Things we might discuss if the forum didn't dieFollow

Don't be looking at the past, only the future. I'll be 29 when I am finished with my bachelor's next year.

University is a pyramid scheme.

He's saying look into schools around Cairo.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2016 1:37am by Timelordwho

That's probably for the best, considering the weather.

Right now I am experiencing the darkest week of my life. Nothing I have experienced before can compare to this. Nothing has ever come close to this. Sleeping does not fix it. Waiting for 3 days hasn't fixed it. It is relentless and nagging like nothing I have ever felt. I actually called about counseling and they want $120 an hour which I obviously can't afford. I have been researching methods of hanging and have learned how easy it is, and it has never been so tempting. I have talked to my wife about it, and even my stepdaughter, and they both said "I don't know what to tell you." I can barely move, let alone motivate myself to get up and do something like that. My legs and arms feel like they are filled with ice water. If I had a gun it would be over. But I don't, so I'm going to go on continuing to exist this way for who knows how long, maybe until I actually start feeling good enough to stand up and make the necessary preparations. I am going to wait until Saturday to see if anything changes. I might be meeting my friend on that day to play MtG with her again, but I'm not sure. I hate to blame her for this. It isn't her fault that I feel the way I feel about her or myself. It isn't her fault that she isn't interested in me, or that I've never been more hysterically jealous about this other guy who came out of nowhere who she will soon be seeing exclusively. It isn't her fault that she barely knows me and that I'm stuck in a loveless marriage with someone I'm completely dependent on.

I thought I could enrich my life by going out and meeting people and making friends with people my age, but instead of being depressed on a level I am used to, I have gone out of my way to relive all of the things that have damaged me the most in previous years. I have done nothing but pretend to be a mature adult about it all. "Oh, I understand completely" I say. "Oh, that's nice. Good luck with him ^^" I say. --but on the inside, I am on fire. It is kind of like an extreme anger, but at who? Myself? I think more than anything it is raw frustration, just on a level that is almost beyond comprehension. It is a lifetime of being completely unable to achieve any sort of satisfaction, and instead landing in **** every time.

I am positive anyone who would read this would think how absurd my reaction to all of this is, because for them it might only be a mild annoyance. Surely I am overreacting. --but it isn't that simple. I am reliving all the times I have been wounded in the same way over and over, and I am realizing that this is how it has always been, and always will be. I realize how foolish it is to think I can just go to school and have a good job and pretend it will make any difference, and even if it did, it is too little, too late. She is the first person I have ever actually expressed my romantic interest in before, and even though I was rejected, it was actually kind of relief. She was not angry like I always expect people to react, but seemed happy. We can still be friends, or so she says, even though I'm really more of an acquaintance, she also said.

I feel like I have truly gone over the deep end. I think of all the crazed yandere characters I've seen on the internet, and feel like I can completely relate with them. I'm just a really sick person who has succeeded in pretending to be normal to everyone I know outside of the internet.

Anyway, I feel infinitely a lot better after writing all of this. Thank you so much whoever for skimming over this post and thinking whatever judgmental thoughts you are thinking.

Yeah. I think you're overreacting. You're correct that it's not that simple. But it should be. I think you're over thinking things, and placing far too much weight on things that aren't as important as you think.



Then stop doing that. You're dwelling on the negatives and making them loom large in your life. Find things you enjoy about life. Read a good book. Watch a fun TV show or film. Play a video game (or any sort of game). Don't think about anything negative while doing that. Then, think about the fun you had while doing that instead of the negative stuff. I get that you can't just ignore bad stuff and push it away, but you've gone far too far in the other direction IMO. You need to find a balance in life. And the first step to doing that is spend a lot more time thinking of positive things rather than negative.



Two things:

1. Try to stop defining yourself based on other people, and define yourself based on yourself. Figure out what things you want, what you enjoy, and what you like to do that doesn't revolve around anyone else. I don't mean substitute one person in your life for another (which is what it sounds like you're trying to do here). Figure out who you are (or even who you want to be), and strive to be that person.

