📚 return to index

to continue living

occasionally you'll hear people ask broadly "what is the meaning of life?". it's a difficult question with an alluring aura--for if life has no meaning then what is the point? there are a variety of competing thoughts on what that meaning truly is, but i like to believe that the question is wrong, at least in part. the meaning of life isn't anything in particular, but rather it is life itself. life is, among many other things, a collection of experiences one has over the span of their lifetime. growing up, going to school, your first kiss, hanging out with friends, and so on. so then the meaning of life becomes those experiences, how you experience them, and forging more opportunities to have such experiences.

but what if your experiences and everything to do with how you perceive and create them becomes tainted? you try to do things you enjoy, or see people you like, but it just doesn't do it for you anymore. they don't fill you like they used to, and you're left feeling empty. that emptiness is so terrifying, because once upon a time it was effortless to fill it up--you didn't even have to think about it. but here you are now, faced with the problem of trying to fill that void, to feel something again, and you have no idea how to do that.

you panic, and you reach for whatever you can just to get that hit. you sink into destructive habits for those cheap moments of joy which fill you for that moment. but you need more, you always need more, and so you keep going until you're faced with the reality of what you've done. you can see the physical effects of what you've done to yourself, you can FEEL it, and you hate yourself for it. you cry because you feel lost and alone, unable to pull yourself up and out of this hole you've dug yourself into. you feel like a piece of shit, you hate yourself, and once again you feel empty. but what can you do when you're this low, you need to hang onto something right? so you keep at it. you keep destroying yourself, bit by bit, crying and loathing yourself all the way to the bottom.

and then you hit the bottom. there's nowhere left to go now. even the autocannibalistic tendencies you once indulged in have lost their lustre, but their effects on your body remain. all that is left for you is the pain of your situation--you've lost your life's meaning, and with that your will to continue on.

i've been slowly digging myself into this hole for a while now, and it's truly terrifying. you can never really know when you've hit the bottom, but what i do know is that i feel close. i continue to actively seek reasons to hang onto life, but day by day their count dwindles.

i should be seeking help, but how do you do that? how can i find someone i trust, and tell them that i don't want to be alive right now? it's not the sort of thing you can just bring up, and it's a lot of burden to put onto other people. even the build up to just try and talk to someone about it is hard, because to put your feelings into words is to directly acknowldge the reality of how you feel. but then maybe you do tell someone, and out of fear they lock you away--somewhere that you can't hurt yourself but instead sink deeper and deeper into the depths of your mind. they assume it'll help you, but really you just continue to fester with your thoughts.

which is why you find me here today, floating off in space. they sent me here. they didn't want me to bring harm to myself. they thought the best way to help me was to treat me as less than human. i feel so isolated from the rest of the world, like nobody understands or cares. all i want right now is for someone to hold me, and to tell me things will be okay, and for me to be able to believe them.

📚 return to index