhaps suicide would be another such sin, trying to break out of the prison before my sentence is up, and it'd only lead to me being back here again, or somewhere worse. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that my own mind is a prison. There's plenty in the world that others seem to enjoy, but the way my mind works makes it all so inaccessible to me. I wonder if there's something more to this than mere metaphor, whether my life really is playing out the way it is for transcendent, and to some extent predetermined reasons? I've been wanting to write a post about that for a while, but I've not found the time or energy. Same for several other posts I've been wanting to write.

It's not all bad. I've achieved some things. I made games that brought some pleasure to people in the past, websites that brought people together to forge lasting friendships. And yet when I look back on those things, it's negatively due to depressive biases... The games I made were crude, and it's been forever since the last one. The websites were full of ridiculous rules which make me cringe when I remember them.

I don't know what to do with my future. University will end soon, and then what? I don't know whether to do a Master's degree or not. I'm not exactly enjoying academic psychology. I like the concepts, but I'm becoming increasingly incredulous about the experimental methods, and the grey way you have to write up articles (which nobody will ever even read) seems to deliberately exclude much of what I feel is wonderful about the world. I spend most of my time making things, still - even if they're increasingly personal and private - and I'd want to express myself through some medium or another... but then I fear the scarring feedback, and dread climbing far enough up a mountain for anyone to see what I've made. I don't want to get some games-related job where I'm surrounded by men, or some mundane job where I'll feel stifled. But you have to accept the world's limitations, the suffocating mediocrity and the death of dreams, if you want to continue to live in it. It's why I don't want to continue to live in it. The gamble of death seems better to me than nine-til-five drudgery of cog-grinding in the fatcats' pocket-bloating machine. Or some better metaphor than that. I don't know! I'm just way too naive, and it's overwhelming.

Anyway. I don't know what to do because I don't know what to do. That is, I have no clear goal to aim for at this point. Perhaps it would be nice to just spend at least a year just renting some little place alone, spending my days meditating and creating things, trying to learn about the universe introspectively and expressing what I find. Maybe that's way too self-indulgent. Deluded. But it's all that seems to appeal to me at this point. I'd worry I'd go mad from the isolation, but haven't I already?

Of course, I still have a brain tumour, and might be told I need devastating brain surgery fairly soon... so that's something to look forward to. Oh yippee.

I probably won't kill myself today, just because I lack the energy and the courage. But I'm certainly not living, and that's not a simple thing to just 'fix'.