2. I know that this kinda violates the first thing I just mentioned, but how are you married if this other woman is the first person you've ever expressed your romantic interest in? Is that actually true, or only true in a pining away "she's the only <insert whatever> for me. Ever!" manner? Because if the former, then I'm not sure I understand your relationship situation at all (and that may be a source of your problems, but I can't comment because I don't know what's going on there), but if the latter, then you really need to get your life balanced (as I mentioned above).



Honestly, as long as you think that, you'll find a way to make it be true. I know it's not that simple. I've known people who struggle with depression, and it always seems so easy to solve. But it's easy for someone who isn't suffering. Those who are just can't find a way out of it. But honestly, you have to anyway. And, as I mentioned above, the first step is to spend less time thinking about the things that bother you, and more time thinking about things you like and enjoy. Over time, the "sickness" will seem less large, and eventually may even go away entirely. The mind is funny that way.



Not judgmental at all (well, not in a bad way anyway). You're not the only person who's had bad things happen to them, and had bad thoughts that persist about those things. For years, on a date that was an anniversary of a particularly horrible event in my life, I would always be aware of it. I'd reflect on that horrible thing. I'd think about it in the days before, as the date loomed before me. I'd always be sad on that day, knew that reflecting made me sad, but did it anyway. Then one year, I realized that the date had passed. I'd "missed it". Hadn't thought about it at all. I actually thought this was a bad thing. I'd failed to remember this horrible thing, and despite it being horrible, it was a part of me, so by failing to remember, it was like a piece of me was lost or something.

Then I realized that I wasn't sad. And I moved on.

I am finding myself unable to enjoy those things anymore. That is exactly what I have been doing all my life. Reading books. Playing games. All while being shut away in my room and never interacting with anyone. I feel like the very act of doing these things any longer is a negative thing that I can't avoid.



It's funny, because she went on a long incoherent rant saying more or less the same thing after I told her I wanted to see her more often. I could not make her understand that everything I want to do involves at least one someone else. I simply can't stomach the idea of doing things alone anymore than I already have been.



I know it sounds terrible, but I have never had any romantic interest in my wife. There are several people in my life I have been particularly interested in, and I never had any kind of relationship with any of them. I met my wife after emailing something like 150 women on Myspace listed as "single" and she was the only one who responded favorably. I talked to her online for a little while before meeting her, and the rest is history. Before her, I had never been in any kind of relationship with anyone. If she had never replied, I would not have survived another week. I was desperate to be with anyone at all. She doesn't seem to mind our relationship. She is more focused on her career and doesn't seem to care about the kind of things I do. She has told me she is unhappy, though, but only because she feels she still isn't making enough money. I have told her I am unhappy because of how platonic our relationship is, and how I feel ignored by her and the kids. She says she won't talk about divorce because she and my mother are afraid I will kill myself, and I can't really say anything until I can be independent from her financially. Originally it was our plan for her to work and make all the money since she has a good paying job and I am more or less unemployable, and I am to stay home and tend to cooking and cleaning and that sort of thing.



The only things I can think of that I would actually like or enjoy is to be in the company my friend, doing anything at all. Someone else at this point would not even do. I know that sounds incredibly unreasonable. The way I feel around my friend is literally like a drug, and when I'm not at least texting her, I begin to feel worse and worse. It has been this way for me for several other people in my life. There is always someone at a place I work at, or went to school with who had the same effect, but they were always from a safe distance. I never before had the pleasure of talking to such a person or getting to spend time with them in any way. Sometimes I think it would be better if I had just never met her, and I could go back sleeping 17 hours a day or playing online games over Skype with fatherless jailbait.

Instead I now spend every moment I'm awake on Facebook trying to come up with valid excuse to talk to her, which is hard. She is easily the hardest person to talk to over text that I have ever known, but she makes up for it by being incredibly charming in person. I used to play League of Legends with her over Teamspeak but that doesn't seem like something she ever wants to do anymore. So I wait until Thursdays through Saturday and ask her if she is going to be at the comic store on either of those days and go when she goes. Anything else I do feels like wasting time.



I can usually move on, usually. I think the reason it's hard to now is because I feel like there is still hope, however unrealistic it may be, that what I want can happen. Honestly, I would be perfectly happy being just friends with my friend, so long as I got to see her and talk to her once in a while, just like before. But as it stands right now, I feel as though the next thing she is going to say to me is how she would rather not talk to me at all, or she will make up excuses to not join me at the comic store, or have an actual reason for not being there because she'll be somewhere else with that other guy establishing a relationship with him. Or not. I have no idea what will happen. I don't know anything at all for sure because she always says so little that I don't even have room for speculation. The uncertainty is the worst part I think. I feel I may have ruined things. She fell asleep while we were talking about that on Sunday night and said the next day that it was settled and there was no need to discuss it any further. I am going to ask her tomorrow morning if she has any plans for this week to go the comic store. How she responds will be the deciding factor in how I feel tomorrow.

I don't know how I can balance anything when there is nothing else at all I care about. I can't make myself enjoy doing something else. I can certainly force myself to do other things. I can try to forget and take my mind off of her, but it never lasts for more than a minute or two.

I am realizing now that the problem is: I didn't really enjoy anything to begin with. I don't enjoy things. If I read a book or play a game or do anything at all by myself, it is not for enjoyment, it is simply to keep busy.

I feel like I say this a lot, but I compare myself to the Trix Rabbit. He spends all his life obsessing over and chasing after one thing he can never, ever have, just to be told it's not for him-- whereas they will then throw him a ****** sack of carrots. I just cannot force myself to eat any more ****** carrots, not when I see everyone else around me enjoying Trix cereal that I just for some ******* reason cannot have. The frustration I feel is purely maddening. The fact that I put so much effort into one thing and fail over and over no matter what I do. It is this that fuels my desire to die the most. All that I want and have ever wanted is for someone to love. But that is not. for. me.

Edited, Oct 29th 2016 5:30pm by Kuwoobie

My friend got on to me last night for liking her statuses on Facebook too much. She then went on to tell me about how uncomfortable I make her and that I should not go to the comic store anymore. Then she blocked and unfriended me. This is really what I have been dreading all week, but now that it's happened, I don't feel upset like I thought I would. I don't feel anything at all. It's like being an inanimate object.

So I have decided that I won't be going there anymore. I won't play Pokemon Go anymore or try to talk to anyone or bother anyone anymore. I would like to stop eating, and breathing, and just being me, but I no longer feel the urge to hurt myself, either. I am realizing just how much I hate myself. It's hard for people like her to understand because they don't have to walk around everywhere as someone everyone hates. It's like being stuck with a shitty, useless character and being forced to play a game I hate.

Before she talked to me last night, I was applying for all kinds of at home call-center type jobs. I was going to call about getting my transcripts from previous colleges and my high school and about free counseling. But now I just have no desire to do any of that. I am simply not motivated anymore. I was tired so I went to sleep, and much to my dismay woke up only a couple of hours later, wide awake, remembering what had just happened was not a bad dream. I just want to go to sleep and stay asleep.

If I had the opportunity to kill myself now, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore either I don't think.

--and yes. I realize how all this sounds from an outside perspective. I wonder about that a lot. If I were someone else reading this I could just say "well do this, this and this. There. Problem solved." But it isn't that simple.

I think about how we're all really just a bunch of soulless biological robots, and the only reason we do anything is because our brains release chemicals to reward us when we do things we have evolved to know we will benefit from. I feel like I'm disgusted with myself for being unable to achieve rewards-- for failing every step of the way. It's like having a car that is a piece of shit-- that is ugly(no seriously look how fucking ugly) and stalls constantly and has all kinds of other problems that aren't even worth the cost of the vehicle to fix. It is intuitive for people to say "oh, well you just need to buck up and carry on" because I might still manage to win this race somehow with one wheel still intact, spinning in circles and shooting sparks everywhere.

I am garbage. Trying to improve myself is like putting sprinkles on a fucking dog ****. I know that I'm whining. I know it won't help anything, but I really feel like I need to express my discontent. I want to destroy myself for not being good enough. I want to destroy the world for teaching people to fear anyone who is hurting or for simply expressing love. All I can ever think about is how good things could be if things were different-- how I am missing out. It is maddening. I can barely see what I'm typing now because I am now furious. I want to bleed. I feel like I want people to watch me bleed and be slowly dismembered for being so inadequate. It is maddening, and I am trapped this way. There is no way out. I know continuing to feel this way is probably reducing my natural lifespan either way. It's like nature's way of mercy killing its mistakes. I am 30 years old. Can I have heart disease yet? Or maybe I'm already dead, and this is Hell. Maybe I could drive my car as fast as I can into a solid brick wall and wake up in bed like it was all a dream. Maybe I've died thousands of times already and just can't remember. That would explain so much.

That's all I can say. I hope it was as fun for you to read as it was for me to write. I think I can sleep again now.

"...problem solved"? No, no... not likely. Some problems inherent to the human condition don't seem to have solutions.

But: there are still ways to help.

Reading your posts, it's obvious to me that you have some degree of intelligence. Intelligence serves us well; pattern recognition allows us to anticipate things, to interpret things, that those lacking intelligence may struggle with.

One of the biggest problems with depression, and I speak from many years of experience, is that it hijacks your intelligence and forces your intelligence to see patterns that serve the depression itself. You are seeing loops, traps with no way out; your intelligence seems like it is betraying you. In a way, this is illusory.

Your intelligence is intended to serve you. It is a tool we humans can use to improve our lives and the lives of others.

I am going to share some tools and actions I have found useful. They will take effort, which I know is hard to consider when you're in a place like the one you're in now. You depression is likely to tell you that I myself am wasting my time writing this, because I am not you, and my suggestions may have helped me but we're not the same person, so why should they help you? Why should I care about you? Maybe you think I'm wasting my time. Maybe you think you're smarter than I am (and maybe you are!) and all you'll do is pick about what I'm about to say and rebut with all the reasons why my advice is bullshat.

Again, that is the depression hijacking your intelligence. Try to quiet that voice for just a minute and open your mind. In the words of the late, great Frank Zappa, "A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it isn't open."

1) Acknowledge that you are a part of something greater than yourself. I'm not telling you to find religion (I'm not necessarily telling to to avoid religion either.) You are a part of society. Society can be ugly, broken, and unfair. But you're a part of it, like it or not. You are a part of nature. Nature is often as nasty and brutish as it is beautiful and inspiring. You're a part of that, too, for better or worse.

If you must believe that we are soulless meat machines, you must. But the sympathy and empathy I see in your posts leads me to believe this may be a lie you (or your depression) tells yourself to numb your feelings. Even if the reality is that our emotions are chemical reactions and absolutely nothing more, they still affect us physiologically, and no man is an island -- they also affect the society around us and even to a certain extent nature as well, even if those effects aren't immediately obvious to us.

2) Start and maintain a gratitude journal. Every day, write down five things you are grateful or thankful for. Happiness is elusive; gratitude is more concrete. Do you have a roof over your head? Is there food on the table? Do you have hot running water? A toilet to flush away your waste? Access to the Internet? There's five things right there. Pardon the "starving kids in Africa" trope, but there are lots of folks in the world that would be very grateful for those things. I'm being presumptuous; perhaps those five things do not apply to you. Even if they don't, I suspect you have other things to be grateful for that you could substitute them with.

If, every day, you write down the same five things, that's okay. But try to make at least one thing on the list new every day if you can -- even if it's something as silly or trivial as "scotch tape." I'm grateful we have scotch tape and that I have access to it. Does scotch tape alone make life worth living? Maybe not, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate it and be grateful for it.

3) Move and go outside. I know this sounds preachy and dumb. I'm not saying to go join a gym or anything. I'm saying go outside and walk around the block (assuming you live in a safe enough neighborhood), or go to a park, or take a hike. If it takes Pokémon GO to motivate you, so be it. I like Pokémon GO. But if there are too many negative associations with GO right now, simply walk. Try to be in the moment. Breathe. If you live in a deadly neighborhood, at least step outside your door or open a window for a minute to breathe outside air, and look into simple exercises you can do indoors.

Humans haven't evolved to be idle all the time. That's a recent development in human civilization, and our bodies (and probably our minds!) haven't quite caught up to our increasingly sedentary lifestyles. Don't overdo it! I'm not saying that at all; that's why I'm talking about starting with walks around the block. With time, try to make it a goal to increase the activity to a point. Three blocks, maybe four. Maybe a jog or a sprint. Don't injure yourself, but also remember that the human body is a versatile and adaptive machine.

I sincerely hope you can find some peace of mind.

That just seems to be the reoccurring theme of what anyone says, and all I imagine any kind of therapy or counseling will amount to. I realize the goals I set are mostly unrealistic, but otherwise it simply does not seem worthwhile to me. I feel like I am being asked to settle for mediocrity, and I think my biggest problem of all is that I simply can't be content with all the little things anymore.

I told my wife about everything yesterday-- about how I had feelings for this other person and how she became afraid of me and cut me out of her life. She was angry, but she also understood. She could see how completely heartbroken I was, and decided she would make an effort at being a better wife so that I don't need to look elsewhere for attention.

--and there lies another problem. My friend had given me attention. She went from being a stranger on Facebook to being someone I was completely obsessed with because she seemed to actually want to befriend me and get to know me in the earlier days. There were several times where she would message me completely out of the blue and it would just make me so happy. All I could think about was wanting more and more until it finally peaked on a day we spent together at the comic store. I had never been so happy. It was just me and her and she was so friendly and charming. That was on September 30th, and after that it had become all that I cared about. I really think if I could go back in time and redo a lot of the things I said and did, things could have turned out a lot differently, and the thought of that kills me. I made a lot of really big mistakes and scared her away.

I just wish she could have understood how much it all meant to me without freaking out about it and getting all kinds of scary ideas. I wish she could look past those things and forgive me. Basically the last thing we talked about was how she was not comfortable hanging out with me anymore and how she wanted things to be like they were before she met me, and how I felt didn't matter at all. She gets to go back to the times before I existed in her life and I get to go back to sleeping all day and never leaving my apartment. It just feels really unfair. I know I screwed up a lot, but still. I am missing out. The chance that I could see her again on weekends was all I looked forward to, and there was always something stopping that from happening again. --and now it can never happen. It has been taken from me. I didn't care that she wasn't into me the same way. I didn't expect anything different-- but to completely cut me off like that was just devastating.

So now once again I'm expected to forget about the things I can't have, and appreciate the things I do have, and I can't quite describe what that feels like. It's like a big tease. I could have very well succeeded in getting what I wanted. It WAS possible. I just royally ****** everything up like I always do. I also had really bad luck. --like I could have very well gotten to see her the following Friday after that first time, but Hurricane Mathew came out of nowhere and ruined everything. Then the next week there was a change in my wife's work schedule so I couldn't go, and the more time passed the more desperate I became to make it happen, and I got sloppy.

So now here I am, trying to erase my memory of her and how happy I was, but I'm also relieved. My friend had been making me miserable far more than she ever made me happy. Every day she didn't want to talk or skillfully avoided spending time with me, which had become pretty much always, was very painful. I knew what was coming and it filled me with dread. It was actually a relief when she finally told me to go away, because before that there was still hope that she wouldn't. I can move on now. It would have been so much easier if she did that a month ago instead of putting up with me and playing nice all this time. I feel like I actually kind of hate her now. She has shown to be an incredibly selfish and uncaring person.

I got to watch Mad Men on Netfllix with my wife cuddled up with me last night, which was nice. It's something she never would have done with me had none of this happened. We talked about what we needed to do in order to make things better between us. --and I told her I just need attention. I need to be able to talk to her about things and to feel loved and be close to her. She says she completely understands because she felt the same way back when she was a housewife to her ex husband. Now I am the housewife. I don't feel the same kind of excitement with my wife I would have with my friend. It's like being married to my mother, really. We will never be able to change that part of our relationship, but at least now there is something.

This whole experience has left me even more untrusting of people. I now find myself completely unable to leave my apartment. The thought of getting a job and interacting with strangers has never been more revolting to me. I still feel depressed, but only just slightly more than I did before all this happened. I wish my friend could find all that I've written here and read it all. I don't expect her to change her mind, but I do wish she could understand. I am really hoping for there to be some kind of afterlife in which everyone can see the world through everyone else's eyes at once somehow, and that people could experience what things have been like for me and really understand.

Well, if you think you can fix it and feel that it's too late then you're not all that interested in fixing it.